TV Guide (January 8, 1954)

field. Don’t frown. It makes wrinkles.’ So they had me going through an entire picture with what amounted to a blank expression on my face. Real pretty—and no character.” Like Imogene Coca, whom Joan has never met but admires extravagantly, Joan tightens up before a perform¬ ance. And while the butterflies dis¬ appear the minute the cameras flick on, she carries a certain tenseness straight through her performance, a tenseness reflected chiefly in her voice. Liebman Calms Fears The butterflies were most apparent during the week before the initial telecast this past September. A friendly soul who likes people and wants to be liked in return, she was worried for fear some people would be wishing her ill. She was particu¬ larly upset at the thought that Max Liebman, producer-director of NBC’s Your Show of Shows, would be giv¬ ing her the baleful eye. My Favorite Husband plays opposite the Liebman extravaganza in the 9:30-10 P.M. Sat¬ urday spot in the East. While Joan doesn’t know Liebman, she has a great admiration and re¬ spect for him. The thought that he might be thinking unkindly of her, however impersonally, was giving her enough butterflies to fill a botanical exhibit. When word of this unfortu¬ nate state of affairs drifted back to New York, Liebman characteristically sent her a wire on the day of her first show, wishing her luck. INo Hard Knocks A blue-eyed blonde of what might be called classic American good looks, Joan was born to comfortable cir¬ cumstances in East Orange, N.J., and has never known the hard knocks road so familiar to most theatrical people. She took to the theater with all the easy aplomb of a born athlete taking to the gridiron. By the time she had finished two and a half years at Columbia University, she was al¬ ready a top model for Harry Conover and had had considerable experience in school, college and dramatic club theatrics. So she tossed college over¬ board and headed for Broadway. Supremely confident, she went just once around the producers’ circuit and came up with a part in George Abbott’s “Beat the Band.” It flopped but Abbott gave her the lead in his next production—“Kiss and Tell,” in which she played Corliss Archer. It ran 14 months, following which Joan ran to Hollywood. At Paramount, she appeared in such light-hearted efforts as “Miss Susie Slagle,” “Blue Skies,” “Mon¬ sieur Beaucaire,” “Welcome Stran¬ ger,” “Dear Ruth,” “Petty Girl” and “The Lady Said No.” She belied the title of this last one by saying yes to producer-director £rank Ross and has been Mrs. Ross since April, 1950. Favorite Husband No. 2 Moving to the scatter-brained sur¬ roundings of My Favorite Husba7id hasn’t been difficult, Joan says, for her own favorite husband has taken a keen interest in the TV show and even lets her toss lines at him when they are at home. They live in the old King Vidor home in Beverly Hills, taking life easy when they can around a comfortable pool and straying from the premises only when duty calls and paychecks must be earned. For all her success and pleasant way of life, however, Joan is con¬ tinually plagued by a dilemma be¬ yond solving. Comes 9:30 Saturday night in Hollywood—and what should she watch—her own quick kinescope, or Imogene Coca? She takes little consolation in the fact that quite a few million other people are faced with precisely the same annoying problem. It’s worse than butterflies. Glamor-plus: Joan likes TV job better than 'too pretty' movie roles like this. 16