Mother Knows Plenty!—Jeanne Crain

The table near the big picture window was set for two. The lights were out, and only the vast bed of burning jewels that is Hollywood glowed from far below to illumine the faces of Jeanne Crain and Paul Brinkman.

This was the way they liked to dine, with the boys tucked away back in the nursery wing—not out of heart, but out of mind for this moment—their special moment together. Outside, the curving pool shimmered black-blue. The jacaranda tree quivered imperceptibly. Jeanne wore a colorful, low-cut Mexican cotton dress that Paul particularly liked.

She shook her red-gold curls back on her bare shoulders. It was a gesture Paul knew. Something was coming.

“They whistled at me today,” said Jeanne.

“Who whistled?”

“Men,” said Jeanne, “two hundred extras.”

“Lucky girl,’ nodded Paul, lifting a slice of avocado.

“It wasn’t that kind of a whistle,” complained Jeanne. “I was a fright—imagine a bathing suit with bloomers, long cotton stockings, and a ruffled cap. That hazing scene, you know, in Take Care of My Little Girl. I looked like a fugitive from a Sennett comedy!” He could see her nose tilt alarmingly.

Paul took a sip of wine. He remembered conversational beginnings like this during Margie, when his bride wore pigtails and long woolen hose; during Apartment For Peggy, when Jeanne’s maternity rig made her look like an over-stuffed laundry bag; during Cheaper By the Dozen, too, when another 1910 bathing job, complete with parasol, got her started off.

He remembered the beginnings—and the endings, too . . .

“Paul,” mused Jeanne, “the picture finishes next week.”

Mr. Brinkman laid down his fork. “Jeanne, Doll,” he said, “this time it’s impossible. I’ve never been so busy. The plant’s jumping—defense orders, expansion, headaches. I can’t spare a minute. I can’t—” But there was that look in her eyes that always made him helpless.

“Paul,” said Jeanne, “I sure do need a trip to New York.”

Before another week had passed, Jeanne was curled up happily in a drawing room on the Chief, rattling East, and so—against his better judgment—was the man she loved. And if Paul was hopping off at Pasadena, Albuquerque, Kansas City, Chicago and points en route to send frantic business wires, Mrs. Brinkman nursed no such cares in her pretty head. She had visions of glamor gowns, theaters, smart cafés and dancing until dawn. This was a reaction; Jeanne was off on a glamor whirl. Paul knew it was important medicine for her.

Every now and then, and especially after some temporarily restraining hiatus in her life—whether it’s an unattractive movie getup, or the antiseptic business of having a baby—Jeanne Crain spins off on the wings of an irresistible urge for excitement. For a week or more she can be Jeanne Crain, which is to say, an Irish redhead, a dramatic, exciting gal, and a lady, by the way, understood by too few people.

Last year for instance, Jeanne was barely home from the hospital with Timothy Peter when she ripped open her bid to Hollywood’s annual Press Photographers’ Ball, a star-spangled shilly where almost anything goes.

“Look—it says the theme’s ‘Your Secret Desire’!” she told Paul excitedly. “Well, you’re my secret desire—and you know how I’ve always pictured you—secretly? As a sheik!”

Paul is dark, handsome, and dashing, of course, but at that point he was also the brand new father of his third son and he felt his responsibility and—well—dignity. He wasn’t particularly in the mood to wear white sheets and a turban.

“Tell me—how will a sheik match up with a madonna?” he wanted to know.

“Don’t be out of date,” said Jeanne. “I’m not wearing my halo any more. I’ll be your harem slave, Great One.” She’d worked hard enough, Allah knew, getting her figure back with all those exercises and, well, she sort of wanted to show it off.

So, with Timothy only six weeks old, Jeanne glided into the ball with beaded bra, bare midriff, and daring diaphanous trousers that invited a view of two of the trimmest supports in Hollywood. When they saw who she was, the flash bulb boys gasped, and Hollywood’s envious females were properly shocked. Jeanne had the time of her life.

