The Best Days Of Their Lives—Russ Tamblyn & Venetia Stevenson

It was after a premiere and the hour was late. Mr. and Mrs. Russell Irving Tamblyn turned the key to their apartment—and sank down on the long, curving sofa to post-mortem the evening. They’d teamed up that night with Tab Hunter and his date, cute Lili Gentle, a Fox starlet just sixteen years old. 

After Russ had yanked loose his tie and started to spin a particularly sentimental platter of theirs called, “Please Don’t Leave Me,” Venetia spoke.

“She’s so pretty,” she murmured, “and so very, very young. Sixteen! Gee,” stated Mrs. T. reflectively, “I can remember when I was sixteen.”

“No kidding!” teased Russ. “Can you really?”

His bride’s blue eyes regarded him gravely. “Yes,” she sighed. “It’s a wonderful age.”

“You know what?” Russ broke up the reverie—he thought. “I’m sleepy.” He yawned and padded into his bathroom to scrub his teeth. After a minute he heard Venetia enter hers. She seemed to stay a long time. When she came out Russ took one look and bolted up from his pillow as if a wasp had drilled him.

A mess of white goo covered his bride’s face like marshmallow whip. Through the zombie mask she cracked a sheepish smile.

“It’s a miracle night cream,” she informed him. “I saw it on TV. It takes ten years off your age.”

“Ten years? Holy cow!” yelped Russ. “Don’t tell me I’m going to be married to a girl eight years old!”

Now, of course Venetia Stevenson Tamblyn, who was just seventeen when Russ took her to wife, and turned eighteen a month later, needs to shed years like she needs a shawl and a wheel chair. So the result was that finally she towelled off the wonder pack and they both laughed themselves to sleep.

But from that little domestic scene, which took place only a few nights ago in the Tamblyn’s West Hollywood apartment (an apartment appropriately named “Desiree”), you might reasonably deduce that for Venetia and Russ the honeymoon is over. When a blushing bride, who still occasionally thinks “Mrs. Tamblyn” refers to Rusty’s mother, starts fretting about her advancing years—even if it adds up to absurdity—well, things have changed.

Russ and Venetia still wake each other each morning with “Happy Daily Anniversary, darling.” But the golden alchemy of marriage is indeed already taking place— and they couldn’t be happier about that. It’s a fabulous time of unending surprises, intimate revelations and glorious promise. It’s a constructive time, too—dedicated to falling in step, further in love, and to building one life for two in harmony. It beats a honeymoon all to pieces.

It’s been that way ever since one night last spring, when two sleepy people climbed a flight of steps, stopped, turned right, looked at each other and heaved grateful sighs. Russ fumbled for the key. They were out of words. The honeymoon was over. They had seen America from South Dakota to New York to Boston—and it had been fun—but hectic. The plane bringing them home to Hollywood had been late and the ride bumpy. No door ever looked so good. When it swung open and Russ started to lift in the luggage, Venetia touched his arm.

“Rusty—darling—haven’t you forgotten something?”

“Don’t think so,” he mumbled sleepily, looking around. “Bags are all here . . .”

“I don’t mean that. But—well, aren’t you going to carry me over the threshold?”

“Honey . . . !” He swooped her up, took three steps into the living room, collapsed—and fell flat on his face!

They just stayed there for awhile, on the floor, laughing hysterically at that crazy homecoming. Then Russ noticed something shiny in Venetia’s eyes. He scrambled to her side and circled her in his arms. “You’re crying,” he said. “Hurt?”

“I do that sometimes,” she told him. “No, I’m not hurt. Just happy. Oh, Rusty, we’re home! Even if we fell in, we’re here! It’s the best part of our honeymoon.”

And they both knew she was right. They know it more every day that passes. The only trouble is, there aren’t enough hours.

Love nest

As all newlyweds know, getting a home organized and operating is a full time job, especially when you start from scratch, which pretty accurately describes the housekeeping state of the homecoming Tamblyns. The apartment they tumbled happily into that night was no show place, nor even a comfortable love nest. Apartments are scarce in Hollywood, and Russ and Venetia had found theirs just three days before the wedding. They barely had time—with all the other nuptial arrangements—to make midnight hauls, lugging over their personal plunder and stacking it in the living room. It was still there—in grocery cartons, boxes, sacks, suitcases and trunks, pyramided halfway to the ceiling. At the glass wall facing the patio—and their curious neighbors—sagged a hastily hung bedsheet, with a hole in the middle. Only two dusty pieces of furniture graced the living room—a long, modern coffee table that Russ had laboriously made, and a TV set with the tag still on. In the kitchen were a refrigerator and stove that went with the lease. In the bedroom was a bed—period.

