Screenland Plus TV-Land (Jul 1957 - May 1959)

Love Came First continued from page 49 I'm not being forced into finding a job; there's no pressure on me. I guess a man just has to be the breadwinner. Whatever it is, I can't bear your making the money we live on. If you quit, I'll have to find something. And I'll win back my self-respect." "I made up my mind instantly," said Gale. "I told my husband 'That's all you need to say. I'll call the studio tomorrow.' And I meant it, with all my heart." FOR Gale, this was no great heroic gesture. "It was a decision that I could make without even thinking," Gale has said. "Any woman who has a wonderful marriage and doesn't feel this way must have holes in her head. Any woman who has the man she loves, as I had, and his children, couldn't achieve greater personal fulfillment from a business career, no matter how glamourous and lucrative. I fell asleep peacefully that night." The next morning Lee awakened Gale. "Jo." he said (Lee still calls her this), "don't call the studio. All I had to hear was you saying 'yes.' As long as I know you're with me, I'll fight this out." Even so. the Bonnells' problems were not yet solved. Gale suddenly became self-conscious about her career and recoiled from mentioning her work to Lee. "When something wonderful happened to me during the day," she said, "I didn't tell my husband because I was afraid he might be hurt; if something disappointing happened, I didn't talk about it, either. I didn't want to add to Lee's burdens. This is the only dishonesty that ever existed in our marriage, and it upset me terribly." Then Lee and Gale met an older couple; the husband was in the insurance field. The man was sure Lee would make a great insurance executive. "Frankly, the idea didn't appeal to Lee at first," said Gale, "because he thought it was simply a high-pressure business. But he decided to try it. He went through the training school at his own expense. It was rugged, really rugged, but within two weeks Lee knew that this was what he wanted to do. He was no big flash, though he's a pretty big flash now. with his own general agency, but in no time at all he knew that he had found the way of life he was seeking." Ever since, Lee Bonnell has been the long-range breadwinner in the family, and as Gale has declared, "It will never be any other way. It doesn't make any difference who earns the larger paycheck, but her check must be the cake— his, the bread." And Lee Bonnell, wearing the respectable tortoise-shell glasses of a successful insurance executive, which he is, answers with his droll humor, "Just think of me as the children's father. We have four, ages 15 to almost two: Philip, the oldest; Peter, 12; Paul, 11; and our daughter, Susanna, who was named for Gale's CBS-TV show, 'Oh ! Susanna.' " But little Susanna made an actual appearance on the show when she was a year old. She was a big hit, and the next day. Gale's producer, Alex Gottleib, sent her a little note. It read: "Don't be too secure, Miss Storm. We're only waiting for Susanna to start talking." No one. however, really dreams of getting rid of Gale Storm, who, at 36, has a pretty dimpled face that not only does not grow old, but will probably, Gale says, "have me playing teenage parts when I'm 90." This is her third year on the top-rated "Oh! Susanna" show, and her previous series, "My Little Margie," is playing its sixth time around on various stations. Gale, despite her wry description of herself as being "medium lousy," has made noteworthy ENERGETIC Gale Storm astounds everybody around her with her capacity for hard work. accomplishments in virtually every medium of show business. Six years ago she began singing ("I'm really a frustrated opera singer," she laughs), and as a recording star for Dot Richards, sold some four million discs her first year. Her night club act at the Thunderbird in Las Vegas broke all existing records for the spot. "If I have one talent," says Gale, "it's that I'm always able to be happy doing what I'm doing." She is a smallish girl who hardly looks robust enough to keep up with her current goings-on, and her six-foot son Philip towers over her. A blue-eyed blonde of medium height, with a baby's clear skin and probably the prettiest teeth in Hollywood, Gale weighs a good 100 pounds if she eats and eats and eats. She loves to work. One observer said her work capacity is actually too high. Recently she took some kind of scientific test which her husband gives to prospective salesmen, and that was the verdict. She has to control her impulse to work too hard. "I've always been this way," says Gale. "I just like to work. I enjoy it so much that I never know how really tired I am until I stop." One of her business associates who has known Gale for several years remarked, "When Gale is working, the entire crew stands around, waiting for her to entertain them. She does. She gives two shows in one. "In the beauty parlor, she reads stories in the movie magazines about Susan Hay ward, Sophia Loren, Ingrid Bergman and other top stars with as much wide-eyed interest as the next hausfrau. Her idea of a glamourous afternoon is to officiate as one of the hostesses at a tea given by the PTA to which she belongs, or to help arrange an amateur 'What's My Line?' program at the church that the Bonnells attend. She taught Sunday School for a while, but she had to quit because, as she said, 'The kids were getting too big and too smart for me.' "But most of all, she probably has less of a big star complex than anyone else I know." In the big, beautiful modern house the Bonnells have recently built atop a hill in the Valley (it is only the second house they have owned), Gale seems content as never before. "It's a wonderful thing to know." she says, "that I don't have to work unless I feel like it because Lee's business can support us. We live on his income, not mine. As a matter of fact," she laughed, "a couple of tirrles lately I've tried to get Lee to ask me to quit, but no such luck. But maybe the kids will take over before long. Philip's beginning to sing; he's got a real deep voice, waaayyy down heerrre—" Gale imitated Philip's youthful bass— "and he's already starting to get fan mail, though I don't dare tell him. Now he has his first after-school job— stock boy in a greeting card plant, but he may turn into an actor or a singer in the end. If that's what he or the other children want, it's fine with Lee and me." GALE is not a great one for cooking or housework, though she will answer the doorbell herself when the housekeeper is busy, and listen with sympathy to a salesman's pitch. Nor is she much for gardening— "I have no green thumbs; I'm not even a good weeder, like Lee and the boys"— but she does love her Chinese contemporary house, with its pecky cypress interior walls and superb decor. "Lee and I planned and decorated the house ourselves," she says, "with help from a decorator friend." Most of all, the Bonnells enjoy their Oriental teahouse and playroom built on a ridge above the swimming pool, where the family spends so much of their outdoor living. She and Lee have taught rock continued on page 74 59