Nobody expects things like that from Jeanne Crain, and when they happen right out in public no one seems to believe it. Only recently Jeanne took the breath away from as breezy a gal as Hedda Hopper, at a party which Director Jean Negulesco tossed after winding up Take Care of My Little Girl. Nobody needed to take care of Jeanne that night; she took care of herself. She swept in, wearing a deep-dipping black blouse and a shocking pink circus skirt, around which she’d sewn glittering clown faces—only they weren’t really clown faces. They were daring caricatures which she’d cut out herself, cartoons of the guests present, including Hedda.

The legendary girl you sometimes feel like pasting on a lace Valentine—the ingenuous Jeanne Crain, who at 25 and thrice a mother can still play a teenager more than convincingly, is only an actress—period. She’s a good one, a mighty lucky and satisfied one, but no resemblance exists between the screen Jeanne and the real Jeanne. The warm flesh-and-blood Jeannie is smooth, smart, sexy, sophisticated, and sometimes shockingly unconventional in her behavior.

On her last trip to New York, Jeanne arrived lugging a Hawaiian guitar case, because at that time she was taking lessons from her Island friend, Sam Koki, and she didn’t want to lose her touch. In Grand Central Station the reporters and news cameramen spotted it pronto. “What’s the act?” they demanded. “You can’t play that thing, can you?”

“I sure can,” fired back Jeanne. “Want to hear?” So while the crowds gathered and gawked, she plopped down on her suitcase and whanged out “The BlueTailed Fly”—right in the Grand Concourse. Then she hustled out to a cab, and with Paul grinning and shaking his zoomed off to her hotel. But, of course, Paul Brinkman knows by now he can expect practically anything from his beautifully unpredictable bride. After all, their romance wasn’t exactly out of Emily Post.

What other star ever found her true loving husband by letting him chase her through city traffic for her license number so he could call up, make a date, and marry her? What other Hollywood star—and a new one at that—would dare keep her marriage a deep, dark secret from her own publicity department, even though she worked up until an hour before she went for the license? Who in the nice Niagara Falls set would choose bleak Death Valley for a honeymoon? And what other brand new mama would dare feel the compelling urge to bring home a half-grown lioness cub from a circus party—just because he licked her hand—and keep it prowling around the place until the neighbors called the cops?

Jeanne Crain lives as she darned pleases. And she lives in the most dramatic setting of any star in Hollywood. Jeanne and Paul, with the assistance of architects, planned it together. “We saw eye to eye,” they both say, “we knew what we wanted —and we got it.” They certainly did. The result is what said architects call “interesting,” but “thrilling” is an even better word.

No photograph yet developed can catch the dramatic feel of that eyrie, or how it fits the glamor pair who live there. Snuggling into the beige hillside, it’s white topped, strikingly modern, planted on seven acres of precipitous mountain with a framed view of everything. Maybe you’re hep to the stunning color accents of gray-greens, bright reds, golds and chartreuses that Jeanne has splashed here and there to delight the unconventional eye. Perhaps you’ve heard of the rows upon rows of romantic travel books and exciting biographies (she’s a heavy reader) that line the shelves, the big tropical plant that spears up out of nowhere, the huge fieldstone fireplace, and the rough-hewn ceiling of pink, lavender and green.

But if you haven’t stood by the glass at sunset and seen the big jacaranda tree shower a purple carpet of blossoms right up to the pool, and watched the city lights burn up the valley, then you’ll never know what a breathtaking, disturbing place it is—and yet peaceful and perfect for a girl who always wanted to paint, and a guy who likes to build. And when Paul, Jr. races in tagged by Mike Anthony, and Jeanne brings in Timmy and lets them all scoot wherever they please, that’s something too—but that’s also another thing.

Jeanne is a mother, all right, and a good one. Five years, three baby boys. (“Lucky me—with all the men around!” she cracks.) She loves them, takes care of them, wants more of them. But she’s no lace draped picture of Whistler’s Mother.

