Radio-TV mirror (July-Dec 1954)

(Continued from page 51) working seriously to solve them, and can have fun year in and year out. Never, never to lose that sense of fun seems so important." At this point, Peggy pauses to laugh a little at herself, a single girl, discussing marriage with such assurance. A popular girl, however, and strikingly pretty, with bronze-brown hair, lovely hazel eyes — a slim, 5' 3", twenty-four-year-old who has already had plenty of chances to ponder this question of what makes a marriage right. Particularly, what will make it right for her. "For me, even friendship is usually a slow growth," she says thoughtfully. "Then I think of that person as my friend forever. It's the way I believe that love should be, too. "A girl should be very sure, before she goes into marriage, but all of us have to get to a certain phase of our lives before we can understand this. We have to arrive first at a certain maturity in our emotional development. For me, a very youthful marriage would not have been good, because my reasons for entering into it would not have been important enough. Not thoughtful enough. Certainly, I have believed myself in love, once or twice, but now I am glad I waited." She laughed, hesitated. "I probably wasn't really in love, anyhow, or the thing would have happened!" One notion, the old one that you can make a man over to your pattern after marriage, doesn't appeal to Peggy at all. "You fall in love with the man and all his traits, even his idiosyncracies. Maybe the qualities that seem so endearing may turn out to be a little annoying when lived with every day, but you have to remember that he takes the same chance with you. I have heard girls talk about the men they were going to marry and mention all the things they expected to change. I don't believe anyone has a right to do this to another person. Perhaps a husband will conform a little more to your ideas as time goes on — just as you will adapt to some of his — but a girl makes a mistake when she begins to build up these things. If they had seemed important enough in the beginning, she would never have married the man. "I hope, too, that I shall try very hard to avoid that dreadful moment in a marriage, the time when a wife begins to make an issue of really small things. I have seen this happen, and it seems most apt to happen when a woman has no interests of her own. I suppose the way to prevent it is to keep up some of one's own interests, and to be on the alert against it. Even when people really love each other dearly, an argument can sometimes start about something rather important and yet end up with all sorts of petty recriminations. The big thing might have been worth talking out, but it's as if the smaller ones were just brought in for something hurtful to say. It seems so foolish — and often it's even amusing to an outsider, who has had to listen to the quarrel go off on these bypaths. Once in Love for a Lifetime a while, when Vanessa gets involved in something like this with Paul, I am secretly a little amused — although I know it's not a bit funny to her!" The one trait that Peggy finds hard to forgive, even in someone who otherwise attracts her, is snobbishness. "I mean the feeling of being above certain other people, by reason of education, or money, or environment, or fortunate circumstances of any kind. Perhaps it is unfair of me to judge, realizing that a man's background and whole way of life may have done this to him. But, by the time he is old enough to look squarely at the world for himself and form his own decisions, there doesn't seem to be much excuse for remaining a snob. I find this hard to overlook. In anyone, for that matter. Man, or woman." There is something else, too. Because she has always known exactly what she wanted to do, from high school on (there was never anything for her but acting), Peggy feels that her own chances for happiness are greater with a man who is devoted to his work, whatever it may be, and who already has a fairly definite idea of what he wants to accomplish. "I understand this kind of ambition, this love for the work for its own sake, regardless of what rewards it may or may not bring. That's the way I have always felt about my work. I am sure I would not care what kind of business or profession a man might follow, if he believed in it and was so absorbed in it that he could be happy in nothing else. And I hope I would be willing to live any way, and place, required — continuing in my own work, if that's possible, but willing to make any change necessary. I should dislike to feel that, because of me, he could not gamble on any change or take any chance he thought was for the better. "Sometimes I have noticed that the best way for a wife to understand a man's feeling about his job is to try to understand something about it herself and the conditions under which he must do it. I should certainly dislike turning into an interfering wife who constantly pokes her nose into her husband's business affairs — I have seen wives like that! — but, if there is an understanding of his problems and he feels free to discuss things that trouble him, it must be wonderful for them both. It would be wonderful for me, I know, to have a part, however small, in anything that interested the man I might love." One way any wife can be helpful to her husband, to Peggy's way of thinking, is by being a gracious hostess to his business associates and friends. "A pleasant, relaxed atmosphere in the home, where a man can ask the people he wants to entertain, can be of great help. Even the simplest surroundings and the plainest entertaining will make guests feel comfortable— if there's warmth and friendship. "I think it's important also for a girl to try to like a man's friends, both before and after marriage. And his friends' wives. Some girls begin by pointing out to a man the faults of every friend they meet, even his oldest and dearest ones." 72 There's only one BINGi Crosby has always held a unique place in America's heart . . . and only Rosemary Clooney has come close to explaining "why"! Don't miss this inspiring story, told as only Rosemary could tell it ... or the great full-page, full-color picture of these two singing favorites ... in the January issue of TV RADIO MIRROR on sale December 7 This brings up the question of how a girl can judge a man who begins to show more than a "dating" interest. "These very friends are often the clue to his character, an indication of the kind of person he really is. And you can't judge them by the little flaws. You have to remember he may see faults in some of your closest friends. If neither of you likes the other's friends, however, it may be that your other ideas are just as far apart. You can find out also whether or not he likes children by watching him with the children in your family or his, or with the children of friends." Peggy is an outdoor girl and, while she adores theater and movies and dancing and going out all dressed up, she feels she would be happiest with a man who enjoys some of these other things she likes to do. She gets up early to ride in Central Park before her Love Of Life rehearsals, and she lives outdoors as much as her crowded schedule permits during the summer months. Last summer, with her friend Dolores Sutton (who plays Diane in Valiant Lady), Peggy rented a cottage on Fire Island, near New York, where she swam and lived on the beach weekends, and where the girls and their friends put on all sorts of impromptu musical entertainments, writing their own shows, costuming them, acting them out. Summer before last, she had a gorgeous time touring the Pacific Northwest, fishing its rushing streams, riding the steep mountain trails, boating, hiking, loving the scenery and the northern woods. "It would be wonderful to marry someone who could enjoy these things with me," she says. "A man who likes the excitement of crowds and music and theater, but who also is happy doing some of the simple things. A walk in the woods, for instance. Maybe a picnic along a country road. And even in the city, there are many things to do that aren't along the beaten paths. There are art exhibitions, and quaint little shops, and little restaurants you can feel are your very own discoveries! If you can enjoy some of these things together — or if you can just take a walk along a street and feel you don't have to be filling every moment with conversation, but can let a companionable silence fall between you — it seems to me that might be one of the tests for a happy relationship. "For me, too, it would be a wonderful thing to find someone who is interested in some of the projects I am always working on — like planning some of the pantomimes I love to do, or dreaming up an idea for a play, or a story. It would be wonderful, too, to work on some of his pet projects — a business he might someday want to start, a dream house he might hope to build, a trip that might be a future reality. I only hope we would both have sense of humor enough to laugh at ourselves when our schemes got too ambitious and out of hand, and yet faith enough to keep on with them when we felt they might someday work." Apart from such preferences, Peggy doesn't care whether her sometime husband is tall or short, fair or dark. Or, if she does, these aren't the important things. "I can't help feeling," she says, "that if you are going to spend the rest of your life with someone, it should be someone you can laugh with, you can cry with, you can talk with or be silent with. And if at some point in your going-together you feel very sure this will be true of you — well, then, I guess you know that it has really happened. And that there's an excellent chance that you've fallen in love for a lifetime!"