Salt Water Dillies

A butterfly with too much flitting to do ceases to believe he is a butterfly. That’s what happens now and then to movie stars. It’s a butterfly’s life but they do get fed up with endless memorizing of dialogue, endless terrific love scenes with people they don’t know very well, and equally endless nights of dressed-up premieres and fancy parties at nightclubs.

A MODERN SCREEN editor fell to talking with old friend Scott Brady about this situation. Said old friend Scott, restlessly, “I’d like to do something different, meet some new people.”

“I think,” the editor said, “I have an idea. You are always beefing that we magazine people put too much emphasis on the glamorous side of life in Hollywood and that we don’t give enough of a break to the exciting young newcomers. Why don’t we kill two birds with one rock? We’ll let you cook the spaghetti dinner you’re always bragging about and we’ll let you introduce some youngsters who are going to be the big stars of tomorrow. What do you say?”

“Well, golly,” was the first thing Scott said. “This is the millenium or whatever you call small miracles. I accept with pleasure.”

The next afternoon Mr. Brady, whose arrival and departure time at gatherings usually is highly indefinite, slid his big convertible to a stop outside May (The Caine Mutiny) Wynn’s neat little Malibu Beach home at two-thirty—a half hour before he was expected. He unloaded the precious ingredients for his spaghetti dinner and perched them on the back doorstep along with himself.

The sea gulls may have had the impression that this man was talking to himself. And he was. He was making a mental check of his supplies against his simple, perfect menu, to wit:

SPAGHETTI

with meat sauce and grated

Parmesan cheese

GARLIC BREAD

OLIVES AND CELERY

TOSSED GREEN SALAD

DESSERT

Large slices of chilled fresh pineapple served on long lollipop sticks

COFFEE

(served on the beach, hot and strong)

By the time the gang arrived, the impatient Mr. Brady had pulled a screen off a rear window to make his own entrance. Miss Wynn, jumping out of her own convertible, said to him: “If I didn’t suspect that you’re Scott Brady, I’d blow a whistle and have the Malibu gendarmes toss you in the local jug.”

“That,” said Mr. Brady, pulling one long leg from inside the window, “will not be necessary, Miss Wynn, and how do you do?”

With the aid of a key, May let them both in and in a moment they were joined by Bob Francis and Kim Novak, the voomy type blonde ex-model who began her career wearing one of Rita Hayworth’s slinky black dresses in The Killer Wore A Badge.

They were all friends in twenty seconds, and adjourned to the beach—a beautiful stretch of clean white sand, punctuated at water’s edge by rocks crawling with all kinds of tiny sea animals. They had a ball game and Bob and Scott proved that each could tote a pretty girl on his shoulders endlessly up and down the strand without getting tired.

At sundown Scott disappeared into the kitchen, emerged some time later pounding on a pail with a big spoon and yelling, “Come and get it!”

“You know,” Kim Novak admitted to Scott afterward, “after all I’ve read about you, if anyone had told me that you could whip up a dinner like that with your own two brutal hands, I’d say your press agent had gone crazy.”

“I’m a homey type!” Scott retorted. “Remind me to get your phone number.”

Then they all went outside to feed the sea gulls who live, they decided, much more comfortable lives than movie stars. When it grew dark they came inside and collapsed around the room.

“Nobody goes home,” Scott announced, “until you say enough about yourselves so that I can report it to a magazine called MODERN SCREEN, which in turn can tell your future public. Kim, you kick it off.”

“I feel a little silly,” Kim hesitated.

“Don’t be silly about being silly,” Scott advised.

“Well, all right. My name was Marilyn Novak and for professional reasons, there being another blonde Marilyn around, I changed it to Kim. I’m twenty-one years old and I’ve done quite a bit of modeling. My first big break came at the auto show when some kind photographers made a little fuss over me and a kind Hollywood agent named Louis Shurr became interested. He introduced me to talent director Max Arnow at Columbia Pictures and I got a screen test. My new pictures are Pushover and Phffft! and everything’s happened so fast this year I just can’t believe it. I can’t remember any more the time I was so discouraged.”

Scott interrupted, “Can you, just for me, remember your phone number?”

Kim: “I live at the Studio Club and the number’s in the book. But like I was saying, when I was young I was skinny and anemic.”

“Wow,” exclaimed Bob Francis. “Look now.”

“Stop interrupting,” Kim shushed. “I was too skinny, and the doctor put me on an endless fattening diet. I had such a terrible inferiority complex that he prescribed little theatre work. I was terrible, I know, but gradually I gained confidence and experience and finally landed a radio show job with Calling All Girls. In between all that I ran an elevator, clerked in a department store, and for a while I was a dentist’s receptionist.”

“Lucky dentist,” Scott suggested, and before Kim could bat him down, he turned to May Wynn. “It’s your turn now—and don’t spare the details.”

Said May: “It’s easier when someone else starts it off. My family was theatrical so I just naturally gravitated toward show business. First, though, I think any girl, whether her family is theatrical or not, should have experience in other fields. So I was a clerk in a real estate office. Then after a while I got a job at La Guardia field as a page girl. Then when I was seventeen I modeled a bit before I got a job as a chorus girl in the line at the Copacabana. I danced there for two and a half years before I finally got a spot of my own as a singer and dancer. My name was Donna Lee Hickey then, and I thought I was really on the way when I signed a 20th Century-Fox contract. It didn’t work out, though, and,now I know that whenever your boss wants to let you go it’s usually the best thing that could happen to you, even though it doesn’t seem like it at the time. On a hunch, I took the name of the role I play in The Caine Mutiny—May Wynn—and that’s me up to now. You turn, Bob. And don’t forget to tell them about your engagement.”

Bob: “Oh no! I’m not saying a thing. I’ve just been interviewed by MODERN SCREEN. Let’s make Scott Brady talk about himself.”

Scott: “Not a chance. I’ve been interviewed so many times that any fan who can’t recite my life story backward can go sit in a corner.”

The girls were burned up (they said) because the men had made them do all the talking, so they let Scott and Bob wash the dishes.

“I got to warn you,” Scott growled at Kim, “if some day we grow up and get married, I cook like a fiend, but I do not wash!”

The time was late, so fe party broke up because they were all acting type people and had six A.M. studio calls. Let it be said, however, that this is not the end. Fast friendships were formed at this casual Hollywood party. Three future stars made their debut through the courtesy of Scott Brady and MODERN SCREEN. Wish them luck!

There’s news of a romance brewing between Kim Novak and Scott Brady and if you ask Scott, it wouldn’t be a bad idea. He’s busy right now finishing a picture called The Law vs. Billy The Kid, but after that, who knows?

THE END

—BY LOUELLA PARSONS

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE AUGUST 1954