Screenland (May-Oct 1941)

Mickey Rooney and Patricia Dane in, "Life Begins for Andy Hardy." Beginning with Patricia, Mickey shows wonderful discernment. How do you do it, anyway? Or is it a trade secret? Wedding Bells for Judy! Continued from page 33 thought Dave Rose's arrangements were terrific. "That man's going places," Judy would prophesy. She had her schoolgirl crushes and got over them. She'd meet Dave at the home of mutual friends and listen, enthralled, to his playing of the masters he loved. Judy's never taken lessons. She sings like the birds, plays by ear, and is blessed with instinctive musical taste. Like a hungry kitten, she lapped at the fountain of Dave's knowledge, and bowled him over the sureness of her grasp on such fundamentals as even trained musicians spend years in mastering. He was going places, as she had •forecast. His arrangements for Lamour, Ameche and Jeanette MacDonald were the talk of the town. In March, 1940, he was made musical director of the MutualDon Lee network. Under his guidance, California Melodies with Maxine Gray and Adventures in Rhythm, the Betty Jane Rhodes show, forged to the front of popular favor. His handling of Betty Jane's music was at least in part responsible for the long-term contract she's just signed with Paramount. NBC, whose airwaves compete with those of Mutual Don Lee, turned its Woodbury Soap program over to Dave, because Tony Martin would sing under no other leader. Little by little Judy and Dave began to single each other out from the group. He'd drop in to play for her and her mother and her sister Sue. They'd listen to pet records together. Presently you'd hear Judy saying: "I'm going to a show with Dave tonight." In the film capital, Dame Gossip wears seven-league boots on which she moves swiftly, often in the wrong direction. If you're out with a man three times, she's got you married. If your husband plays poker with the boys while you stay at home with a good book, she's got you divorced. She had a whirl for herself with Judy and Dave: Judy was a child — the studio didn't want her to marry — Mrs. Garland disapproved of the whole business. The facts are these. Judy was eighteen, which isn't a child. To inject the question of marriage was rushing the season, since it hadn't yet entered into the calculations of the principals. As for Mrs. Garland, she had the advantage of knowing Dave. You can't know him long without recognizing his gentleness, his integrity, his sensitive good taste. That Judy was eighteen and Dave thirty never bothered her mother as it seems to have bothered the busybodies. On the contrary. Better than anyone else she knew that Judy, mature for her years, would be more likely to find happiness with Dave than with a boy of her own age. Not that she promptly cast him in the role of a husband. The buzzers, professional and amateur, did it for her. She was satisfied to let matters take their course. But from the first Mrs. Garland was Dave's friend, for his own sake as well as her daughter's. In the early days Judy would say: "Gee, he's wonderful ! So understanding. Like a brother. I can tell him anything." Neither could tack a date to the fading of the fraternal note. But after a trip to New York, where Judy met other men and couldn't wait to get back to California, her mother asked her whether she was in love. "I don't know," she replied soberly. "I'd just rather be with Dave than anybody. If that's love, then I'm in love." Mushiness was always out. They don't feel at home in the sentimental idiom. They underplay by choice, and duck superlatives. For anything super, the word is "adequate." "Miss you adequately," one would wire the other. Or at a preview, "That was a good picture," Dave would observe, "and you, my dear, were very adequate." Judy's only photograph of her fiance is inscribed: "Here's hoping for an adequate friendship." This dislike of show marks their whole relationship. Birthdays and Christmas are adequately remembered. But they don't keep bombarding each other with expensive gifts. Last Christmas Judy gave Dave a boiler for the precious railway train whose tracks circle his whole backyard, and whose engine proudlv flaunts the name GAR-ROSE RAILWAY. On St. Valentine's Day Dave turned up with a market bag full of chocolate buds in his right hand, while his left lingered coyly behind his back. "I didn't want you to feel bad, Jude, so I picked up a trifle of perfume for you too." Whereupon he produced a huge dummy bottle advertising a popular scent, but holding none. Judy has more perfume than she knows what to do with, but she can always use another laugh. She paints and writes verse for her own pleasure — "dabbling and scribbling," she calls it. Dave is sometimes allowed a glimpse of her canvas from the neck down. Let him try to uncover the face and she goes frantic. After long persuasion, she let him read some of her verse, and floated to seventh heaven when he suggested they collaborate. So many requests have poured in for the three themes he uses on his broadcasts, that they are about to be published. Judy's writing the lyrics. Dave doesn't think she's Shakespeare, but then he doesn't think he's Beethoven either. He just thinks she's as good as a lot of lyricwriters, and they get a kick out of working together. It's her pride in Dave which makes her humble about herself. He's equally proud of her, but too diffident to say so. She thinks his talent is so much more important than hers, that she's been reluctant even to sing for him. A month or so ago she appeared at Ciro's. "This is the first time," said Dave to a friend, "that I've really heard her sing. She's wonderful !" "Why don't you tell her so?" He seemed to be blushing, though through the bronzed skin, it was hard to be sure. "You tell her," he grinned. Because she was young and untried in love, he bent over backward to exert no pressure on her. She knew how he felt. The decision had to be hers. It wasn't till after the trip to New York late last 76