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

Along Came Jones! continued from page 33 without his works, Aaron had despaired of earning his living that way. Carolyn restored his birthright as a writer. Until Jones came along, he wasn't even too sure about his manhood. His unsettling first experience in marriage certainly didn't help. On top of that, a good puff of wind would whiff him off to Bagdad. As the writer and producer of the highly-touted new CBS-TV series, "Johnny Ringo", Aaron has emerged a Hollywood heavyweight. But physically he's a featherweight. He still has the appearance of a college boy roaming around Hollywood between classes. He is a soft-spoken, crewcutted wisp of a man who looks like an upended broomstick in Brooks Brothers clothing. On his sparse frame is mounted a twinkling-eyed owl face from which he radiates warmth, wit, wisdom and wellbeing. To hear him tell it — and he tells it eagerly and well — it was not always thus. "Carolyn is a woman who makes a man feel masculine," he enthuses. "Even if he weighs only 118 pounds, like me. I think this is the greatest gift a woman can have. It must be a gift. Carolyn has the gift of making you feel like the most masculine man in the world." To feel masculine, a man has to feel loved. To feel loved, he has to feel cared about. She cared about him as much when they didn't know where their next meal was coming from as she does now when they don't know where their next nearmillion is coming from. She not only cares about everything Aaron does; she is pari, of everything Aaron does. There are no separate compartments in their lives — not her acting nor Aaron's writing and producing. Aaron prides himself upon the extent to which he has leaned on Carolyn in bringing "Johnny Ringo" to life. When I asked if she influenced him in his work, he shrugged: "Not any more than God does!" In his college days. Spelling was a selfcontained dynamo. Along came Jones, and that was changed. Now he glories in sharing every experience with her. "I wouldn't pick a tie without asking Carolyn," he declares happily. "We've had the strongest relationship. By the same token, Carolyn wouldn't think of doing a picture or reading a script without me. She held up rushes on 'Guns Of The Timberland' for five minutes at Warners because she wouldn't let them start until I got there. That's unheard of!" Carolyn was out of town when Warners wanted her for the feminine lead in "Ice Palace". The studio got hold of Spelling and asked if he could get the script to her. He did better than that. He called her long distance, and for an hour and a half read passages to her over the phone. "I think we ought to do it," Carolyn said at last. "Don't you?" "Yes," Aaron grinned. "I already told them you would." 64 If Carolyn doesn't influence Aaron any more than God, the same may be said of his influence on her. Aaron practically bludgeoned her into playing the existentialist in "Bachelor Party" — and she emerged an Oscar-nominated star. "I think you have to love someone very much to know what's right for them," Aaron points out. "When Carolyn didn't want to do 'Bachelor Party' that was our first fight. I thought she'd just explode in it, and she did. I made her do it." He and Caroline have taken the yawn* out of togetherness. "It's so much fun that way," Aaron insists. "If I go on location, she goes. If I can't go, she won't do the picture, and vice versa." Their togetherness is not a moral pose. It was forged in the early years of their marriage. There was no middle ground. Having each other had to be enough or too little. There was nothing else. The erstwhile college playwright was an intimidated writer, a sometimes drama coach and director, and a starving bit actor. Along came Jones — and they starved together. It was better that way. "Our wedding party," Spelling chuckles, "was the worst of all. Our only friends were other starving actors. Eight people, including Paul Richards and his wife, were at the ceremony. We went to Paul's bachelor apartment, where our wedding gift was a bottle of champagne. All ten of us drank Up the wedding present, and then we went home — to our own bachelor apartment." AARON no sooner carried his bride across the threshold than he got a long distance call telling him that his father was dying. The honeymoon was interrupted by a frantic effort to scrape up plane fare to get Aaron to his father's bedside. "We didn't have a nickel," he recalls. "We had no car. Paul Richards loaned us $25. Carolyn's agent loaned us $25. Carolyn was about to leave On a personal appearance tour for 'House Of Wax', and she got Warners to advance her $200 expense money. So I went. My father recovered, and everything ended happily." Fortunately, hard times were not a sudden post-marriage shock. Aaron and Carolyn were bloody broke, but unbowed throughout their spartan courtship. "When I met Carolyn," he smiles, "I was directing a show for Preston Sturges for $100 a month — 'Live Wire' it was called. Carolyn was working backstage at the Players Ring for nothing. Her father was dead, and her mother was in Hollywood working and raising Carolyn and her kid sister. When we got married, I got me a big job. I taught at Ben Bard's for $150 a month. Carolyn's mother took ill and went home to Texas. On $150 a month we were married and also raising Carolyn's sister, Bette." AARON never stops marveling over Carolyn. "The depth of this girl is unbelievable." Once Jones came along, the bitterness began to drain out of Aaron Spelling. He looks back on those lean days with affectionate amusement rather than rancor. "We used to go to Rand's Round-Up where you eat all you want for $1.50," he laughs appreciatively. "We would save up for it. I remember when $1.50 was the whole world. Carolyn still has a hangover from those days. She still gathers up all our loose change and rolls the coins in nickle, dime, penny and quarter wrappers. She does it even when she's dead tired. She can have a five o'clock call, and she'll be wrapping her pennies. We used to save all our change. We figured that once we got below a half-dollar our money was all gone anyway." Aaron and Carolyn warm themselves with remembrances of their poverty. It sharpens their appreciation of their present good fortune. For Aaron, it underscores his esteem for the girl he married. "Once we had a car and we couldn't keep up the payments of $36 a month," he adds to their saga. "Paul Richards needed a car to get to the studio, so he used it and made the payments. Those hard times were the best thing that ever happened to us. Every little thing we get now we realize we're very lucky." Aaron Spelling would be hard put to pick the greatest benefaction bestowed by Carolyn Jones. Certainly not the least is the fact that today he is one of Hollywood's most successful and prolific writers. When he was fresh out of college, and already stale with failure, he was defeated as a writer. Along came Jones, and she changed all that, too. One day Carolyn read the two awardwinning plays Aaron had written at SMU, and she put a slamming halt to his career as a bit actor grubbing grocery money by playing dirty, ancient Arabs in burlap sacks, crying, "Alms for the love of Allah." "I don't want you to act again," Carolyn was outraged at the shocking waste of talent. "Genius like yours should not be