Screenland Plus TV-Land (Jul 1959 - May 1960)

Janet And Tony's Marriage Secrets continued from page 29 Janet holds court, as she did this bright morning, Tony is nowhere to be seen. Each has inviolate respect for the other's domain. They have discovered that togetherness comes easier for people who know when to be apart. They temper their togetherness with generous and therapeutic doses of individual privacy. "Naturally we love to be together," Janet said cheerfully as she inspected the fresh coat of polish on her fingernails, "but we're not Siamese twins. We have areas of individuality. We have to. Just to give you an example, I have my tennis and Tony has his golf. Golf doesn't particularly interest me, and since Tony tore a tendon, tennis doesn't particularly interest him. But even if I took up golf, I'd play with women. I think golf is an awfully good time for men to be together. I enjoy my time with my tennis friends." They stay in each other's hearts by not getting in each other's hair. They do not practice togetherness as an obligation. "T DON'T respond to everything that A Tony does," Janet shrugged, "and he doesn't respond to everything I do. Tony is an absolute bug about cameras, but I have no interest in them. Why should I? It's Tony's hobby. He shares it with friends who are camera enthusiasts. I'm much more interested in the home." Even when they are in the same place at the same time for the same reason, Tony and Janet do not crowd each other. When they co-starred with friend Dean Martin in "Who Was That Lady?" at Columbia, they frequently would have breakfast together at home, then drive to the studio in separate cars. Tony and Janet enjoyed working together on the movie, but they did not make such a fetish of togetherness that they neglected to give each other elbow room. "I never interfere with Tony on the set," Janet's tone implied how unthinkable such an infringement would be. "It's fun working together in scenes. We're easy and relaxed together, and he's a good actor. But between scenes, Tony has his group of guys, and he goofs around with them, and I have my things to do and people to talk to." This is not to suggest that their moments of togetherness on the set were either infrequent or dull. Their interludes of communion were marked by the playful exuberance they inspire in one another — a mutual reverence for nonsense which undoubtedly has had its share in keeping their marriage from going old hat. "We had such fun on that picture," Janet laughed warmly. "Once," Janet continued, "Tony squirted me with his water pistol and locked himself in his dressing room to avoid reprisal. He had just put on a new suit for the next scene, and I climbed to the top of his dressing room and poured a bucket of water on him. He was a very good sport. I think he laughed more than I did, if that was possible." There was another uproarious time when Janet enlisted the aid of director George Sidney to play a gag on her spouse and Dino. Sidney agreed to stage a phony retake of a scene in which Tony and Dean find themselves chin deep in water in the basement of the Empire State Building. Meanwhile, Janet had finished for the day, and told Tony, "Goodbye, honey. I'm going home now. I'll see you later." She did not leave the sound stage. Instead she sneaked back to her dressing room and quickly put on her bathing suit. "The boys were almost drowning," she explained mirthfully. "Then I came swimming past them in my bathing suit while they were floundering in the water fully clothed. As I swam by, I nonchalantly said, 'Excuse me.' They simply could not believe their eyes. They almost had a heart attack!" Theirs is by no means a one dimensional togetherness. It runs the full gamut from the riotous to the sublime. "There are so many things that we both love," Janet wiggled her newlypedicured toes before dipping them into a plastic basin of water. "We love to read the same books and then discuss them. We love to visit art galleries, browse through book shops, listen to music. We can't wait till we get to New York to catch up on all the plays we haven't seen and to visit the antique shops. I could go on and on. There are so many things to do, so many friends to be with. There just isn't enough time for everything. If we could find a dull moment, we'd use it for a rest cure." While their enthusiasm never seems to run its course, particular hobbies do wax and wane. This, Janet feels, is only as it should be. "We're always finding new interests," she exulted. "But that doesn't mean we discard our old ones. We just build up a backlog of interests, and from time to time, when we feel like it, we go back to the old ones." PERHAPS one reason Tony and Janet have managed so well to keep their romance alive is that mostly they go in for togetherness after dark — whether they're off on a quiet date by themselves or out with friends. "New things are always being presented," Janet explained. "We usually get together with other couples at night. Right now we're on gang gin rummy games. Sixteen to twenty people play, and there are eight or ten on a side. These are the maddest, wildest, craziest, most wonderful games. I'm sure we'll tire of it, but when we do there will be something else. For a while it was liar's poker." TONY and Janet love being together . they don't make a fetish out of togetherni It is a generally accepted tenet that average man and wife have to work preventing their marriage from wilti But Janet is convinced that she and Ti have been able to keep their partners from drooping because they don't have work at it. "It comes so easy," she was aire apologetic for their good fortune, a ma share of which she freely attributed Tony's personality. "He's such an acti creative and imaginative person, r always got something new to do. I ne know what to expect next. I can co home, and he's playing the flute, and all have to sit down and listen. I can co home and he's baking a cake! Or he's the diving board off the swimming p because he wants to see if it looks bei that way." Janet seems unable to get bored will marriage in which the man of the ho is in many ways still a boy at heart. "I can just not see him for an ho she said with loving approval, "and of a sudden he's out in the lath sh and we have a greenhouse! My fat} who's as nutty as he is, has gone do1 town and bought the plants. Or Tony \ be trying new experiments with camera, using everybody within sight a guinea pig." Tony and Janet go about marriage w the joy and wonder of two children pi ing house — whether Tony walks into dressing room to be bowled over by fi ing a portable stereo record player fr Janet, or whether Janet pulls the sheet her bed to find that Tony has placed her pillow the collected poems of Ec St. Vincent Millay, tenderly inscribed: love you." If their marriage has remained bl proof, it is due in no small part to efforts they are willing to expend to pie one another. The last thing Janet pected the day Mrs. Kirk Douglas lui her to her home in Palm Springs recer was that she would walk off with a ft length diadem mink coat. "I was playing tennis that day, a continued on page 60