Edd Byrnes Asks: Why Doesn’t A Fellow Ever Get Over His First Love?

I sat in my bedroom, staring into space, listening to Vic Damone singing. For the hundredth time I lifted the arm on the phonograph and set the needle back to the beginning of the record.

You’re breaking my heart

Cause you’re leaving;

You’ve fallen for somebody new.

It isn’t easy believing

You’d leave after all we’ve been thru . . .

Every time I listened to those words, words that seemed to be written just for me, it was as if I were hearing them for the first time. When you’re seventeen you can be hurt very easily—you kind of dramatize things all out of proportion. But at seventeen who’s interested in logic?

I sat in my bedroom, hour after hour, not talking to anyone, just listening to that record, feeling lost inside, and thinking that what was happening to me must be a unique experience, something no one else in the whole world could understand, or share, or know anything about.

When I first started high school, girls weren’t important in my life. I was at the age where going out for sports, being one of the guys, being liked by the group were the things that mattered most. I dated occasionally but it wasn’t until I was seventeen that I first met her. After that I was less available for stag evenings, movies, less anxious for late basketball practice, less willing to spend all my free hours jumping up and down on a trampoline. I found out there was more to life than I had imagined!

Yet I was always especially interested in gymnastics. At the time I was taking a class twice weekly at New York’s famous Turnverein Gym. Our teams entered athletic competitions with universities and schools like West Point. I went to classes on Tuesdays and Fridays. On Sundays both girls and boys used the gym facilities at the same time.

One of those Sundays I stood talking with a friend of mine in the gym. We’d just finished our workout on the bars. As we were about to head for the showers, a very lovely, dark-haired girl with an elfin-like figure came walking towards us. She moved so gracefully, and was so poised that I got the impression she must be a dancer, or maybe a model. She was wearing a black leotard that really showed off her figure. And she had the most striking big brown eyes. I wondered how come I hadn’t noticed her before. My friend put his arm around her and I thought to myself, so that’s his girl. Then he said, “Edd, have you met my sister?”

“No, I haven’t,” I gulped.

He introduced us and we talked for a while. She told me she was studying ballet. Before we said goodbye that afternoon I’d asked her for a date and she’d accepted.

I left the gym and practically trotted all the way home. I kept whistling and couldn’t help noticing that the late evening sunset seemed much more vibrant. During the next three days I looked for things to occupy my time so that Wednesday, the night of our first date, wouldn’t seem so far off.

Wednesday finally came. I remember pulling up in front of her house in my beat-up ’37 Ford. It may have seemed beat-up to everyone else, but to me no limousine was as beautiful.

“I never meant to hurt you, Edd . . . but I like him . . . and he likes me.”

I took her to Loew’s 86th Street, and we sat in the balcony. During the second picture I got up enough courage to hold her hand.

After that first date we began seeing each other regularly, as much as three or four times a week and twice on Sundays when we’d meet at the gym and then go out afterwards. We never went to any spectacular places on our dates, just to movie shows, with a stop at the Orange Room afterward for something to eat—the Orange Room, that’s a term of endearment we New Yorkers have for Nedicks’ Hot Dog Stand.

Sometimes I’d go over to her house and we’d dance and listen to records, or we’d take long drives and usually wind up in the Bronx near the Cloisters, a popular parking spot. We’d sit and talk for hours and listen to music on the car radio and hold hands. We never talked much about the future. We were young, and the future seemed like a long way off.

We lived eight blocks away from each other and her house soon became a second home to me.

Eight-and-a-half months later, at the end of that year, I realized that for the first time in my life, December 31st had a special meaning. We were going to celebrate New Year’s Eve together—our first.

When I picked her up that night she looked more beautiful than ever. She was dressed in a formal, with all sorts of sparkling things over her dress. On her wrist was a rhinestone bracelet and around her neck she wore a matching strand of shining stones. I’d given them to her for Christmas. She looked like a dream. I felt wonderful.

It was pretty mobbed by the time we got to the party. Soon we got separated in a crowd. I kept looking around for her. Then I saw her. She was standing in a corner talking to another guy. I went over; and when I’d reached her side I put my arm around her as if to say, “Hands off, buddy, she’s mine!” She looked up at me and said softly, “Can we go outside and get a little air? It’s so stuffy in here.”

We walked through the crowd and outdoors to the front of the house. It was cold, snowing lightly and she had forgotten to take her wrap. She was shivering and I wasn’t feeling any too warm myself. Suddenly she looked up at me and said, “Did you recognize that boy I was talking to?”

I nodded my head in a yes. All the guys knew him. He was already out of school, older than the rest of the crowd. He was a dancer and an actor. He had the only new convertible in the crowd and also his own apartment which I guess made him seem as though he were from a different planet.

