Radio-TV mirror (July-Dec 1953)

A Human Kind of Guy Named Garry {Continued from page 64) wrought a change in the Garry Moore I knew. When I met him at his suite at the Gotham six years ago, he'd just come in from an all-night jazz session at Eddie Condon's place in the Village and was clearing his head with black coffee. The day sort of went on like that." I thought rather sadly of the devil-may-care, let'sget-going fellow of 1948, then got to my feet. "Maybe it's not such a good idea after all." But, on the way out, I caught sight of a door and froze ia my tracks. "Oops!" I said. "Whose office is that?" Shirley said, "Garry's, of course. Oh, you mean the stuff on it? Well, it was painted the same dull green as everything else here at CBS and the other day he couldn't stand it another minute. Said it was too drab. Called in painters and had it painted that shocking pink. And, after that, the sword of Damocles on the wall with the label 'Sponsors' on it, and that crew-cut symbol of his, and — " Then I could laugh. "You had me scared for a minute," I said. "He's the same old Garry. I wouldn't miss doing this story for the world." "The trouble is," Garry said a couple of afternoons later, twisting nervously in his Mansfield Theatre seat a few minutes after he'd finished his show, "the Tnain trouble is that nobody wants to let me look the way I really am. They keep saying I have to look to the public the way the public wants me to look. They print everything about me but the truth." It was an old complaint of great stars, only I'd never had it from Garry before. I'd never had anything except honesty from him. For a moment or two, Garry and I recalled that other, long-gone meeting when we cured his morning-after blues and went on to lunch in 52nd Street and then wandered along Fifth Avenue on the way to his studio without a soul recognizing or stopping him. Now, in 1953. Garry glowered morosely at me. "I couldn't spend an afternoon like that any more," he said. "Then I was only a name. Now I'm a face. Good Lord, do you know what happened a couple of days ago? I was on a two-week vacation. I took my wife and kids on the boat, and we sailed around the Sound and up to the Cape. At six in the afternoon we were all downstairs, the kids having orange juice and the rest of us having refreshments after a good day's sail. "When I started up the ladder, I saw a lot of strange faces peering down at me. Up on deck, I discovered oiu boat was surrounded by little catboats, and the deck was crowded with people I'd never seen before — lots of kids, the works. Somebody yelled, 'Hey, funny man! Make with the laughs!' I didn't know what to do." Garry recognizes himself as one of the new Problem Children of TV. He is a man who has always enjoyed the salaries and the anonymity of radio without ever experiencing the nuisance of being a movie star. When I say nuisance, I mean exactly that. Do you believe movie stars wear big dark glasses to attract attention to themselves? Nonsense. They are conditioned to being stars, and they wear the glasses in a forlorn hope that they may not be recognized. It's no fun to be recognized everywhere, wherever you go. Garry has discovered this recently, and he is not yet able to cope with it. He even said to me, "I'm not kidding. If I'd known what being on TV would mean to me, to my private life, what it would mean to my kids — I'd have stood in radio. I'd have thought twice before I ever went into TV." I gauged Garry's temper and decided that I'd known him long enough to say what was in my mind. "It's an old gag," I said, "but all you get out of it is a lousy fortune." He smiled. It was a pretty weak smile, but he managed it. "You may be right," he said. "But who can afford it?" He didn't just mean that what was left after taxes might not be enough to compensate for constant invasion of his privacy as a citizen and human being. He was thinking in terms of the boys and his wife, and with good reason. A year ago, for reasons which Garry naturally does not discuss, Nell Moore packed herself and the children and went to California for a while. From my own personal impression of Garry when I met him six years ago, I'd think that, if a separation had happened then, he would have been hurt and mad and upset — but not thrown completely offbase. So much for the change in six years, because this separation really did throw Garry. He went on the air about it, in one of those between you-and-me telecasts he sometimes features, in order to scotch the rumors and the snide gossip in the columns, and to state the fact that this was not a legal separation nor, he hoped, anything nearly so important. After a few weeks and a number of very long long-distance calls to California, Nell and the boys returned to the house at Rye. (Continued on page 106) $1,000.00 REWARD ... is offered for information leading to the arrest of dangerous "wanted" crinninals. 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