Radio-TV mirror (July-Dec 1954)

they'd ask. 'How's it going? Want to use my red dress?' " After a while Russ and Liza learned about a little restaurant where they could buy a lot of spaghetti for a few quarters, and then they got friendly with the pages on the sixth floor of the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center. That's where NBC keeps a small viewing room, supposedly only for employees, with a big TV set and some chairs. The pages let them in, and there was their evening's entertainment, waiting for them. For free, too. In February, their luck changed. Russ got a radio show and some spots on a TV set-up, The 54th Street Revue (now defunct) . And Liza was offered a leading part in "Inside USA," the Bea Lillie stage show. Liza would spend four weeks with the play in New York, and then start on the road with the touring company. Here was the first crisis in the love affair of Russ and Liza. Until now they'd only been broke. But, if Liza took the job, they'd be separated. They walked down into Central Park the afternoon she got the offer, and huddled together in the cold on a bench, talking it over through chattering teeth. "It's a break for me, Russ," she told him, shivering against his shoulder. "I can't let you go. It might be weeks, months, before I saw you again." "But all that money — " "You might meet somebody else — " "Silly." "You have to go, don't you?" "I won't, if you say not." "I couldn't stand in your way — " "But I'd be back. I'd be back so soon." "Don't go. I couldn't live with you away." "All right, I won't go." "But your career — I guess you've got to." "Yes. Oh, Russ, hold me close. . . ." So she took the job. The night she caught the train for Boston, he saw her to the station and went with her to the train. They were very civilized, very grown-up, about their parting. He kissed her gently, handed her up the steps, and walked along the platform outside as she walked along the aisle inside of the car, until she sat down. "There she sat," Russ remembers, "with her hands crossed in her lap, a forlorn little figure. She was everything in the world to me, my whole life, and she was going away. Then she looked at me, and the big tears started rolling down her cheeks. In a minute I was crying, too. She sat there, and I stood there only a yard from her, and we both bawled like babies." The next night he counted up his money, then phoned her at her hotel in Boston. Halfway through the conversation he said, "By the way, you know we're going to be married when you get back, don't you?" "Yes." "Well," he said, "as I was saying, there's a good chance of a new TV show for me next week . . ." After they'd hung up, Russ suddenly said to himself, "Good Lord, I've just got myself engaged!" He went to stand in front of a mirror and grinned at his reflection. In Boston, Liza started to wash out a pair of nylons. Suddenly she stopped. "I said 'Yes,'" she said to her reflection. "I'm going to marry him!" The next morning she found the nylons still floating in the cold basin of soapy water. She couldn't remember how they'd ever got there. Russ hasn't the faintest idea how, during the next months until May, 1949, he saved enough money to call Liza as often as he did, or buy plane tickets so he could fly for a few hours to Boston, Philadelphia, and other cities on the tour's way to Chicago. Liza thinks he must have hocked his watch several times, and admits that finally he said to her, "Honey, now that we're engaged, maybe you might call Die once in a while. You can afford it and I can't, and I've got to talk to you — " "Don't worry," she said, "just be by that phone at six tomorrow night, and I guarantee it will ring." Russ, meanwhile, had taken a tenement walkup apartment in New York. He was trying to save some money for their marriage, but at the same time he wanted to carry her over the threshold of a cute, amusing apartment. So, all the time she was on tour, he remodeled the tenement flat. He painted it, turned orange crates into end-tables, went up to Harlem and bought an oak dining table for eight dollars, then cut it down to a coffee table, made bookshelves out of planks discarded when a near-by building was wrecked. . . . When, in May, Liza wired him that she was quitting the show and coming home, he started making fast plans for the wedding. He had some friends who lived in apartments in Greenwich Village looking out on the courtyard of the Episcopal Church of St. John's-in-the-Village, on Fourth Street. Russ and Liza were married at the outdoor altar in that courtyard, and held their reception in a friend's apartment. There was no money for a honeymoon, but Providence usually takes care of nice young people whose only problem is to share their first few days of love together in privacy and beauty. The day after their marriage, Russ received a wire from his Hollywood agent offering him a part in a Gene Autry movie, "Sons of New Mexico," with a three-week guarantee. For a whole week, they stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel because Liza had always wanted to spend her honeymoon there. Then, sensibly, they moved to her mother's house in Beverly Hills. After all, that would do now. They had found each other and their love, they were married, and they'd had the dream honeymoon they'd always wanted. From now on, marriage would be a sensible arrangement, albeit still the happiest of contracts in this happiest of worlds. 1 oday, the Arms family lives in a "garden apartment" in Flushing, and Russell commutes into New York City while Liza keeps house — and some singing "dates" of her own. At home in their one-bedroom apartment — which they furnished in modern "because modern goes with anything, and we hope someday to have a house that isn't furnished with left-over apartment furniture" — they are still as much in love as ever. Russ is pretty much tops now, with his spot on Your Hit Parade. He started just singing the commercials, then began doing entire numbers on the show, and now is one of the vocal stars. And, when he goes home at the end of a long day, Liza is waiting for him. They still kiss each other hello as if they'd been married for just a week. Then Russ will sprinkle food into the aquariums of tropical fish, his greatest hobby, while Liza prepares the vegetables and meat in the kitchen. Then they both fix dinner. When they were first married, Russ discovered that Liza couldn't boil water. He was already an accomplished cook, having been taught the art by his father. "So I passed on a few lessons to Liza, and she isn't bad," he explains. "Of course, I belong to the plaincooking school, and she's beginning to throw garlic and wine around . . . but you can't have everything." This should qualify as the most pointless remark of the year, since he obviously has everything. And he got it, so to speak, from the towering Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. : bring out the natural eauty of your hair If you really want to make your hair lovelier, you can do it, safely, easily in about 3 minutes. From Noreen's 14 wonder-working colors , you'll fincf just the shade that enhances yOur natural color, reviving its\ youthful, lystrous beauty or to blend; in gr'py or streaked/hair Try a Noreen beauty treatment. §ee for'yourself how Noreen will keep your hair the way you want it from shampoo to shampoc ight and shir COLOR HAIR RINSE 75