TV Radio Mirror (Jan - Jun 1957)

Sliiny New Penny (Continued from page 24) anyone but a girl like Rosemary. She has a theory that a woman— any girl-child with an understanding heart— can project herself into almost any age. She believes that all women retain a childlike side of their nature which makes it easy to slip backward in time, especially back to their own bittersweet days of adolescence. This ability to combine mature emotions with childlike moods and enthusiasms makes Rosemary an actress interesting to watch and a girl interesting to know. As Mrs. Michael Thoma (pronounced with the h silent and the o long), she is the wife of a talented actor-stagemanager, currently serving in the latter capacity for the Broadway hit play, "No Time for Sergeants." As Rosemary Thoma, she is also the brand-new owner, with Mike, of a stunning new ranch house in Rockland County, about 35 miles out of New York, in the foothills of the Ramapo Mountains. As Rosemary Thoma, she is also chief cook and dishwasher. She also had endless lists of things still to be done and people to be seen concerning the house they have just had built by Moireale Brothers, Builders, a firm which has developed much property in the Ramapo foothills. As Rosemary Prinz, however, the girl who is Penny Hughes every day on television, she finds herself just as happily fittino into that teen-age framework, emotionally and physically. She flings herself around the '?ets with the abandonment of a high -school girl. She curls up on the floor to play records, or talks endlessly over the telephone to her best friend, Ellen Lowell, about boys, parties, school, homework and the difficulties of dealing with parents. She makes dates, and then agonizes over what to wear and what to say. In fact Rosemary dresses like Penny, thinks like Penny, is Penny. "It's a wonderful outlet for me, this going back," Rosemary says. "I'm lucky. Other women may vicariously enjoy watching their own daughters grow up, or following a program like ours. We get many letters from mature people who tell how much they enjoy Ellen and me and the boys in the show, as well as they do the more adult members of the cast. After all, who wants to be entirely grownup every minute of every day?" It could be argued here that perhaps Rosemary feels so strongly about this because she began to grow up earlier than most girls, when at sixteen she bought a show-business paper, read an ad in it, and applied for a summer stock company job at Cragsmoor, New York. "My parents had wanted me, their only child, to go to college first. But they listened when the owner and director of the theater, the well-known Morton DaCosta, suggested that I need not stagnate merely because my formal schooling was interrupted. He told me that, with an inquisitive mind and a reasonably intelligent approach, I could get the 'schooling' I needed as I went along. It must have been difficult for my parents to give up their own plans for me, but they had always encouraged me in whatever I wanted to do, and I am very grateful." Those who watch Rosemary being Penny Hughes know that this is a petite girl who has to stretch just a bit to reach 5'1" and weighs a mere 96 pounds. One of her teachers used to call her "the girl with the golden eyes." There seems to be no better phrase to describe the goldenbrown eyes that seem to light up as she looks at you. Her hair is golden-blond in the highlights, darker in the shadows until it seems almost brown. Her nose is small and cute, her mouth full and pretty. Mike Thoma, to whom Rosemary has been married since 1951, when he was twenty-four, is a tall man — 5'11", lean ("the kind of man who has always attracted me"). Sandy-haired, but balding since he was twenty. With what Rosemary calls, "a kind of humorous nose, as if he were always laughing a little at life, and at himself; strictly a non-neurotic tjrpe. I think maybe it was his sense of balance and his marvelous sense of humor, along with his gentleness and consideration, that made me fall in love with him." They met on the stage of the Grove Theater, in the town of Nuangola, Pa., where Rosemary was a member of the company and Mike had come up to act in one specific play. It was on the opening night of the play before the one in which Mike was to appear. He was "casing" the theater and waiting for the curtain to go up. Rosemary, the perfectionist, had come out on the empty stage to check the lights before fini.'shing her make-up. "I had only the plain base on my face, no eye or mouth make-up at all. I looked a mess, but I didn't mind meeting the people who belonged to the show. Then I saw this strange young man wandering about the stage, and I thought: What an idiot! Doesn't he know better than to hang around on an opening night, twenty minutes before curtain? "I was embarrassed, of course, at having a stranger see me as I looked then. Mike was thinking (he told me this later) : What a big deal she must think she is, having to check the lights for her make-up. Does she think she's starring on Broadway?" 1 hat's the way it was between them at first — sort of an unsooken antagonism — until the opening night of the show in which they appeared together. The strain of opening night over, the cast went to the one restaurant that stayed open late and Rosemary and Mike danced to the tunes from the juke box. "I think we both realized we were beginning to fall in love. It was really very romantic. The quiet little mountain town. The moonlight. The long walks we took in the evenings after that. The knowing finally that one day we would be married." They were married on June 10, 1951, the summer after they met, in the Little Church Around the Corner, sometimes known as the Actors' Church. Rosemary had always thought: Why all the fuss about weddings? But her mother was sxire her daughter would like to remember a real wedding. Mike was inclined to go along with Mrs. Prinz. And Rosemary admits today, "I never thought it would mean so much to me, but when the time came I felt like such a bride. All dressed up, and carrying a bouquet. Fluttery and nervous, just like brides in the movies and television. But when the actual moment came to walk up the aisle, I was so happy that I'm sure I was smiling every step of the way, instead of looking properly demure." When Mike and Rosemary moved into their first home, a small apartment, they found neither was too proficient about housekeeping. Their dining table came with legs separate, to be screwed into the top, and they had to call Rosemary's mother to help them put it together. They are still not very ardent do-it-yourselfers. Rosemary was already something of a cook, a maker of zesty sauces and barbecue triumphs, and a good baker. 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