“Actually,” remembers Russ, “it looked like a warehouse. Only thing missing was cobwebs. But it looked like heaven to us.” By now it’s beginning to look the same to everyone else. But that has taken plenty of weighty decisions and work.

Venetia put out an S.O.S. for her decorator friend, Ann Sullivan, and they got busy. Gradually deep-pile carpets have covered the floors, gray-blue with drapes blending at the picture windows. By now a big beige modernistic sofa sweeps around one end of the room. In the dining area a handsome marble table swings out from a massive mirror with a new buffet behind it. The pink bedroom’s cozily complete and the den’s in working order. Every few days another new piece—chair, table or something—arrives. “We’re operating on the furniture-of-the-week-club plan,” grins Russ.

Wedding gifts have helped. Towels, linen, utility and party china, glassware to fill the shelves, pots and pans for the kitchen, a rotisserie, toaster, a clock radio by the bed and flatware—stainless steel, not sterling. “Golly,” whistles Tamblyn, “do you know what all this household stuff costs? We have to take it easy, man, or we’ll go broke!”

My wife, the actress

That’s a slight exaggeration, of course. Russ and Venetia have no money problems. Riding a string of hits, Russ makes a swell salary by now and last December 30, when he turned twenty-one, he collected enough bonds to paper one wall of the courthouse. And now Venetia has an income too. She got the good news about her RKO contract at the wedding reception. That was bitter-sweet tidings to Russ Tamblyn. At that point he nursed a weak frown at the idea of an actress for a bride.

But it was inevitable—and he knew it. Even before Russ slipped on the diamond, wherever he took beautiful Venetia talent scouts and movie moguls table-hopped over with, “You ought to be in pictures.” Although her mother, Anna Lee, was an actress and her dad a director, Venetia was hen only a dilettante model, with no burning desire to act. Frankly, Russ hoped to keep her that way. But finally her agent, Dick Clayton, levelled with him. “Look, Buster, you’re going to spend the rest of your life saying ‘No’ to this. You can’t stall it forever. Why not let her have a try and see how it goes?” Two weeks before they married she took a screen test—and got the verdict on their wedding day.

By now, Russ is not only reconciled, he’s glad. As for Venetia, she’s frank: “It has always been marriage first with me,” she says. “The career comes second and it always will.” Happily though, both Venetia and Russ have discovered that two careers, in their case, augur a better marriage. Not because of the extra check—although that’s not to be sneezed at by a couple just getting started—but because they know now that mutual interests make the best family bond.

Invincible Venetia

While plenty of people wagged, “too young to be steady” at Venetia and Russ when they got married, you don’t hear that refrain any more. Few couples in Hollywood or anywhere else have proved to be more sensible and serious about their life together. It shouldn’t really be such a surprise, and it isn’t to Russ. At sixteen, that “wonderful” age Venetia so recently sighed about, she was a Conover model in New York living in her own apartment and running her own affairs. In Hollywood one week after she was engaged to Russ, Venetia took over his apartment when he went on location. When he came back, all his chaotic financial affairs were straightened out with money in the bank that she’d saved for him. No wonder Russ thought he knew what he was getting. He hasn’t been disappointed.

Venetia’s Dresden doll beauty makes her seem fragile, helpless and so young that she can still stall off salesmen at her door with, “I’m sorry, but my mother’s not home.” But, as Russ points out, “Her middle name’s Invicta—and you know what that means.” If you don’t, it’s Latin for “invincible.” Russ finds that out whenever he tries to up his $30 a week spending allowance. But she’s not only invincible, she’s capable.

Both Venetia and Russ are still lost in that lovely state where even the tiniest misunderstanding is just a marvelous excuse for a make-up embrace. Their differences so far are only the normal ones any two people who start living together notice, unless they’re vegetables, sugar angels or identical twins.

“Oh, I may have a few faults as a husband—but they escape me right now,” Russ cracks glibly under pressure. “I leave food around the kitchen and that draws ants. But Venetia blocks them off with Scotch tape over the cracks where they come out. Then I’m a late sleeper and she’s up with the birds. Sometimes I bang the piano a little loud—and I might pull a magic trick at the wrong time or try a handstand too near the dishes. But I write her poems and I sing her pretty songs,” he grins. “Venetia? She’s perfect—except that she likes to tap dance while she’s cooking—and she’s a pretty tight girl with a buck.”

