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

Waif With A Future continued from page 21 just sit here and wait for you to dress." "But I am dressed," Millie replied. When she sat down for lunch in the raiment of Anne Frank, recollection made it difficult to distinguish between her own clothes and her movie getup. Millie's almost starkly simple taste in clothing reflects a personality that instinctively shies from anything flamboyant—and perhaps, dramatic as it may seem, reveals a strange affinity between her and Anne Frank. Physically, of course, there is considerable similarity between the martyred Jewish heroine of the Nazi occupation in Holland and the frail Catholic cover girl from Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Points of likeness are as obvious as they are compelling. Millie's coloring and_ features are almost identical with those of the girl she portrays. Like Anne Frank, she is fragile and childlike in build, constantly struggling to boost her 95 pounds to the 100 pound mark. HOWEVER much of Anne Frank there may be in Millie Perkins, there is much in Millie Perkins that has Hollywood guessing— particularly her love life or lack of it. Millie's romances— real or alleged— have accounted for considerable guesswork on the Hollywood gossip circuit. In fact, the speculation has been so zealous that Millie brands most of the reports which have found their way into print as fantastic fabrication. On the one hand, she was been rumored in love with the picture's associate producer, George Stevens, Jr., personable young son of the producerdirector; and on the other hand, she has been reported to have had clandestine meetings with a mysterious GI whom she supposedly plans to marry upon completion of her picture, thereupon to retire from the movies. Confronted with the rumors, all George Stevens, Jr., will say is, "Well, I'm the only single guy around, so that makes me a target." Millie herself acts as if she had no idea anyone could be harboring such quaint notions about her and the son of the director she reveres. She is more outspoken on the report of her alleged plans to marry a GI and quit pictures. The first thing she said when she met the trade columnist responsible for that report was a testy: "Let's get one thing straight. I am not marrying any GI or any ex-GI and giving up my career." Statements like these have been responsible for the misleading impression that she would rather not talk about such relationships as she may have with the opposite sex. Her attitudes about romance are normal in some respects, and unorthodox in others. 60 Millie's nice appreciation of the possibilities of love and marriage, much as it may surprise those who have her written off as another in a long and tedious line of Hollywood enigmas, does not represent all of the things she has to say on the subject. Quite the contrary, she gleefully admits that she does correspond with a GI, and that he is the one and only boy she ever considered marrying. "I hope," she caught herself, "you don't mention him as a love interest because he's not. He's just one of my very good friends. I write to a lot of boys. In fact, I write to boys more than girls." Millie's preference for males— in person or by correspondence— is a healthy hangover from her childhood. "I never had girls to play with," she recalls with a touch of whimsy. "Only boys. I had all my sisters so I never made girl friends, only boy friends." One of Millie's friends is Richard Beymer, the boy with whom she falls in love in the picture. "It seems to us," ventures an observant informant at 20th Century-Fox, "that she's halfway interested in this Dick Beymer. They are quite palsy on the set." Her evening with Dick at the Canadian Ballet when it graced the Los Angeles Philharmonic Auditorium is revealing of the kind of relationship Millie prefers with boy friends. She bought two tickets, realized she needed someone to take her, then phoned Dick and asked if he'd like to come along. This night out is described as her only Hollywood date. "But that wasn't a date," Millie insists. "I asked him." WISTFUL Millie Perkins was a New York fashion model before going to Hollywood. It is this self-sufficiency on the one hand, and her painful shyness — with strangers especially— on the other hand that has invited the erroneous impression in some quarters that Millie is aloof and self-centered. She is self-conscious, which in her case at least is something quite different from being self-centered. She is self-conscious when she is thrown among people she doesn't know, and she is self-conscious about the fact that she comes to stardom not only without training— but without having sought the opportunity. While she has managed to overcome many of her early doubts, she is not easily persuaded that she is adequate to her task. HER anxiety about doing well accounts for a 24-hour preoccupation that demands generous understanding and is not calculated to win friends and convert disciples among the thin-skinned. Millie realizes that she is no hailgirl-well-met, and she attributes this, with no misgivings, to a childhood in which she was a card-carrying member of the closely knit, self-contained family unit. It was presided over by her mother, Katherine Perkins, who was a veritable playmate, and by her seafaring father, Adolph Perkins, a merchant marine captain who always comes home with rollicking tales of adventure. "My family," Millie reasons, "has been a big influence in my association with people. When I was young, I never went outside of my home to play. I never belonged to girls clubs, the girl scouts or any of those things. My mother was like another girl. My father was an adventurer. I love sea stories, and our adventure was never from outside. My father came home and brought it. We were always having fun. All my emotions were related to my family. So until I grew up, I never associated with people outside the home except, of course, for going to school." When at the urging of friends she grudgingly moved to New York's Greenwich Village to take up the lucrative career of a teenage cover girl, a childhood of almost total family insulation had its inevitable effect. This perhaps explains why the set was closed during the three days that Millie was doing a scene for the film in her slip, and why she came to be known as "The Mouse" during her two years residence in Greenwich Village. "I found it difficult to associate with people. If I was in a room with a lot of people and someone came over to talk with me," Millie admits, it would upset me terribly. All I knew was that I couldn't get along with people too well if I didn't really know them. I always managed to have a handful of people that I was quite close with, so it would never bother me at all. That's all I ever really needed, I think." continued on page 62