Jeanne is a modern mother—and you can sing no sad lullabies for her. She’s enjoyed every baby, before birth and after. She’s enjoyed herself too, and she has never let being pregnant slow her down—either as a woman or as a film star.

Jeanne plunged right into Pinky less than six weeks after Michael was born. Ethel Barrymore called her “the most vibrant young actress I’ve met.” While she was carrying Michael the Brinkmans’ annual, super-sentimental New Year’s Eve anniversary party rolled up. Paul looked dubiously at her outsized figure; Mike was due in exactly one month. “Maybe we’d better skip it, Doll—” he began. “We’d better not,” vetoed Jeanne. She not only made the party, but a purple satin maternity gown to wear there.

The evening before Paul Frederick was born Jeanne stepped out to dinner, a show, and a hot fudge orgy afterwards, just making last-minute hospital connections with the stork. After Timmy came Paul asked Jeanne, “What do you want for the baby, Doll?”

“An ermine coat,” said Jeanne. “But not for the baby doll—for this doll!” She got one—full length—which she broke out at the premiere of All About Eve, and a party afterwards.

One of the funniest sights Paul remembers was arriving home late one night, and spying Jeanne sitting in a bed of scented honeysuckle outside the lanai in the full California moon. She was ten days overdue with Timmy and chanting, “Come on, moon, bring the baby!” That’s as close as she ever came to any old wives’ tale about any blessed event. “But even then she was glamorous,” remembers Paul. “And you know, with every baby she gets more beautiful.”

Paul Brinkman could be prejudiced, of course, but there’s more truth than sentiment in what he says. Mortenson, the famous feminine photographer, says Jeanne has “the most beautiful face and the most beautiful figure in one body that I’ve ever seen”—and he shot over 5,000 pictures of her to back up that opinion.

Otto Preminger, who has directed his share of the world’s beauties, gazed at Jeanne through a camera finder once. “Perfect,” he purred, “but please—take off your rouge and those false eyelashes!” Which, of course, Jeanne couldn’t do, because they were her own. And Jean Negulesco, an artist as well as movie director, painted her portrait secretly while Jeanne acted for him in Take Care of My Little Girl. At the end, he gave it to her, but when Jeanne thanked him, he apologized. “I shouldn’t have done this without asking you,” he said, “but I couldn’t resist. No artist could.”

But there’s more to Jeanne Crain’s allure than her rose-tinted complexion, eternally teen-age chassis, and the smouldering glints of her copper-gold hair. That extra something was acquired through living and learning to accent her natural gifts. “After all,” she says, “if you look, think, or act like the same person at 25 that you were at 17, there’s something vacant upstairs.”

Jeanne still wears her tumbling tresses shoulder length because Paul likes them that way. But peasant blouses and dirndl skirts got swept off the hangers long ago to make way for the haut couture of Paris and Manhattan designers. Long ago Jeanne started telling misguided salesgirls who whipped out something demure every time she walked inside a salon, “Never mind the pinks, please—bring out the wicked ones—black beads and lace!” Now Jeanne Crain is a stunning fashion plate in private life indeed, and poses for high fashion magazines whenever she’s in Manhattan.

Paul trotted along with Jeanne a few weeks ago to Ceil Chapman’s, because Jeanne said she wanted him to help her pick out a formal for the Academy Awards this year. “This one dress,” promised Jeanne, “is all I really need.” They went in for a quick hour—and they stayed all day.

“I made my big mistake,” confessed Brinkman, “when she put on a sexy number and I said ‘Sensational!’ I said it 17 times—and Jeanne left with 17 dresses!” The Academy Award gown was typical: a sea blue, tight-bodiced eye-catcher with a bell skirt full enough to accommodate six lace petticoats, with ruffled puffs.

