Brenda Lee, Guess What Dion Thinks Of You!

To me, Brenda is like a song. Don’t tell her, but I wrote one just for her. It goes, “Four feet eleven and a dress size seven, tha-at’s Brenda Lee, cute as a button and you ain’t heard nuttin’ till she belts out high C.” . . . And why shouldn’t she belt, with all the exercise her vocal chords got in school? Cheerleader—debater—and now I hear she talks her way out of kissing a boy goodnight on a first date. Isn’t that like a girl? Can’t wait till they’re sixteen and Mom lets them date, then they chicken out. . . . But that Brenda, she’s so little and weighs all of a hundred pounds, but once on tour in South America she went on in place of a whole circus. I kid you not, so many people wanted to hear her. the only way was to pay off every other performer for a day and let Shorty have all three rings to herself. . . . I don’t know what she does with so much money—she says herself she spends her whole five dollars allowance foolishly every week. . . .

On the other hand, she’s done what every red-blooded American kid should, bought her family a new house. It’s a split-level Swiss chalet type with a French Provincial bedroom for her brother and Early American furniture for her mother, and it’s in Nashville, Tennessee. But I guess she’s got her geography straight because she was an A student at Maplewood High. . . . Nowadays she doesn’t stand still long enough to go to school; a tutor chases around the world trying to keep up with her. But wouldn’t you think a tutor could teach her to say “Tuileries” for those gardens in Paris instead of “Tooleries” like she does? That’s where she nearly got arrested because it’s against the law to be photographed in the Tooleries—I mean Tuileries. What some people won’t do to get a picture in Photoplay.

That Brenda, she says “Ah cain’t tell you about Paris, ahm too modest,” and then goes right on to say they simply showered her with flowers every day. I’ll bet. Threw them at her. . . . She had a real romance in Paris, too. Every day she came home from the theater and found a bunch of violets or tulips or candy by her door and no card, while somewhere in the hotel she could hear a guitar playing and a boy’s voice serenading her. Till one day she ran out into the hall and found him. It was a little bellboy, and you know what Brenda did to that boy? Next day she took him to the theater and made him listen to her. . . . And maybe you don’t know it, but she can’t read a note of music, poor little girl.

I notice she never mentions the time she and Fabian and a bunch of the kids were on tour all over this country. Fabe told me—she kept planting dead flies and moths and stuff around his room because he’s got a thing about bugs and she isn’t afraid of anything. Except snakes. She didn’t tell Fabe that. So I’m telling him now. There will be other tours. And what’s nicer to get than a live garter snake—gift-wrapped?

She had her first real solo date year before last in Nashville with a local boy named Randall Watts. She says they’re buddies, he used to be in some of her classes and they played touch football together. Randall asked her would she like to go someplace to eat, and she said yes, so they did and that was the date. It was nice, she says, but not very romantic. Maybe she should try dating a boy she didn’t play football with.

But honestly, I’m only teasing. Brenda’s all right. She’s got some sound ideas. Like she can’t be bothered smearing a lot of makeup on herself, she can’t bear the stuff. And when she meets her ideal boy she won’t care what he does for a living just so he has a nice disposition. She doesn’t care what he looks like either, just so he has hair—either dark or blond—and blue-green eyes, is five-foot-eleven—and carries around a stepladder.

THE END

—BY DION

Brenda Lee records on the Decca label, and Dion records for Laurie Records.

 

It is a quote. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE MAY 1961