First fight

Actually, their only spat worth the name, Russ admits, was nobody’s fault but his own. One night when Venetia couldn’t make it he went off to Drama Class and afterwards went along with a guy he knows who pats a piano in a Valley night spot. Russ sat in at the keyboard while the pal beat the drums. Since rock-and-roll is like dope to Russ he got so lost in his work that he didn’t come home until the small hours. Venetia was wide awake, not a bit amused, and she bawled him out good. Then, like a wiser wife than she’s really had time to be, she did something constructive about it. Next day, while Russ was on the set, she rented a piano and had it rolled into the den. “If you want to play the piano all night, you can play it at home,” allowed the little woman.

That’s what Russ sometimes does, with socks crammed in the windows so the neighbors won’t howl. “I don’t mind how loud he plays it, but it’s always the same piece,” frets his wife. “I guess I like it, though. I like everything about Russ.”

There isn’t much doubt about that. In fact, so far Russ and Venetia have found each other’s company about all that’s needed. They both had lots of friends before they were married and still do. But somehow they don’t seem to get together as they used to. For six months before the wedding Venetia wore a ring and in that time the old gangs sort of drifted away, still on the chase, dancing and night-clubbing. That doesn’t send the Tamblyns any more. Sometimes they see Debbie and Eddie Fisher, when they’re on the loose or Pier and Vic Damone when he’s in town. Rafael Campos, Tab Hunter, Bob Six and a few more stags Russ knew in his bachelor days are likely to drop around any time. But as yet Russ and Venetia haven’t had time to collect a young married set in Hollywood. They’ve been too busy.

For instance, the call that broke up their honeymoon turned out to be not about Fastest Gun Alive but a new picture MGM had loaned him for while he was away, Young Guns at Allied Artist. Russ saw the script for the first time barely a week before he made it. But he’s quick that way and if there’s anything he can’t do in pictures nobody’s discovered it yet.

For Venetia it’s mostly lessons right now at RKO, whose bosses cryptically state they plan to build her into a “cross between Audrey Hepburn and Loretta Young,” whatever that might be. She reports there daily in her little MG, and tackles speech, dancing, voice and dramatics, while Russ rattles off in his ’54 Ford to his established interests at MGM. But you’d never know one was a seasoned pro of ten years’ standing and the other a green beginner at the game. Both team up afternoons and at night to take acting lessons, and it keeps them busy!

If they can sneak in a neighborhood movie, a plunge in the patio pool or a drive up the hills to look at the stars they figure they’re lucky. Actually, the way they’ve been going it’s a wonder they’ve had time to fry an egg. Sometimes, in fact, because Venetia’s plugging so hard to get started right now, Russ tells her, “I’ll cook dinner. You just lie in the tub and soak your feet.” And that’s all right with Venetia because she knows he likes to cook. Only she’s dreadfully certain she’s going to have hamburgers.

Life is roses

But the nice part is—the more they work and do things together—the happier they are. The reason: Russ and Venetia share a goal. It’s a rather general objective now—just to make a happy working team and to get ahead in their chosen professions. Later on there are a few specifics. They’re saving for a trip to Europe. For a while they had a lot picked out in Pacific Palisades to buy and build a house on. That project’s postponed because, as Venetia sensibly points out, “We want to find out what we like first. And the only way you can do that is by renting a while.” They do want children—but “not for a year”—they’ve agreed on that but not on what sex. Russ wants a boy, Venetia a girl. They figure they can compromise—maybe both—later on.

Meanwhile, life is opening out for Russ and Venetia Tamblyn like a garden of roses. When they look out the window there’s not a cloud in their sky.

“Problems?” puzzles Russ if you ask him. “There aren’t any. With Venetia how could I have problems? I married a girl they say—but I got me a wife. That’s the answer, man. The only problem I had was finding her.”

A few nights before Russ walked down the aisle in Palos Verdes, twenty-odd guys of the old gang he used to chase around with tossed him a bachelor dinner. They drank a bit of beer, traipsed off to La Zombo, a burl-ee-que in the Valley, smoked big black cigars and cheered lustily as the girls did their bumps and grinds.

“We had ourselves a time, all right,” Russ admits in a faraway voice. “It was just great. But that night it was, ‘Goodbye, boys, I’m through,’ for me!”

When he left they razzed him with the age-old nifties. “Eat a hearty breakfast before they come get you,” they yelled, as if he were set to shuffle down the last mile to the hot seat. And, “Why don’t you jump off Suicide Bridge and save yourself fifty years of toil and misery?” He gunned away grinning to a funereal chorus of, “P-o-o-r ol’ Russ. P-o-o-r guy!”

Well, it’s funny how things switch once youre married. When Russ Tamblyn sees those stags these days, what he thinks, but is usually too polite to say, is “Poor guys—they don’t know what they’re missing.”

THE END

—BY JACK WADE

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE AUGUST 1956