Jeanne can get by with the most dramatic and striking clothes because she is a dramatic and striking beauty. When she trips out in her holy white slippers with crimson roses on the toes, or the black ones with the ruby red jeweled heels, they seem exactly right. When she breaks out in the bare top, silver-beaded cocktail dress with the super short skirt—it may be ahead of the styles, but on her its perfect. Even when she parks a Floradora hat on her curls, complete with purple ostrich feathers—as she did at New York’s Bowery Follies, she gets cheers. Anything goes with Jeanne that’s daring, colorful, gay. In fact, the only fiasco that spoils her record was a homemade job she whipped up one time when she was caught with “just nothing to wear.” Jeanne dug up a white crepe dinner gown with a white lace top. She had it on when Paul charged into the bedroom, late and fumbling with his shirt studs. He took a horrified look. “Good gosh—hurry up and get dressed!” he barked.

“I am,” said Jeanne.

“Oh, I thought that was a nightgown,” blurted Paul. She finally got by with a big, red rose at her bosom.

What most people don’t know is that Jeanne is an incurable romantic, a true artist, and even a bohemian, at heart. Everything she does in her own life must have a flair, or Jeanne considers it a flop.

Four years after their house was built, Jeanne and Paul finally got around to a housewarming party. For Jeanne it couldn’t be just a party, it had to be something that was especially her—her house, her creation. She had a deep tropical tan at the time, she was taking Hawaiian guitar lessons from Sam Koki and Napu, his wife, was teaching her the hula. The weather was warm and the nights caressing. They still talk about the Hawaiian party at the Brinkmans’—all 265 lucky guests who came.

A mammoth green tent projected their porch almost to the garden rim where the mountain drops off. Special isinglass sides let in the whole dazzling view of the valley’s bright splendor. Flood lights in the pool turned it to turquoise. Camellias and gardenias floated on the water. A Hawaiian orchestra throbbed. There was a floor show of Polynesian dancers. And the guests never knew that an extra electric oven which Jeanne had rushed in to handle the food blew out all the fuses so that the whole party was by candlelight. “Luck was just with me,” sighed Jeanne. “I should have thought of the candles.” She’d thought about everything else.

Jeanne and Paul’s summertime barbecues are almost as spectacular—with red-checked tablecloths dotting the fieldstone terrace, both barbecue pits—in the house and out—blazing away, and Jeanne usually the very first to plunge into the moonlit pool at midnight. They have flocks of friends who fit into no narrow pattern—artists, architects, writers, musicians, socialites, actors, business men, politicians. To Jeanne, everyone who does something she doesn’t know about is, at once, the most interesting character on earth.

Nobody could call Jeanne Crain an introvert today—if she ever was. On the contrary, she packs a healthy hunger for action and freedom. But wherever she goes, there goes her screen image to slow her down. Luckily, Jeanne can laugh impishly at the ardent mash notes that still pour in from high school boys; or at something that happened not so long ago, when a Carmelite nun called up Jeanne’s mother from an orphanage.

She thanked her for supplying a print of Jeanne Crain’s nice picture Margie, to delight her charges the next day, “And couldn’t you arrange to have your little girl, Jeanne, be with us,” she begged. “The children would love to play with her.”

“I’m afraid I can’t arrange that,’ said Mrs, Crain. “My little girl’s pregnant.”

Mrs. Crain’s little girl Jeanne is still expecting—maybe more babies one of these days—but a lot of other wonderful things as well. Being Jeanne Crain, she’s expecting a full life of excitement, rich interests, fun and romance. She’s expecting to live it always with the man she loves. And these great expectations seem dead certain to come true.

On their anniversary last December 31st, as the final sun of 1950 dipped down to paint their housetop pink with its fading glow, and the lights sparked up in the great city before them, Paul Brinkman slipped a thin gold chain over the likewise golden hair of his lovely wife.

At the end hung a gold medallion of Our Lady of Guadalupe, with five diamonds on one side—for the five beautiful years—and three rubies on the other—for the three beautiful boys. On the back was engraved:

“Jeanne, Doll—Not for five years but forever. We love you. Paul—plus 3.”

And as he hugged her close and kissed her, she had all the proof she’ll ever need that Jeanne Crain is a beautiful, fascinating, glamorous woman.

THE END

—BY KIRTLEY BASKETTE

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE MAY 1951