Pinups Stage A Manhunt!

“I want to marry, but I haven’t found the right man yet,” mused Debra Paget when I asked her why she’s a bachelor girl. And this is exactly the same answer I received from a dozen other Hollywood glamour pusses when I posed the same question. Not one of them wants to stay single. They hate to live alone and they don’t like it, each and every one assured me. But the problem is: where to find the right guy?

Most girls have some idea of what they’re looking for in a husband. Sometimes the list of qualifications stretches from here to the ridiculous; at other times it dwindles to the one word “Man.” But it’s been my experience that no man measures up to any set of rules and regulations a woman makes for him, and when a girl falls in love, it doesn’t matter. She’ll think he’s everything she’s been looking for—because, of course, love has a way of ruining 20-20 vision.

To go back to Debra—she is one girl who is very definite about what she wants. “I have no intention of falling in love with anyone who cannot give me the very best in life—and that includes material things. My theory is simple: It’s as easy to fall in love with a rich man as it is with a poor man, and much more comfortable.

“When I do fall in love, you’ll know that he is wealthy enough to do more for me than I can do for myself. And I’ve acquired a lot of material possessions for a girl my age—a lovely home, a pool, the best of cars, clothes, jewels and furs. So my knight had better be wearing 14-carat armor!”

Then she added, emphatically: “I’ve never been in love, but when I do fall, the fellow won’t have a chance.” Judging from the way she said it, I believe her.

Who’s the lucky man who will win the most sought-after movie queen of today, the cool, collected blond from Philadelphia, Grace Kelly? That’s a major question whenever more than two people get together in Hollywood or Beverly Hills and the talk turns to conjecture on who’s going to marry whom.

“The key to Grace is her deep sense of propriety in public,” a close friend of hers told me, “and I think that’s the answer for the Romeo who’ll eventually melt that frigid reserve of hers.” But that reserve certainly melted, didn’t it, beneath the hot sun of the Riviera? Or didn’t you see those longshot photographs of our Gracie nibbling the fingers off Frenchman Jean Pierre Aumont when she thought they were a zillion miles away from a camera?

“I can’t tell you what she wants in a man,” a girl who’s worked with her confided, “but I can tell you what she doesn’t want. She can’t tolerate men who have dim standards, who have no place in life. Grace is a girl of great determination and integrity. She won’t compromise. Men who go overboard for her, without holding anything back, aren’t her cup of tea either. She prefers men who are hard to get. And,” she concluded, “no man is ever going to leave her completely breathless for too long a period. She gets tired of a man fast and under no circumstances will she ever throw caution to the wind. She commands her emotions like a top sergeant commands his rookies.”

And yet, at one time, it certainly looked as though Oleg Cassini had won her. In fact, she tried to sell her family on Oleg as good husband-material, but they weren’t buying. His fascination for Grace was explained thus: “He has great gloss and polish, a European poise that intrigued her. He amused and entertained her, and, as she said, he’s a beautiful dancer. He just charmed her completely. Also, he’s very successful in his business, and that’s something Grace would consider. Not that she’ll marry for money, but she’s been used to it all her life and she admires successful men.”

Actually, Aumont falls in the same classification. He exudes Continental charm and manners, but I think he made a mistake when he announced that he wanted to marry the girl. When Grace does marry, the marriage announcement will come from her parents.

The girl who bared everything and found fame is suddenly becoming an enigma. I’m speaking of Marilyn Monroe, of course. No one can get close enough to Marilyn these days—with the exception of Mr. and Mrs. Milton Greene—to find out what it is she wants in a man, a picture, a contract or anything else, for that matter.

Unless she’s changed completely, though, she is still shopping for the same kind of husband-material that she originally found in the ex-Yankee slugger, jolting Joe DiMaggio. In fact, she’s shop- ping at the same counter. When Marilyn divorced Joe and fled to New York. it was rumored that she had found a new love, a very highly placed official. Not only was he wealthy, but he was well-educated, the type who reads “The Brothers Karamazov” and knows that Marilyn would be good as Grushenka. Marilyn hungers for appreciation. She wants to be more than blond and beautiful; she. wants to be brainy. And right now I think Marilyn is too busy acquiring culture to bother about acquiring another husband. Her dates with Joe seem to indicate that she still wants what she had before. He’s safe, sympathetic, sorry he ever lost her, and more in love with her than ever. This is food for any girl’s ego.

Mary Murphy, too, knows what she likes in the way of a man. In her case, it’s spelled Dale Robertson. But there have been times when it seemed that the strain of waiting out an interlocutory decree would wear romance away before Dale’s divorce became final. Spirited, lovely, enjoying an upswing in her career, Mary has the same wide range of choice as these other beauties. She could find excitement in her work; she could have her pick of men; but she wants just one man.

Despite her unhappiness of the last two years, beautiful redheaded Susan Hayward still has strong ideas about the kind of man she’d like to marry, although she insists she has no specific man in mind. “They’re all very nice,” she admits, referring to a Beverly Hills physician she won’t name, to her agent, Ned Marin, to a young divorced director with whom she’s gone dining and dancing, to actors Richard Egan and Stanley Hough. “But,” she adds, “I’m not emotionally involved with anyone right now. Maybe the picture will change tomorrow; there’s always that chance.

“One thing,” and her eyes flashed as she said it, “I don’t think the man will be an actor. Definitely not an actor. I don’t get along with them too well. They want top billing.”

“If not an actor, then who?”

