Screenland (Nov 1944-Oct 1945)

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Wisconsin BOOKLET Be Your Own MUSIC Teacher LEARN AT HOME FOR LESS THAN 7c A DAY lections, in;ad real notes — no r 750,000 students print and pictures, picture shows you Simple as A-B-C. Your lessons consist of stead of tiresome exercises. You re; "numbers" or trick music. Some of our are band LEADERS. Everything is First you are told what to do. The how. Soon you may become an excellent musician. Mail coupon for our illustrated Free Book "" V— ' ^ and Print and Picture sample. Mention your C ^lirrPCCCIII 7 favorite instrument. U. S. School of Music. 7 ^^,? '^"''V 1191 Brunswick BIdg., N. Y. 10. N. Y. C 47 — YR,^ U. S. School of Music, 1191 Brunswick BIdg., N. Y. 10, N. Y. Please send me Free Booklet and Print and Picture Sample. I would like to play (Name Instrument). (Please Print) Bracken Breaks The Rules! Continued from page 41 through speaking funny lines of dialog. "What I want are roles that combine pathos and comedy. I'd like the audience to believe in me as a person. I want to feel that every time I get into trouble in a picture, the audience will have an urge to come up on the screen and help me. I'd like them to feel that I'm a nice guy, a regular guy, and I think they did feel that in the two Sturges films. "I'm going to do all in my power to preserve that warm audience-feeling, and I believe the only way to make that possible is to have more to say on the production end of my pictures." Even if he had the inclination to bounce around with Hollywood's bobbysocks set, Eddie wouldn't have the time. After his big hit in "Miracle," Paramount rushed him into leading roles in "Hail The Conquering Hero," "Rainbow Island." "Bring On The Girls," and "Out Of This World." In the latter, Eddie took his first step toward becoming a producer by contributing an important gag idea. He plays a Frank Sinatra tj^ie of role in the film and his suggestion that Bing Crosby's voice be used for the numbers was gleefully accepted by Paramount. Also, by the time this appears, Eddie expects to be a father again and that will take up even more of his time. Eddie's wife is the former Connie Nickerson, George Abbott ingenue who played on the road with him in "What A Life!" "There's something wonderful about the way I met her," he said. "The first time I ever saw her was on the stage in a company of 'Brother Rat.' She was playing the part of Clare and I thought she was very good and went backstage to tell her so. She just thanked me and walked away. She didn't make a very good impression. "Then when we were both chosen for 'What A Life!' I met her again at the first rehearsal. She's a very cute girl, pug-nosed and sweet, and I found I was crazy about her. During the run I tried my damnedest to get her to marry me. Finally I won her over and we were married a year later at the Little Church Around The Corner. "That was three days before the opening of 'Too Many Girls' which was the kicker that brought me to Hollywood. If it had been a flop, we would have been living in tenement houses. Luckily, as it turned out, it was a hit." The Brackens already have one daughter, Judith Ann, who is now two years old (she was named after Judith Abbott, the daughter of Eadie's favorite stage producer) . I asked Eddie if his wife wasn't anxious to continue her acting career after their marriage and he shook his head blissfully. "She's not interested," he said. "When we first went to Hollywood, she received fabulous offers to appear in big productions. They wanted her for 'King's Row' and 'The Constant Nymph,' to name only two. Then recently Preston Sturges was after her to play opposite me in 'Hail The Conquering Hero.' But she turned them all down because she decided when we were married to make that her career. That was pretty damn nice of her and don't think I'm not appreciative. I guess she feels that we're one and that when I'm acting, she is too." "We started living very immoderately," he said. "We had a big house in Beverly Hills with a swimming pool and all the works. We were in that for a year and it was a good thing, I guess, to have done it and gotten it over with. I wanted it because that had always been my dream of how a Hollywood Star should live. But I soon got tired of that sort of life. I love my wife and I wanted to see her occasionally. The place was so big, half the time I couldn't even find her!" The next year Eddie came down to earth and bought a small $9,000 house on the south side of Wilshire Boulevard, which he described as being "on the wrong side of the tracks." He's lived there for almost four years now and enjoyed it tremendously because he could always go out into the street to play ball with the neighboring kids without being hounded by sightseers. Connie is very much interested in keeping her own home; the Brackens have no regular nurse or maid, hiring a cleaning woman who comes in for the heavy work three times a week. "My wife doesn't believe in bringing up a child with a nurse, except for the first month or so," Eddie said. "She wants the fun of doing it all by herself. And she's certainly handy around the house. She's an excellent cook. Her roast chicken is out of this world. All her roasts are excellent. Her cakes are delicious, especially her angel food cake. She seems to have a great knack for anything that comes out of the oven." With the expected addition to the family, Eddie recently sold his house and bought a larger one in Brentwood, which, he explains ruefully, is on the right side of the tracks. The new house has four bedrooms and an acre and a half of land, with orange, lemon, plum and avocado trees all over the place. Directly across the street from him lives Gary Cooper; and Tyrone Power, Deanna Durbin, Keenan Wynn, Anne Shirley, Nelson Eddy, Van Johnson and the Andrews Sisters are near neighbors. Eddie explained that these were all acquaintances but that he had no close friends among actors. "I seldom go out with people in the business because I don't want mj' conversation limited," he said. "When I was on Broadway, I went out mostly with professionals because I didn't care much about learning ■ things in those days." Now, the only close friend of his connected with pictures is Martin Jurow, his former agent and manager who is now an executive at Warner Brothers. His other intimate friends are Mr. and Mrs. William Procter of the soap manufacturing family and Mr. and Mrs. Ray Gordon. Mr. Gordon is in the winery business and Mrs. Gordon is an interior decorator. 78 SCREENLAND