Screenland (Jul–Dec 1946)

BLONDES Wash Hair Shades Lighter With New Home Shampoo Made Especially for Blondes This special shampoo helps keep light hair from darkening— brightens faded blonde, hair. Called blondex, it quickly makes a rich cleansing lather. Instantly removes the dingy, dust-laden film that makes hair dark, old-looking. Takes only 11 minutes at home. Gives hair lovely lustrous highlights. Safe for children. Get blondex at 10c, drug, dept. stores. YOU CAN LEARN TO beanARTIST Start Drawing at Home in Your Spare Time — Trained Artists are capable of earning $40, $60, $75 a week! Our practical home study training makes it fun to learn COMMERCIAL ART, DESIGNING and CARTOONING all in ONE course. No previous Art experience necessary. Write for details in FREE BOOK, "Art for Pleasure & Profit." STATE AGE. Training available under "G.I." Bill. WASHINGTON SCHOOL OF ART. Stud.o 171 1C. 1115— 15th St., N.W., Washington 5, D. C. IDEAL CHRISTMAS GIFT ARTIST'S PORTRAIT OF YOUR SWEETHEART An opportunity to own a beautiful hand drawn portrait of your sweetheart or loved one, at an amazingly low price! Just send a reasonably clear photograph, together with only $5.00, for a brown and, tan toned portrait. For a life like color portrait send $6.00. Photo returned. AIL portraits 11 by 14. MONEY BACK if you're not thrilled! ANABEL AND RICHARD LANE Box 390, Times Square Station, New York 18. N. Y. DRESSES $3.95 A Fine Selection of Dresses assorted Styles, Patterns and Materials in Solid Colors and Prints. DRY CLEANED and PRESSED. Sizes 12 to 18 (state sizes desired). Our Better Dresses, Sizes 12 to 20 and larger. Tod Value, 4 for. . $3.60 COTTON AND WASH DRESSES (Sizes 12-20), 5 for. .$2.95 OUR BETTER GRADE (Sizes 12-20), 3 for $2.55 Send $1.00 deposit, balance C.O.I>., plus postage. Satisfaction guaranteed or purchase price of merchandise refunded. Invest postage and discover z-eal Bargains in used dresses. COLUMBIA MAIL ORDER 548 Grand Street (Dept. 107) New York, N. Y. SELECTED USED SOnOUJRITERS $100 CASH EVERY MONTH for best song placed with us. Hollywood composers write melody WITHOUT CHARGE. Lead sheets and records furnished. Send song material TODAY for FREE EXAMINATION. You may win $100. Write for details. CIHEMA SONG CO. • DErl.O-MBOX 670 • BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF Gorgeous, glossy photos of all your f«voriT3 Hollywood Stars in their hewest posesl Customers love our photos, you will, too! Smallest Order 50c. Name 2nd choices, FREE! *m Coupons and Catalog of over 200 exciting photo's with order. Cornel Wilde 2Wh Century-fox Star DELUXE PHOTO SERVICE Dept. HI Bo« «3 Church St. Ann«x. N«w York 8. N. Y. 90 Copacabana, and a woman came up to our table. A perfectly strange woman. 'Would you,' she said to me, 'want to make a really wonderful salary?' She explained that she needed five girls to go to the Ritz Carlton in Boston for the summer, to represent the Copacabana. We were to do a sort of Samba, in fabulous costumes. The woman had four of the girls— and it seems I was the type she needed for the fifth. So I went, under the name of Joanne Marshall. "Well, there it was again," she went on. "I held up that show two whole weeks learning that routine. But I learned it, and we went to Boston, where for two months I led a wonderful life. They treated us like princesses. Then we returned to the Paramount Theater in New York. That was where I first met Dick." He was singing in the same show, with Harry James' band — the tall, serious boy with the voice of dreamy allure. He took her out to dinner, his attitude one of blameless brotherliness, and by the time summer was over she thought the sun rose in his head and set in his heels. And then she had to go away again. "I had to go with the show," she said. "To Piping Rock — Saratoga Springs. But it wasn't fun any more, because — well, when you hear the sea talking and violin strings plucking at your heart-strings and everything bores you — there's only one answer to that. I went back to New York — and married Dick." They were both completely broke. Dick made very little money with the band, but nothing would do but he must have a bang-up, staggeringly huge wedding. A wedding to which everyone he knew might come — to see him marry Joanne. "Mother made all the dresses," Joanne says. "She nearly killed herself, but they were lovely. Dick invited 500 people to the Episcopal Church on West End Avenue. Then, the day before the wedding, something awful happened. Dick was hit by a taxi-cab!" She was standing up for a last fitting when her brother appeared in the sewingroom door with the news. "The expression on his face was as condensed as a Western Union telegram," she says. "The kind that comes marked with a star!!" Dick had been rushing all around New York, trying to borrow enough money from his friends to pay for the wedding bouquet. He hadn't even seen the taxi —until it went over him. "So there we were," Joanne remembers. "Mother discovering at the last moment that she hadn't finished her own dress — she was so busy sewing on everyone else — and coming up the aisle pinned in strategic spots that kept coming undone! And Dick hobbling and limping all the way to the altar. No bones were broken, but he claimed he was one big ache, and gave me a blow-by-blow description under his breath. But it was a lovely wedding — everyone was so very young. Even the minister was young. It was his very first wedding." It had been understood — oh, very clearly understood — that Joanne was to go on with her career if she wished. Months drifted by, and suddenly there was her big chance. A part in the New York stage-play "My Sister Eileen." "I could hardly wait, I was so excited. This was what I'd been waiting for. Then ScREENLAND — two days before we were to go into rehearsal the doctor told me I was going to have a baby. So — I didn't go into 'Mv Sister Eileen.' " Skippy, when he finally arrived, was more than worth it, however. He was born at St. Ann's Hospital, New York, while his father was singing in Connecticut with Benny Goodman's band. "I'm going back to New York," an excited Dick told Mr. Goodman. ''You can't go! You're on the air!" "I'm going!" he said. And he did. Skippy was pretty special. Born into a world of blackouts and sirens, he was also pretty resourceful, even at the age of two weeks. "If you're in the hospital during an air-raid," the doctor had told Joanne, "roll over on your baby — and lie still." Came a night when the sirens sounded, and a panicky nurse shouted "Air Raid!" instead of "Air Alarm." Joanne promptly rolled over on Skippy — who unobtrusively and systematically ate away at his bottle, consuming four quarts of milk before he was rescued. "He hiccuped," his mother says, "for four days." Skippy was still wrestling with bottles when Dick got his break — going to California to sing with Tommy Dorsey's band. Joanne followed after. "It was a most unhappy trip," she remembers today. "It was hot and crowded on that train; I was thrown from side to side as I walked back and forth those 20 cars to make the baby's formula. It had me in a panic — I was ignorant and I was scared!" But the trip ended finally, and there was Dick at the train with a big surprise. Everything was ready for them. Joanne had nothing to worry about. He had rented a lovely penthouse. Nothing was too good, she was just to relax. "The rent," she tells you patiently, "was $1000 a month. Dick's salary was $150 a week. The penthouse was huge. But fortunately, a friend of Dick's, working his way through college, offered to cook for us. Until I got us out of there, and into an apartment at $150 a month, which was more like our speed!" And had time to look around again— hoping to get another chance at a play. "I got another chance," she says. "I was all set to go back on the stage. Then the doctor told me again that this could Suzl Crancfall's handsome escort is Rory Calhoun, now featured in "No Trespassing.''