DRW50

I hadn't heard this, so thanks for telling us. What was the blind item? I have a hard time with Beth Ehlers, as she was a major reason I got hooked on GL. I really wasn't fond of what she became in her last decade on GL. Then there were those comments about JR Martinez I'd rather forget.

happened at the office today. He wanted someone he could love as an equal - a partner he could team up with in the Battle of Manhattan. "Together," Lynne explains, "we do the best we can. It isn't he alone doing the best he can, while I just do the housework. It's both of us. We each have our own existence, and each respects the other's privacy. This doesn't mean that we're less in love. It merely means that we don't intend to engulf each other." If this sounds suspiciously like living apart, a visit to the Taylors in their comfortable Manhattan apartment offers quick reassurance. Obviously, no two people ever got more enjoyment out of "living apart" - together. Although you've come to get Lynne's story - and although Tom withdraws to a far corner of the living room determined not to interfere - it isn't possible. They're so much a team, you can't talk to one without involving the other. And Lynne's story wouldn't be complete, not without Tim's story, too... "I'm a native New Yorker," Lynne starts out, waiting for the customary exclamation of surprise. It doesn't come. "But I was born right here in New York," she continues, and looks to Tim for help. And that's how the other half of the team gets involved. He knows, from his own experience, that a surprisingly large percentage of actors were born "right here in New York," and each thinks it's unusual. And so, like a lot of other actresses, Lynne was born in New York City. Her father, Louis L. Rogers, is a stock broker. She studied art at the High School of Music and Art, developing a talent which was to come in handy for her role as the artist in The Guiding Light. "When the script called for Dick Grant to sit for his portrait," she recalls, "everyone was surprised that I could actually fill in the canvas myself." At Queens College, however, the artist decided to become an actress. She majored in English, speech and dramatics, doing stock at the Provincetown Playhouse. She also managed to graduate magna cum laude. At Columbia University, Lynne started to work for her master's degree in Drama and Comparative Dramatic Literature. Transferring to the Yale Drama School, she was about to return for the second year when she landed the role of Myriam in Light of the World, based on the New Testament. "After a year, the show was replaced by a quiz program," Lynne says it with a dead-pan expression - it's th e only comment she can think of. "That was 1950," she remembers. "Then CBS assigned me to be an actress-at-large on the Stork Club show. I was to be there just in case - you know, in case I were needed or some of the guests didn't show up." A year later, CBS hired Tim to be a writer on the same show. "They wanted me," he says, "it would be a short job - only three or four weeks. I was to do a preliminary interview of the guests, then draw up a list of ten questions. These were copied on little pieces of paper and pasted to coffee pots for Sherman Billingsley to read off." And that's where they met - in the famed Cub Room of the Stork Club. Not the real Cub Room, of course, but the television studio designed to look like it. "We said hello," Lynne recalls. "Both of us were left-handed - so there we were, with things in common." That was the start. They had time to discover even more things in common, for Tim lasted thirteen weeks - a record for writers on the show. Then Igor Cassini, who conducts a similar television program, hired Tim to be a writer for him. Tim, in turn, hired Lynne to be "his Girl Friday." They worked together until the summer, when Cassini and Tim hied themselves to Europe to interview assorted celebrities. In a way, Lynne didn't mind. Proximity had made them very close, but Tim seemed shy of marriage. She knew that the cure was to "give him a lot of freedom, make him miss you." It worked, too. Tim now confesses that he "wrote more to her" than he ever wrote for the show. Professionally, however, that summer was "a bleak period" for Lynne. But then, after weeks of discouragement and making the rounds, it happened. In this case, because Kermit Bloomgarden was the producer, Lynne thought she was trying out for a role in his stag production of "Autumn Garden." Instead, she found that she was auditioning for the road company of "Death of a Salesman." But that was the same afternoon Tim's boat arrived from Europe. He was "really mad" when Lynne wasn't at the dock to meet him. They got together, however. Explanations were made. And they had a proper reunion. But they also had prolonged farewell. Lynne's contract called for one year with "Death of a Salesman." By the time Lynne returned from her tour, Tim was ready with his proposal. Only they couldn't get married. They didn't have an apartment. And that's how they happened to have a June wedding. It wasn't sentiment. Once again, it was circumstance. It took them six months to find a place to live. As it turned out, however, it