Hollywood Whispers

How Fess Parker and sweetie Marcie Reinhart have been playing hide-and- seek with the professional gossipers and the grapevine that theirs may be the first wedding ceremony at Disneyland after the first novelty of that kids’ fairyland wears off . . . With Marcie dolled up like a squaw . . . Whether pretty Lorri Thomas will be able to lure John Bromfield to the hitching post . . . And the same for Josanne Mariani and Marlon Brando, with the French fisherman’s daughter seemingly settled down in Hollywood for the duration . . . About the special air-conditioning unit built into the new Clark Gable mansion in Palm Springs with speculation rife that this will be a honeymoon cottage for Clark and Kay Spreckels come next season at the desert Spa . . . The way Rock Hudson keeps draping diamonds on Phyllis Gates, even though he hasn’t fitted one to her third finger, left hand.

. . . About the springtime budding of what may be James Dean’s first serious romance—with Marilyn Morrison, who only smiles wisely now when anyone mentions the floundering about of her ex, Johnnie Ray, whose press agents find him a new sweetheart for each new singing engagement in foreign parts . . . And the biggest publicity bubble of them all, the purported love-at-first-sight flare-up between Grace Kelly and Jean Pierre Aumont at Cannes and in Paris, a total phony according to Grace’s chums. . . . That it looks somewhat serious between Sterling Hayden and Bunny Cooper, who’s Ben’s pretty sister. But no more than somewhat . . . The skyrocketing of Jack Palance, who parlayed a not-so-pretty mug from his coal miner’s wage of $35 a week to $150,000 per picture, plus percentages.

While Lori Nelson seems to be playing the field, friends of hers and Tab Hunter await anxiously to see if they will name a Date or wait until their 434 careers jell a bit more solidly . . . Linda Christian’s last word to pals in Hollywood before taking off for Mexico, that she’d joyfully toss out of the window the cool million settled on her by Tyrone Power if she could only persuade him to come back to her. Meanwhile Edmund Purdom seems to have fallen heir not only to the richly gadgeted British Bentley, a $12,000 gift from Ty to Linda, but also to the use of the Power mansion whenever he listeth.

. . . About how Frankie Sinatra and his newest flame Robin Raymond appear to have Reached an Understanding. . . . And the possibility of a fall wedding for Piper Laurie and David Schine, who’s settling down to operate his father’s Los Angeles Ambassador right after his Army release in late August . . . Jack Webbs flat assertion that Peggy Lee will be a top-running Oscar candidate for her portrayal of the femme lush in “Pete Kelly’s Blues.” A fast-approaching altar march for Leigh Snowden and Dick Contino.

About how Sheree North, whose agents now have lofted her figure for each television appearance at $5,000, still lugs her dainties to a laundromat and does them herself . . . George Nader’s sponsoring a Hollywood career for Linda Francis, a singer whom he met while on location at the Virgin Islands making “Away All Boats.” This one has the earmarks . . . The courage of Bob Mitchum in filing suit against that muckraking publication and Hollywood’s fond hope that its people may no longer be lambs led to slaughter.

It is a quote. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE AUGUST 1955