unhappy. I don't know a time when I wasn't happy. And I kind of liked moving around. Good training for show business, anyhow. Sometimes I lived with Mother, sometimes with Dad (James Kirkwood, star of stage and screen). Then I lived with my mother's sister for a while. For a time, I also stayed at a ranch in the San Joaquin Valley, and later went to boarding and prep school.
"In Mickey's case, it's different. He's always had a settled home, and the thought of anything happening to it disturbs him. A lot of things disturb him. He has problems. He gets all tied up in knots...Personally, I'm not like that. I kind of take things in stride. I'm pretty lucky, I guess. Money problems, career problems, sure - everybody has those. But I don't get involved in a lot of personal problems. Even my parents' divorce didn't present the usual problem. I'm fond of them both and never had occasion to take sides, because they remained good friends.
"I like playing Mickey," Jim says earnestly. "Just because I'm not too much like him doesn't mean I don't sympathize with his difficulties. I get real involved in them and kind of enjoy working them out. It's funny, too, how sometimes what happens on the show affects my real life.
"For instance, there's Mickey's relationship with Bonnie. When she first appeared as a roomer, Mickey resented her as an intruder. He didn't think his mother needed to rent rooms, so he took out his peeve on poor Bonnie. But then, as he got to know her better, he began to like her. Then he fell in love with her. Now that she's disappeared, he's determined to find her again.
"Joan Lorring was playing Bonnie then," says Jim. "Mickey's attitude certainly must have affected me. Though I had known Joan before, I grew to like her more and more. We became the best of friends and even started dating.
"Then there's the business with smoking. When I started with the show, Mickey was nineteen, a clean-cut American boy. He didn't smoke. So, pretty soon, I got out of the habit of smoking. I quit for ten months. Then, one day, there was the line in the script: 'Mickey lights a cigarette.' My mother - I mean Mickey's mother - was surprised. How was it that I was smoking, she wanted to know. I answered off-handedly that I just thought I'd try it. Since then, I've been smoking again - the real me, that is - even though the script hasn't called for Mickey to smoke again. I get mixed up, sometimes."
Jim grins at the memory, then continues more seriously. "Even though I've never had a real home, I can understand how Mickey feels about his. Lately, I've had an awful yen to have a home of my own. I don't mean an apartment like this, but a house in the country - a nice old-fashioned house that looks as though people had a good time living in it. I want a place where I can entertain my friends, have them in for dinner or for a weekend. That's my idea of fun. Guess I'll have to hire a cook, cause I'm so darn good at it, myself."
At the suggestion that he might marry a good cook, Jim smiles. "I'm not ready for that yet," he insists. "I've got to be a lot more secure than I am now. I'm doing all right. I've been pretty lucky, working regularly ever since I got out of the Coast Guard. But I want lots of money. I don't mind admitting it. It may not be everything, but it sure helps a lot."
A suspiciously dreamy look comes into Jim's candid blue eyes as he muses: "You never can tell, though. Maybe, when I have my nest, I'll want someone there to share it with me. In the meanntime, I'm hoping Mother will want to live with me. She'd make a wonderful hostess - she's such a grand person. Only I'd better hurry up and get that house, or she might get married again before I find it."
Jim still doesn't admit that perhaps he might be the one to get married first. What with his six feet of mighty handsome maleness, his amiable disposition and clean, choir-boy look - that just begs to be mothered - it would be a rare female who could resist him. That he's reached twenty-six still unshackled by bonds of matrimony is something of a miracle. (And he comes of a family that goes in for many marriages - his mother three times, his father, four...which may account for Jim's shyness about taking the plunge himself.)
Another thing is that Jim is really wrapped up in his career. That is the most important thing in his life. Romance is secondary. It's another way in which Jim differs from Mickey.
"Mickey's the kind of guy who - if he's in love with a girl - forgets about everything else. He lets his work slip, he thinks about nothing but finding Bonnie. Maybe I've never been enough in love. Anyhow, I'd never let anything interfere with my work.
"I know how it is with Mickey. He's got a single-track mind, like mine, but his concentrates on love, mine on work. When I get an idea, I've got to carry it through. I can't think about anything else, and it affects everything I do. Just as it does with Mickey, when he's trying to locate Bonnie."
It took that kind of determination for Jim to get where he is. It wasn't easy, what with being separated from his mother by illness and the financial ups and downs that occur in most theatrical families. There were times when Jim had to dig in and help, like the time on the ranch when he did chores to pay for his keep. Not that he complains about it. It's just part of life, and an experience he enjoyed. He liked the rugged outdoor life, riding six miles on horseback to and from school, milking four cows every morning before breakfast.
