Radio-TV mirror (Jan-June 1954)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

Wake up that tired bedroom with new color, matching color, in bedspread and curtains . . . and do it almost for free! Simply dunk the ones you have in the washer along with All Purpose Rit and presto! you've created a bedroom ensemble. Even the deeper colors like Royal Blue or Jade Green take beautifully in just hot tap water, thanks to Rit and your washing machine. The finest dye . . . the high concentrate dye . . . and only Aw, All Purpose RIT R M 76 RIT PRODUCT* CORPORATION ' 1437 W. Morris St., Indianapolis 6 a mile-long waiting list. And it wasn't too long before the pretty redhead got a part in the successful Gertrude Lawrence play, "Susan and God." When the play ended its Broadway run, Nancy went with the road company — and the very first city she played was San Francisco, whence she had come just six months before. "I came back to New York after the road run," she says, "and went into radio, where I was in Young Dr. Malone, Death Valley Days, and a dozen other radio dramas." Then she was asked to read for the lead in a new play by the wellknown playwright Philip Barry, and got it. Her first starring role was in "Liberty Jones," a play the critics found interesting but the public found merely baffling. But it brought Nancy a Hollywood offer and off she went to Warner Brothers, where she stayed for five years. It was at Warners' that she met her husband Whitney Bolton, who had just become publicity head of the studio. He was sitting at a table in the commissary, where all the stars eat their lunch, when Nancy and a writer friend of hers, Jerry Asher, came in to keep a date with Olivia de Havilland. They were late and Olivia, being a lady of temperament, had gotten tired of waiting and had left a symbol of her annoyance on their table. It was a gris-gris, a little figure made of wax and stuck full of pins. The gris-gris is a voodoo charm made by the Haitian Negroes when they wish harm to their enemies. Of course, Olivia left it as a gag. But Nancy didn't know what it was. "I was so dumb," she admits, "I had never heard of such a thing, so I blurted out at the top of my lungs that I didn't know what a gris-gris was. Well, the man at the next table called out and said, Til tell you what it is.' He came over, and I was introduced to Whitney Bolton. In fact, Jerry Asher said, 'Here's Whitney Bolton, a real charm boy.' " Nancy readily agreed with Jerry. She and Whitney were married the following September. Their life together is happy because each understands and has respect for the other's work. When asked whether Whitney doesn't find her current schedule a little rugged, Nancy explains: "Whitney says that he knew what he was letting himself in for when he married an actress and, so long as I am working and happy, it's all right with him." And Nancy is happy working. She likes TV because it gives her a chance to use what she calls "the tools of my trade." Says she, "Acting is a trade like any other, and if you don't keep working you lose your skill." So that's why this attractive redhead keeps to a schedule that would make many a strong man quail. 64T9 I've All 111 Ever Ask For" (Continued from page 59) been like a rebirth to me. Like the coming of spring. I live for Toni. I haven't any thoughts that don't include her." There was a charge, both in the words he used and in the way he spoke them. Another kind of charge. Right now, happiness is in the ascendancy in Jan's life. And, because there was so much unhappiness, struggle and heartbreak in his early years, Jan has an especially keen appreciation of his present state. "This," he tells you with a glow in his voice, "is the happiest I have ever been." And he tells you why. He has his first real home, in Woodmere, Long Island, a house so old that Jan says, "When I first opened the front door, two old men tumbled out yelling 'Run for your life, the British are coming!' " He has Toni. Toni, who waited five years for him. Toni, of whom Jan says, "When I first saw her, I thought she was the loveliest looking girl I had ever seen! Now, after five years of courtship and four years of marriage, I still think so. I have loved her through all sorts of vicissitudes and," Jan laughed, "all shades of hair!" He has his children: Warren, the son of his first marriage, who is eleven; Celia, so special to Jan, who is three; Howard, the baby, who is just two. And, in May, there will be another baby, a fourth. "Toni wants a big family, terribly big!" Jan beamed. "I get scared sometimes. I'm thirty-five . . . and I see all these tots running around the house. No relaxing for me!" he said, looking as though he couldn't be more pleased. He has his show. His suspenseful, funand-frenzy show now telecast over approximately 120 stations, including such far-flung spots as Hawaii and Alaska. "The only thing I ask for now," Jan said, "is that my show, still pretty much in its infancy, be a big hit; that I can create enough excitement, develop enough new gimmicks so that it will survive forever — and there's no reason I know of why it can't. If this comes off for me, that's all I'm ever going to ask — and, of course, that my wife and kids stay happy and healthy and my home as it is, just exactly as it is today. I seem," Jan summed up, "to have reached port — or heaven, I should say." So he does. A snug heaven, and secure. But he reached it the hard way. Jan was born in the Bronx, New York, one of two children. "We started off in life fairly well-to-do." he smiled. " 'Comfortably off' describes us. And then, in 1929, I saw my dad go bankrupt overnight, but not bankrupt of spirit. He was a big man, a courageous man. One of his remaining assets was a vintage Packard limousine which he converted into a taxicab, and drove, just so we kids could eat. That took guts. He had 'em. "I'd like to think that I inherited my father's courage. But, for a time, it didn't seem as if I had. From the time I was born, my main ambition was to make people laugh. Early in life I showed a knack, I've been told, for the fast patter, the swift ad lib. After high school, I landed my first job as social director in charge of entertainment at a big hotel in the Catskill Mountains. In the first show I put on, I made my professional debut. Acting then, as now, as my own gag writer, I gave it all the pace and patter, the wit and will, at my then untutored command. But I seemed to click with the paying customers. That did it. Then and there I decided to make show business my life work, my career. "As with Danny Kaye, Imogene Coca, Moss Hart, Van Johnson and so many others, I served my apprenticeship on the 'Borscht Circuit.' Soon after I graduated from the Circuit, I began to get bookings in burlesque, honky-tonks, night clubs, small vaudeville theatres, and gradually progressed to the plush Copacabana, the Martinique, the Paramount Theatre. But, all during this time, I was followed by great personal tragedy. "My mother, brother and father all died within six years. They all died tragically. None of it was easy. My mother first. Then David, my kid brother, six years younger than I, was shot down overseas. He vas » pilot in the Second World War. I'd been