“Edd,” she went on, “I don’t know exactly how to tell you . . . I don’t know what to say . . . but . . .” She didn’t seem to want to look at me. She put her head down and said, “I like him . . . he feels the same way about me . . . I don’t even know how it happened . . . I’m awfully sorry. Honestly, I am. I don’t mean to hurt you.”

She went on talking, trying to make me feel better, asking questions, saying words, but I just stood there, looking at her. I knew I should say something.

The only words that finally did come out were, “Honey, I understand. This thing is all new and I guess fascinating to you. You’ve just met him. But it’s only a matter of time—we’ll be back together again.”

She sort of smiled and said, “Let’s go back inside; it’s cold.”

I took her hand and we walked up the steps and back into the house. It was a quarter to twelve and all I could think of was how to get away, how to get out of there fast. I tried not to let her know. In the end I just walked her over to where he was standing, said goodnight and left—alone.

It was getting close to midnight when I started across the street towards the 59th Street entrance to Central Park. As I stepped off the curb, I noticed a man coming toward me. He was playing “Auld Lang Syne” on an accordion that he had strapped across his chest. Hanging from one of the shoulder straps was a tin cup. I dug into my pocket, found a coin and tossed it in. “Thanks son—Happy New Year,” he called out. I must have been the only one to give him anything that night because my coin made a very lonely thud as it hit the bottom of the cup. It sounded like I felt—hollow and alone.

There’s something pretty special about the holiday season in New York. All the millions of neon bulbs seem extra bright; there are glittering Christmas ornaments everywhere; the snow glistens and everything looks peaceful and beautiful. At least it always had before. That night as I walked along, it was the most beautiful and yet the most ugly sight I’d ever seen.

I just kept on walking. I knew when twelve o’clock came because from somewhere the stillness of the night was suddenly shattered by the blast of horns. I could hear shouts and screaming and fragments of words and laughter all mixed up . . . “Happy . . . New . . . Year . . . Whoopee . . .” I kept on walking. I passed a few couples, arm in arm, walking huddled together, sheltering each other from the cold. They didn’t see me, but I saw them; all of them had the one thing I didn’t—someone to be with on this last night of the year.

I kept going slowly until I found myself in the mid-Sixties. I knew where I was because I saw the zoo up ahead; that’s in the park around 64th Street. I walked over and looked through the steel bars into the cages. They were deserted. Even the animals were inside, warm, together with other animals. We’d come here a few times, my girl and I. We’d had fun watching the monkeys acting like little furry people and looking at the lions, tigers and other exotic creatures from far off lands. Now the zoo was deserted and my girl was blocks away celebrating the New Year with another guy, the celebrity in the crowd—a professional already, working at the Roxy Theater in some big production. He made a lot of money—any money seemed a lot of money to someone like me, still in school, dependent on a family allowance and any change I could pick up doing odd jobs after classes.

I passed the skate house where we’d rented ice skates for a spin around the lake; the same shack where you rent rowboats in the summer to go for a ride on the same lake. Soon I was at the Seventy-Sixth Street exit. Id walked seventeen blocks. It was three in the morning, and I’d been walking for hours. I left the park, walked two blocks to. 78th Street and finally arrived home. I opened the front door quietly. I didn’t want anybody to hear me. I couldn’t stand the thought of talking to my folks or my older brother or kid sister. I wanted to be alone.

I went to my room and as I sat on my bed thinking it all over, something inside of me seemed to snap. She wanted glamor, she wanted an actor. Well, if that’s what she wanted, why couldn’t she wait? That’s what I was going to be! I sat on the edge of my bed thinking how it would be. I’d go to Hollywood and become a star overnight. I’d buy a black convertible, twice as big as his. I’d get myself a smart wardrobe and come back to New York. Then I’d sweep her off her feet. Id call her and say hello and she’d come running over to see me. I’d suggest we take a walk and wed go down Broadway. I’d be very nonchalant as she held my hand and shouted, “Oh, look, Edd! Your name! It’s up in lights a mile high.” And I’d just smile and say nothing . . .

One thing my folks had given me for Christmas was a phonograph. The day after New Year’s I went to Goody’s, a big record shop in New York, and bought my first record. It was Vic Damone’s “You’re Breaking My Heart.” And I kept playing it over and over and over.

Those first few weeks, I’d make up excuses to take the long way home. I’d walk past her house on 86th Street and look in and see if I could see her. If the house was dark I was sure she was out somewhere, some place very expensive, with him. She probably thought my ’37 Ford was a rattletrap compared to his new car. I was sure he took her places other than a movie or a free band concert, or to the zoo which costs nothing except the price of what you buy to eat. On Sundays if I knew she was going to the gym Id get there late and work on the opposite side of the room so I wouldn’t bump into her. But mostly she stopped coming on Sundays—I supposed she was too busy going out on the town.