While he was going to high and prep school he worked in summer stock, getting the training for the only career in which he was interested. Aside from that, he had no formal dramatic instruction. But the gift he inherited from his parents was sufficient to get the parts he went after. And his father's name and renown as an actor was certainly no drawback.
Moving around so much made Jim grow up fast. Although he looks no older than the twenty-year-old Mickey, he is far more mature than even his own twenty-six-years would imply. He has a keen sense of responsibility which shows up in his protective, big-brother attitude toward his mother, and in his ability to manage his affairs in an adult manner.
"It's a nuisance to look so young," he confesses. "I don't want to get typed as a juvenile. But, when I go after an older to grow up. I'd like to play light comedy parts, such as 'The Seven Year Itch,' but, as long as I have this baby face, I haven't a chance.
"Not that I don't like working on television! It's swell. I enjoy it a lot, and getting paid regularly takes a load off your mind. When you're playing in night clubs, you're forever having to audition for a new engagement, preparing new material, spending endless hours with your agent. That's why I gave up night clubs, at least for this year. Lee and I were going great with our comedy act (Kirkwood and Goodman). We played some good spots - the Ruban Bleu in New York, the Mocambo in Hollywood, the Embassy in London, and others - but you get kind of tired of hopping around, and you don't know how long your popularity will last.
"I wanted to branch out into something more solid in the dramatic line. Besides, I want some time to work on a play I'm writing. It's based on my mother's life, sort of, and I'm having a heck of a lot of fun writing it. I like to write short stories, too. I took a course at New York University last year."
Jim says he really has no time for hobbies, what with his acting and his writing - they're actually more like hobbies than work to him. He does enjoy golf and tennis, however, but finds it a little difficult to work in any games in the city. That's something he hopes to have when he gets that house in the country - or preferably at the seashore, where he can then look forward to the time when he will be able to afford a boat.
All this sounds very serious. Actually, Jim is fun-loving, with a pixiesh sense of humor and a sure comedy gift which made critics hail the Kirkwood-Goodman team as the most promising pair of funmakers since Martin and Lewis.
"I certainly get more fun out of life than poor Mickey does," he smiles. "Will I ever forget my first and last meeting with Anthony Eden? It seems funny now, but boy, was I embarrassed when it happened! I was staying overnight on a friend's estate in Newport. I was playing in stock there, and my friend insisted I be his guest. I'd come in late and parked my car outside the guest cottage where I was to sleep. I was suddenly awakened by the sound of a very familiar horn. I jumped out of bed and, being in a strange place, couldn't find my way out. When I finally groped my way out the door, I found my car, its horn going like a banshee, surrounded by a half-dozen armed guards who were trying desperately to shut the darn thing up.
"By that time, every light in the main house was ablaze. I knew Mr. Eden was a guest there, recuperating from an operation, and what he needed was rest. I'd tried to be so quiet getting into the place, and here was that horn making like an air raid siren. I don't know if Mr. Eden was disturbed by it - you couldn't tell from his manner the next day, when I was introduced to him...but then, he's a diplomat, so I'll probably never know.
"I've had a pack of fun in my life, and mean to go on having it. For one thing, I've a lot of friends. And that's most important to me."
There's evidence of many friendships in the apartment Jim occupies while waiting to find that dream house. It is filled with photographs of faces made familiar by theatrical publicity. In the bathroom of this third-floor Greenwich Village walk-up, there's a huge framed montage of dozens on dozens of heads of people Jim counts among his friends.
But most prominently displayed are pictures of his parents in various movie and stage roles and mementos of their theatrical pasts. In a place of honor on the mantel above the fireplace is a pair of boots Jim's mother wore in one of her pictures. They are now serving as bookends.
This comfortable and amazingly neat (for bachelor quarters) apartment speaks eloquently of someone who has a rich and varied life, who has a feeling for a "home." There's nothing of that slap-dash, transient look which marks the place where a man lives alone.
It's clear that Jim is one person who should have a real home. And also obvious why he understands and can project Mickey's own fear of losing the home he loves, his fight to protect it from "invasion" by anyone who hopes to marry Helen Emerson.
That Jim can offer plans for his real-life mother simply proves how much he sympathizes with Mickey's dilemma - and how deeply he himself believes in home and marriage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCLz3hc2GX0&feature=autoplay&list=ULpncYtnTX1xg&playnext=1