Radio-TV mirror (Jan-June 1954)

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But I suppose if you are born to an actress-mother and a newspaperman-father you are conditioned to the unusual from birth!" Nancy and Whitney, on the nights he is not working, always have dinner with the twins. "Whitney is a wonderful father," his wife says. "Whenever I have had to be away because of my work, he spends all his free time with them. And the twins adore him, naturally." Nancy is fortunate, too, in having Cora, a wonderful housekeeper who lives and works at the Boltons' five full days a week, but then takes off for the weekend. When she is on duty, Cora does everything from watching out for the twins to marketing, cooking and keeping the house shipshape. But, on weekends, the family takes over. Whitney likes to cook. "He's wonderful with roasts," says Nancy. And, from Friday to Monday, the Boltons live like any other suburban Long Island family. The twins dust, help with bed-making and dishwashing, and Nancy and Whitney putter around the house. They have done almost everything in the house themselves. They like nothing better than to haunt the auctions or secondhand shops and find what Nancy gaily refers to as "a marvelous bargain." They pick up old furniture, rub it down and re-upholster it themselves. Actually, says Nancy, "Old furniture is much more satisfactory when you have children. It seems to have been built to weather their attacks on it." Neither Nancy nor her husband is very good at gardening, so they have a man who comes once a week to tend the small vegetable and flower gardens. All their energy and enthusiasm go into the house. And it is hard to believe that no interior decorator had a hand in the decor. For the color schemes are unusual enough to have sprung from the brain of the most expensive decorator in the country. The living room, for instance, has walls of soft plum and a ceiling of pale pink. Nancy's and Whitney's bedroom is in a green so dark as to look almost black, with dazzling white accents. And in the domain of the twins, who share a room, the predominant color is Americanflag blue. The furniture is mostly built-in. Nancy evolved these schemes herself and did battle with the bewildered painters in the manner of housewives everywhere. "The painters thought I was a bit touched," Nancy says, with a shake of her red curls, "but they did what I wanted." The only major remodeling done to the house is the installation of a huge picture window which overlooks Hempstead Harbor. "But someday," says Nancy, "we are going to do over the attic into a suite for the twins." Asked for an explanation of the twins' unusual names, Nancy explains that "Charla is an adaptation of my father's name, Charles, and Charlotte, which is my sister's name. Grania is the Gaelic word for Grace, which is my mother's name." The little girls are identical twins and sometimes, even their mother has difficulty in telling them apart. A particularly homey episode, which illustrates just how much of an everyday life this petite actress leads, is the story she tells of hearing one of the twins "whoopsing," as she put it, in the bathroom late one night. Nancy went in to help and put the little girl to bed. A little later she heard her again. So once again she went in and put the child to bed. The next morning she asked Charla how she felt. "All right," said Charla. Then another little voice spoke up. "I feel all right, too," said Grania. Both little girls had been ill, but Nancy had thought it was the same one each time. But there are differences in temperament and talent. "Grania, for instance, is the better dancer of the two," says Nancy, "and Charla is the better actress." Their pretty red-headed mother, who has spent most of her life acting, doesn't know whether or not they'll follow in her footsteps in the theatre. "It's too early to tell what they want to do," she says sagely, "and, besides, I don't believe in pushing things. There's plenty of time for the girls to make up their own minds." Nancy Coleman herself is happy anywhere, so long as she is acting. Like most youngsters, she got the acting bug early. But, unlike the majority who get bitten, she never got over it. And it was her mother's courage and vision in pulling up stakes and moving — from the small city of Everett, Washington, to San Francisco— which enabled Nancy to get her first break in radio. For her mother never doubted Nancy's talent. Nancy's father had been a newspaperman. He was managing editor of the local paper. Nancy and her sister grew up in Everett, went to grammar school there and then to high school, after which Nancy spent a couple of years at the University of Washington — where, as she explains it, "I acted, every chance I got, and read all the plays I could get hold of." Her sister had no interest in a career at all. "It's funny," Nancy laughs. "She worked in an advertising agency in San Francisco and was very good at it, but she just wanted to get married and have a home of her own. I used to tell her she wouldn't meet many beaux if she quit her job. But I was wrong. She got just what she wanted." When the Colemans moved to San Francisco, Nancy took a job at a local department store, The Emporium. First she ran an elevator, then was promoted to the millinery department where, as she puts it, "they tried to make an assistant buyer out of me." One day she was riding in an elevator when a sorority sister, whom Nancy didn't know, saw her pin and struck up a conversation with her. Learning that Nancy really wanted to act, she offered to introduce her to the casting director at NBC. "I didn't think anything would come of it," says Nancy, "but it did. I was called for an audition which I couldn't make and, believe it or not, they called me again. This time I went, and got a part in Hawthorne House, a serial drama which was on one night a week. So I kept my daytime job — until the store decided my mind wasn't really on millinery and fired me." After that first show, Nancy got more radio parts and gathered some stage experience with the Federal Theatre. But always in her mind was the dream of New York and the Broadway stage. Everything she had done was leading up to the big moment when she would arrive in Manhattan. "My goal was to save $1000," she says seriously. "I finally made it in January, a time of year when, according to all the experts, nothing is happening on Broadway. But I was afraid if I waited I'd spend that money and my dream would never come true. So I came to New York in style. I took a firstclass cabin on a ship through the Panama Canal, bought myself some wonderful new clothes and landed in New York with about $600. A friend of a friend of my mother's met me and took me to the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel, and there I was." Nancy's luck held all the way through. She got a room at the hard-to-get-into Rehearsal Club, an inexpensive residence for young stage aspirants, which usually has