Every moment of every day I kept thinking more and more about becoming an actor—becoming a star. I started buying movie magazines, reading them from cover to cover, particularly stories on Hollywood’s leading young men. I kept reading, hoping to find a clue on how you go about getting somewhere in Hollywood. My folks weren’t exactly pleased. They wanted me to go to college and take a pre-med course and follow through and get my M.D. degree. No use putting it off, I thought, I might as well tell them now. My parents tried to discourage me by stopping my allowance in the hopes that I’d snap out of the haze I was in.

But nothing was going to stop me. If my folks didn’t give me money, I’d earn some. I took a series of odd jobs, before and after school, driving an ice truck, delivering magazines. I took anything that could pay some money. With my first salary check I rented a tape recorder. I sat in my bedroom for hours at a time reading into it, reading scenes from plays I’d checked out of the library. Then I’d play it back and listen to myself doing the same scene over and over again. I tried to be my own teacher.

Four months passed. Then one night in April while I was in my room reading, the telephone rang. I said “Hello,” and heard a feminine voice on the other end say, “Edd? Is that you, Edd?”

I knew exactly who it was. I’d dreamed for months of this moment. When she’d call I’d be so happy and we’d get back together. I’d show her that I could be twice as successful as that other guy . . . and that’s the way I thought I’d feel until I heard her voice.

“How’ve you been?” I said, casually.

“Fine . . . I . . . Edd, that boy . . . well, it was just a passing fancy and . . . I—I’d like to see you . . . I’d like very much to see you . . .”

I swallowed hard and then said, “I guess I should be glad that things didn’t work out with him . . . but lm not . . . I’m sorry . . . because, well . . .” and I paused, “well, because I think it would be better if we didn’t see each other again.” There was silence on the other end. I could tell she was crying and I wanted to say, “Look, I haven’t stopped feeling the way I did . . . I love you but I’m afraid to get hurt again . . .” I wanted to tell her but I couldn’t say it. She finally said, “Well, goodbye, then.” I said, ‘‘So long.”

She called me a few more times after that. Each time I heard her voice I felt worse. But I wouldn’t give in. The last time she called I said, “Look, seriously, it’s much better if you go your way and I go mine.” She hung up.

I imagined myself pretty worldly. I’d grown up a lot in those few months. Yet down deep I knew I was still a kid. She had been my first girl, and I’d taken it pretty hard. I guess when you get right down to it, I just didn’t want to be hurt again and I knew that feeling the way I still did, she could hurt me.

Four years and a dozen odd jobs later I really got my start in show business. By then I’d done a few bits on TV, carried a spear on stage in a local production of “Hamlet,” been in summer stock and learned just about everything I could. For a long time I’d been planning to go to the West Coast. I broke it to my folks gradually and when the day came they were wonderful. They wished me luck and told me never to be too proud to ask them for anything. They wanted so much to help me, even in acting.

I got in my car and started driving. Now was the time! I would keep going until I couldn’t drive any further and then I’d be in California. About a week later I got to Hollywood.

did see her again—not too long afterwards. It was just before anything really big happened to me. I got a phone call one night. She was in California appearing in a night-club act. We met for cocktails. We talked. It was a pleasant evening. In some ways we were like strangers, worlds apart. In others it was like we’d never stopped seeing each other. We had a few laughs, then said goodbye.

I never saw her again. I did get a letter from her, though, about a year and a half later. She wrote to tell me she had settled down back East. She’d married and was expecting a baby. No, she didn’t marry an actor; her husband was a business man, she told me, and they were very happy. She said she’d seen my name in a movie magazine advertising “Darby’s Rangers,” and she had to write and let me know how very proud she was of me. When I read her letter I could tell she sincerely meant what she’d written. I had no feeling of bitterness, no regrets about what had happened between us. She had been my girl, my very first girl and because of that I’ll never completely forget her. And I’ve so much to thank her for because if I hadn’t known her, if she hadn’t passed me by for someone who represented all the glamor I still lacked, I’d have done what my parents wanted me to do, maybe I’d be spending my time in a hospital ward taking temperatures. And I don’t think I’d have really been cut out for that type of life.

THE END

—AS TOLD TO MARCIA BORIE

SEE EDD IN WARNERS’ “UP PERISCOPE” AND ON “77 SUNSET STRIP,” SEEN FRIDAYS AT 9:30 P.M. EST OVER ABC-TV.

 

It is a quote. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE APRIL 1959