was well worth the wait. Their apartment is only two-and-a-half rooms, but that's more than most New Yorkers dare hope for of heaven on earth. It's in an old, white brownstone off the lower part of Fifth Avenue. The rooms are enormous, with twelve-foot-high ceilings. There are fireplaces in both the living room and bedroom. And what's more - "Eugene O'Neill once lived here." The wedding should have been romantic. They drove out to Greenwich, Connecticut, a lovely town where Tim had once worked as a reporter. But the Justice of the Peace was nervous. He had only married three couples before. Well, the bride and groom were nervous, too. They had never been married before at all. Here Lynne was, promoting to "honor and obey" - as though her life were her own to do with as she pleased. She was an actress. It was enough being at the beck and call of producers without having a husband to obey as well. How could she possible handle two careers? And Tim, reaching in his pocket for the wedding ring, felt that he was giving up his freedom forever. With this ring, he would be chained to those two-and-a-half rooms - in sickness and in health, till death do us part. It wasn't death that parted them. Once again, it was circumstance. They were married on June 7,1953. On June 30th, Lynne had to leave for the Lakeside Theater in Putnam, Connecticut, where she had a ten-week contract. The Taylors can tell the story now, laughing at their early doubts. Lynne has proven she can handle two careers with equal success - both as Lynne Rogers on television and as Mrs. Tim Taylor in private life. As for Tim, sitting beside her on the sofa- he's been in those same two=and-a-half rooms for three years now, without once looking for the nearest exit. "And we owe it all to that ten-week separation," Lynne says. "It was the best thing that could have happened to us." It gave us time to think things over," Tim adds. "I know I'd be there in the apartment. I'd be conscious of things - a perfume bottle, a summer dress among the clothes in the closet - things I took for granted. Then, all of a sudden, I'd realize: Someone else lives here, too." Lynne describes these ten weeks as "sort of a limbo period." It gave her a chance to "go into marriage kind of gradually." For example, she suddenly realized that a married woman doesn't go out with other men. She wasn't forbidden to do so. It just came over her that she didn't want to. It had more meaning, she found, seeing the one man she was married to rather than the many men who were just friends. It was the same with cooking. Suddenly, she realized that she wanted to cook for Tim. She started collecting cook books. "And once she made her mind up to it," Tim admits, "she became good at it." As a team, they also found that they could help each other. Tim, who periodically makes a round of the night clubs for his weekly column, declares that Lynne is "better than a tape recorder." Tim, in turn, helps Lynne by cueing her in her parts. But, more important, he has built up her self-confidence. It seems incredible that anyone as pretty as Lynne, from insecurity. Her face is heart-shaped, with the look of a happy Valentine. Her auburn hair fairly cries out for color television. But the forehead! It's dangerously high for an ingenue. Not that being bright is any handicap for an actress, but Lynne looks every bit as intelligent as she is. Tim has made her understand that youth alone has been her handicap. She has a poise and intelligence far beyond her years. Just right for a leading lady, but not for an ingenue. And one day, Tim predicts, Lynne will graduate into stardom. A glance at the record proves that Tim is right. In her five seasons of stock, Lynne has played such unusual roles as the heroines in "Bell, Book and Candle," "A Streetcar Named Desire, "Dark of the Moon," and "The Sea Gull." And last January, when she became Marie Wallace on The Guiding Light, she was taking on the difficult role of a young artist who suddenly found herself going blind. But, most of all, they have helped each other by "just being there." "Home," says Tim, "is where you can be who you are." But it's one thing being yourself, it's quite another being by yourself. It's nice to have someone to make plans with. Speaking of plans, Lynne says: "We'd like to go to Europe and we'd like to have a family." It's also nice to have someone to play chess with. And, when you glance at the chess set, sitting on top of a handsome mosaic table, Lynne suddenly laughs. That table was almost the occasion of their one and only fight. "That's my contribution to the do-it-yourself craze," Lynne explains. "I made it all myself, and gave it to Tim last Christmas as a present, I did all the work at a friend's house. Every day, I'd be out for a couple of hours, trying to get it done in time. And then I got sore. He wasn't the least bit concerned about where I was disappearing every day. Not once did he ask me where I'd been!" But Tim was merely sticking to the team rule, to respect each other's privacy. As Lynne now understands: "This doesn't mean that we're less in love." It has made them more in love than ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2_bbZ9ui2E

