Radio-TV mirror (Jan-June 1954)

know. We're interested in each other's work, but neither tells the other what to do — except when there's a problem it helps to talk over. We make our own final decisions, but talking over the things that bother us does hreak us out of our separate jobs occasionally . . . especially when Jim has to learn a script over a weekend, as he almost always does, and I am working on something, too . . . and we might as well be in different cities for all we can say to each other! Sometimes it's a relief then to stop and turn to someone who understands your problems but won't impose his ideas on you if you don't want them. Basically, we think alike, yet our ideas do clash now and then. Jim is kind enough always to try to see my side of things — anybody's side. It's one of the' reasons I respect him so much." "Nina is the one who is kind, and never lets a fellow down," Jim interjects. "She's not particularly interested in some sports but, when I get enthusiastic about my favorite team's chances of winning, she can feign just the right amount of interest to humor me." "I don't feign it. I really am interested. I think it's only adult to get interested in the things that interest the people I like." "Like water skiing?" he teases, knowing that she is scared to death of it and only keeps on bolstering up her courage to try because he loves it. As for her own specialties, Nina is a painter of professional skill — but on her living room wall is a little sketch done by Jim in Central Park last summer. Hardly a work of art, but an attempt on his part to understand the thing she, loves to do. Jim has, however, studied sculpture and knows about art as a collector, mainly of Daumiers. Nina has a precious small Renoir etching, an overpainting of half a dozen small etchings (called a "palimpsest") from the same workstone. She also treasures an original Staats Cotsworth oil of a sleeping man, which hangs on another wall of her living room. Other pictures — which she refers to rather deprecatingly as "Oh, those? Those are mine" — are a series of excellent small oils, several of them self-portraits, one with decided surrealistic overtones being a particularly fine likeness. (Ask her what the symbols mean and she says, "Nothing.") Most of her best work has been sold, including her favorite still life. She studied with the great Japanese painter and teacher, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and with Paul Clemens, the portrait painter. Besides this common interest in artistic things, in the theatre, movies and playing Scrabble, Jim and Nina have "pooled" their separate interests. Like Jim's pleasure in exploring parts of New York that Nina had never seen. "Jim likes to do things that didn't exist for me until I knew him. Like going to the lower East Side, around Orchard Street. Being part of the teeming world of pushcarts, the funny little stalls and stores. Hearing the many different languages and accents. Watching the varieties of people. Sniffing the smells and feeling the pulse of a life that seems far removed from uptown New York. I have learned to love it now, too, but all this never appealed to me as fun until Jim showed it to me." "Nina is teaching me to paint, and to eat better," Jim adds, "and I have taught her about Orchard Street and getting out into the country when the leaves turn in the fall, or the first spring green begins to appear. I'll never forget how she broke down, during the first weeks I knew her, because she had worked all afternoon to prepare her most famous chicken dish — the one everyone else is just crazy about — and I just picked at it. She didn't know then that I had acquired the European habit of eating my big meal at noon, when I was making a motion picture abroad, and that I rarely ate very much at night. But I'm learning now to save my appetite for her cooking!" The new apartment is one Nina moved into late last fall. It is still in the process of being turned into the home she wants it to be. There is a small foyer, papered in white and gold, with a white bearskin rug on the floor. Books and ornaments are still being unpacked, in between rehearsals and broadcasts and readings of movie and play scripts (always on the chance there may be just the right part in the right script). Living-room walls are white, with just enough Venetian red added to the paint to give it a slight glow, especially under lamplight. "It's kind to skin tones," she says. So are the blue-white ceilings throughout. "They give the illusion of air and sky." Once, in her childhood, she had a royalblue room — because it was then considered "chic" — and it has made her sensitive to the colors around her. "I didn't want to admit I didn't like it after I got it, but I know now why I didn't." The living-room rug is a soft green. There is a long green couch at one end of the room, under a large mirror with a heavy antique gold frame. The base of the coffee table is a huge wood cube, surmount R M 72 "Suddenly ray anxiety was gone" These words have been uttered by" thousands of people after hearing their very own problem solved on radio's vivid program, "My True Story." For the emotional conflicts presented on this program are true-to-life problems involving real people — yes, people as real as you, your family, the folks down the block. Each drama — taken from the files of "True Story Magazine" — deals with the touching, human problems they encounter. Tune in "MY TRUE STORY" American Broadcasting Stations Don't miss— "DEVIL ON WHEELS"— a story of thrill-seeking hot-rod teens in March TRUE STORY, at newsstands now. m ed with a circular slab of marble. A cabinet with handy shallow shelves was picked up on one of their "antiquing" jaunts for a few dollars and will be fitted later with a marble top. There are comfortable chairs and lamps and an air of homeyness. Nina's bedroom has coral walls, and scattered around are the little treasures that have come down through her family and the things she and Jim have found in their browsings around New York. There is a handsome Delft lamp, a family heirloom. An Egyptian cosmetic box. A red china heart that was attached to one of Jim's little presents to her. Pictures she treasures, a few photographs. The small kitchen is bright with pots and pans and all the paraphernalia of a cook who really works at her job. The corner cabinet is something they picked up for ten dollars in an antique shop, Moorish in design, made of ebony inlaid with mother-ofpearl and a mosaic of fine woods. A home in New York is a fairly recent acquisition for Nina. She spent seven years under contract in Hollywood, except for a year in a hit show, "John Loves Mary," in which she made a decided personal hit on Broadway. Jim did one film in this country, "The Big Break," and one in Europe which hasn't been shown in this country. He started acting in earnest when he came out of the Army Air Force and was waiting to be admitted to Columbia University Law School in New York. It's true he had been a successful radio actor in Detroit, but always he thought of it as a sideline. During the wait in New York, he auditioned for radio again and success came so quickly that he never did get to law school. He has played roles in most of the daytime dramas and appeared on many TV shows, such as The Web, Danger, Medallion Theatre and You Are There (in which you may remember him as Michelangelo). Now he is devoting most of his time to being young Dr. Dick Grant on The Guiding Light TV and radio programs, with an occasional nighttime dramatic show and also the filmed Inner Sanctum series, soon to be released. Both Nina and Jim feel that they have learned lessons from acting that apply to their own lives. "We think it has taught us to deal more objectively with our own problems," Jim says. "We can stand aside a little and judge things apart from our impulsive personal reactions," Nina adds. "It has given us both a broader viewpoint. Perhaps we see ourselves a little as actors see the characters they portray. All this is a help to us both." "This is what I like about Nina," Jim breaks in. "She's so terribly pretty, so extraordinarily charming, yet so very intelligent in her whole approach to life. Perhaps I admire her most, however, for being such a terrific try-er, if you know what I mean. Even when it's something she wouldn't have chosen to do, she strives so hard to make a success of it. It's a kind of wonderful courage, a drive she has that makes her stick to anything she has started and to battle her way through." "I think what I like most about Jim," Nina says thoughtfully, "is this business of being able to respect him so completely. It's not something you notice all at once. It has to build and build, until you recognizehow it overshadows everything else. In the beginning, when Jim was so kind to me when I was ill, and when he brought me the wonderful, imaginative flower-birdcage on which he had put so much time and work, I thought I already knew the best of him. I have learned there is so much more." So, even though this is a romantic and gay story, you can see it has its serious undertones. And through it all is the warm laughter of two people who are finding that problems shared are cut in half — but joys shared are doubled.