“Remember, I have two sons. They’ll have as much of an adjustment to make to my marriage as I will, so the man I marry must like children—my children. He’ll also have to be the man of the house, the boss, winning my respect as well as my sons’.

“He’ll have to be in love with his job, too. I remember, back in Brooklyn, hearing a neighbor say: ‘The best kind of husband to have is one who says goodbye after breakfast and comes home only when I’m putting the supper on the table.’ Frankly, there’s a lot to be said for that kind of man.”

I certainly hope that whatever Susan wants, Susan gets.

It was only recently that another pretty redhead, Piper Laurie, went into court to collect $7,850 worth of United States savings bonds which had been impounded for her under a minor’s contract since she started acting at the age of eighteen. Newspapermen covering the event asked her why she was still an eligible bachelor girl at twenty-three. Her answer was: “I haven’t found the right man.”

There it was again, the same complaint. And there have been quite a few men in Piper’s life, too. I think she might have married the late producer Leonard Goldstein, her close friend of many years, if he hadn’t been more than twice her age. He was kind, considerate, influential in the business of making pictures, understanding her needs and ambitions and a big help to her career.

A man who is still in the running is G. David Schine, the wealthy heir to the numerous Schine-owned hotels. “But I’m in Hollywood,” Piper says, “and even when David gets out of the service, his work will keep him in the East most of the time. It’s difficult enough to be separated when you’re just going together, but it’s impossible when you’re married.”

Piper had a short-lived romance with accordionist Dick Contino, but religious differences spelled doom for this almost before it started. Her fling with dancer Gere Nelson ended when he was suddenly signed for a picture in London and had to leave her. It may be resumed, but I doubt it.

No need to ask Columbia’s sensational new answer to everything, Kim Novak, what kind of man she likes. It’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s seen them together—and they’re inseparable when he’s in Hollywood—that wealthy theatre-owner Mac Krim is the answer to the prayers Kim admits she says every night before retiring.

He’s dark, good-looking, thoughtful and affectionate. When Kim was doing a personal-appearance tour, she visited one of Mac’s Detroit theatres and found proof of his affection on the marquee: “Welcome, Kim Novak.” She replied with another set of big neon letters: “Miss you, Mac.”

What Kim wants in a man, Mac has. Although she doesn’t mention his name when she discusses her reactions to the opposite sex, they add up to a pretty fair description of Mac. “I like a man with a sense of humor, who understands me. But he must be intelligent, not a slap-happy-go-lucky character who puts on an act for my benefit or laughs uproariously at anything I say that’s funny. Besides, I don’t often say anything that funny.”

Kim has little to add on the subject except to murmur dreamily: “I want a home and three children, and a woman can’t have either without a husband.”

There’s the cue you’ve been waiting for, Mac.

Rita Moreno, 20th Century-Fox’s bundle of spice, insists that she is the exception to the rule, because she has no list of qualities she’s looking for in a man. “When I see him, I’ll know it. He’ll bowl me over.”

Rita claims that she usually goes for the fellow who isn’t any good for her. It’s safe to say, though, that the man she marries had better like music, because that’s her passion. As you may know, Rita had one torrid romance with a musician, Leslie Caron’s ex-husband, Geordie Hormel. And she’s dated Marlon Brando, saying me admiringly that he plays the wildest set of bongo drums this side of Africa—or wherever they originated.

She and Jeff Hunter dated while they appeared in a picture together, but at the moment she has no boy friend. Asked why, she replied: “I don’t want to date just for the sake of getting around. I don’t say it has to lead to marriage, but it has to be something special in the romance department.” Then she added, as they all seem to do, “But I am looking forward to getting married.” 

Rita’s predecessor in the affections of Hormel, the gamin like Leslie Caron, is French from her cute coif to her twinkling toes, so she wants a French-style husband, though he may be any nationality. “He has to be my boss,” Leslie told an intimate. “I’ll fight him for it, but I’l love him for it, too. Ballet dancers are a tribe apart—gypsies—who work and think like no other performers in show business, and not Tooth he’ll have to understand and accept this, yet never let me run him. He’ll have to be practical with money and with his emotions, because I am very emotional and need a steadying influence.”

Charlotte Austin, too, needs a man who won’t be baffled by the whimsies of show business. For her, it’s home grounds; her dad is Gene Austin of “My Blue Heaven” fame, once among the most popular of singing stars. She has no fireworks temperament to be soothed: she’s simply looking for a husband who’ll get as much wholehearted fun out of life as she does.

Mona Freeman isn’t very talkative about what she admires most in men, and that’s one of the chief reasons why she gets along so well with her dates. She knows gentlemen blow their tops if the girls they date discuss them for print, so Mona doesn’t.

But if you want to know what kind of man Mona would want as a husband, he’s got to be easygoing, fun to be with, and never take himself seriously.

It isn’t because offers haven’t been forthcoming that Lori Nelson is still listed as “blonde, attractive, over twenty-one and single.”

“Sure, I want to get married,” Lori told me frankly. “But I’ve never been positive that this was it with any of the men I’ve dated. You don’t shop for a husband as you would for an automobile, unless you believe in a new model every year, and I don’t.

It’s difficult to put into words what I see in my dreams,” she continued. “His looks won’t matter, but I would like him to be tall. He should know what he wants to do and at least have started doing it. I love to be with lots of people, and I hope he will, too. When you come right down to it, I guess I want a husband who’ll love me and take care of me all our life together—but then that’s what every girl wants, isn’t it?

Yes, Lori, that’s what every girl wants.

THE END 

—BY SHEILAH GRAHAM

 

It is a quote. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE OCTOBER 1955