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Back around 1940, the program for the summer ballet season at the Hol¬ lywood Bowl was loaded, as usual, with the unpronounceable Russian names generally associated with the art. At the tag end of the billing, however, appeared an incongruous credit line: “Featured dancers—Smith & Rafferty.” “It sounded for all the world like songs, dances and funny sayings,” the Rafferty half of the team s^ys today, “but it was dead serious business at the time. Even if we were only 15.” (The Smith half was Alexis Smith, since turned dramatic actress.) Frances Rafferty, better-known to viewers as Spring Byington’s daugh¬ ter in December Bride, which returns to CBS Monday night, has also turned dramatic actress. The reason: Her second season with the ballet she went into an overly ambitious leap and broke her kneecap. “You,” said the doctors, “will never dance again. Or, at least, not for 18 months.” That about marked the end of any serious ambitions on the part of the Iowa-born, Los Angeles-reared Miss 20 Rafferty, who had given up a college education to become a ballerina. Ev¬ erything since then has been simply a matter of personal “kicks,” rather than serious leaps. It was Alexis Smith, still her oldest and closest friend, who persuaded Frances to study dramatics with the late Madame Ouspenskaya after the broken kneecap had also broken the ballerina bubble; and it was Madame Ouspenskaya who got her an M-G-M screen test in 1942. “Everybody at M-G-M saw the test and nobody liked it,” Frances remem¬ bers. “So I went over to Fox and did one there. Nobody liked that one, either, and they sent it around to the other studios, such being the friend¬ ly little custom. It finally reached M-G-M, and guess who signed me when they saw it?” In five years Frances appeared in 34 M-G-M films, most of which she says were “walk-ons, bits, yesses and noes,” although she did have three leads opposite Wallace Beery and one with Edward Arnold. Then, Spring Byington, right, and Frances Rafferty. ►