August 1956 TV Radio Mirror.

Thanks for reading. What were his Doctors stories exactly?

I think one of the reasons I liked Ellie is because...well, I'm not really sure why I liked her at the time. When I watch now, although I prefer Iva, I like that Renee Props plays so much of Ellie's quiet pain and unease. She added a lot to what were very predictable stories like the "triangle" with Craig and Sierra. What I do wonder about is, long-term, if she really fit into the Snyder family. I know she was close to Caleb but other than that it seemed like they didn't develop these angles. I also wonder if they may have been better off not keeping Ellie/Kirk as a couple. I don't know. They don't ever seem overly happy for a fun-loving couple, with some exceptions, like their wedding. Kirk/Iva seemed genuinely happier. The abortion story is one I wish had gone on a little longer, but most of all I wish she would have told the family it wasn't their concern. Then again maybe she gave a big lecture to Iva about the Aaron lie, so she would be a hypocrite if she told people to butt out.

Will Rick Perry be telling us that the Statue of Liberty is a "demonic idol"? This is one of the big speakers lined up for his upcoming event. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/rick-perry-ally-condemns-demonic-lady-liberty-as-false-goddess.php?ref=fpb

Those outfits are so tacky. They look like they are from one of those late night spoof movies on Skinemax, like Bikini Basketball Housewives. The woman on the left even has that look on her face, "Why the hell am I wearing this?"

own memory, before we started. And it's an ongoing thing. We list when somebody has a terrific fight with someone else, so their relationship changes. We have relationship charts and all kinds of different methods of keeping track of this and inspiring new stories. We're also in the process of making a whole map of Madison so we will know how far everyone is from everyone else. If you know this and it doesn't change, then it's wonderful because you know Matt driving from X to Y will pass such and such a scene. We'll also have a floor plan of the hospital. Many times you come on a show, a medical show or something, and they don't know how many beds are in the hospital, they don't know how many staff are in the hospital, and that doesn't get reality, it doesn't ring true. If people pass in a corridor, the actors and the directors, everyone should know where they came from, where they're going and what their environment is. Q: I've always wanted to know that - where the third floor desk is in relation to the lab, etc. A: Well, we want to work all those things out. Q: I'd like to know the mechanics of this thing. How does it work? A: OK. We're plotting it in five day segments, Monday through Friday air dates. Essentially, there are 25 scenes a week. I've got four colors for four storylines. Yellow is the Billy/Greta storyline and the four parents; red is Mike, Colin, MJ and Sara; blue is Nola, Mona, Jason and Doreen; and the green is Barney, Sweeney, and Luke and that group. So this is basically how I divide it so I'm sure when I've finished these fancy magnetic boards each week, I can see the colors are well intermingled and that all the viewers can watch enough of their own favorite storyline each week. They would be cheated not to see their own favorite characters, so that's my way of being sure I get a good mix. Q: Have you brought in new storylines? A: Yes. Q: And did you wrap up some old ones really quickly to get rid of them? A: Well, when I came on, there was some thought that Greta would try to kill herself and the baby would be poisoned and die early in the pregnancy, but I just thought this teenage pregnancy story was so important. 600,000 teenagers this year are having babies and more than half of them are keeping their babies. It was a good summer story, an important summer stor. So that was one of my early choices, to keep that story going because it is so basic and vital. Q: Can we give the viewers anything to look forward to without getting too specific? Like, who has big storylines coming up? A: Well, let's say that I want to hear from people, I want to hear from viewers what characters they think should have big stories. I really want more mail. I'd like to know what they'd like more of, but I don't want people to write and suggest storylines because those I cannot read. People have wonderful ideas and it hurts me that I can't respond to them. But I would like to know who they like, who they don't like - that's what I want to know. Q: What was their reaction? A: They were just blown away! And then I've been trying to have lunch or a drink with each actor, or they come to the office and we talk about their characters. I learn things from them. Jim Pritchett is a wealth of information, and Lydia's been on the show so long, and David is wonderful, just wonderfully helpful. They all are. And it's wonderful to go into the studio and have people like the wardrobe ladies and the stagehands come over and say the show hasn't been this exciting in years and years, and now they don't mind working harder. Q: It used to be one of the best daytime shows years ago. A: And it's going to be one of the best again! We're gonna get there and we're going to get there quickly. The audio-man went in to see our producer recently and said he wanted to come in earlier in the mornings because the show was more exciting and challenging to do. That's what's pleasing me. And that's what I'm talking about when I say involve everyone in the fantasy. We'll have a map in living color available so the actors and the stagehands and everybody can enter Madison and see what it's like, and can see what the hospital's like. That's what makes it fun instead of work. The truer you can make it to life, the more exciting it is. And I want all the actors to know their character's history, to know where they came from, know a lot about it. We'll be doing a lot more hospital, authentic stories. We are spending a great deal of time in research. My assistant, Meg Blackstone, is spending an enormous amount of time and she's going straight to the top. When we need information on cardiac surgery, we go to a top cardiac surgeon. We're determined to make it all totally authentic. Q: I notice you have every actor's photograph pinned to the drape across from your desk - why is that? A: So that when I speak in their voice, I can look in their face and say it as they would say it. I need the actors' pictures up. Q: How did you get into writing soaps? A: Because I was a stage mother, a captive of control rooms for about five years, so I figured I should use what I knew about soaps with what I knew about writing - I'd written a book. Q: That's right - your children were in soaps. For those viewers who remember them, can you update us on them? A: Sure. Cindy, who was on "Love of Life," just did "Jaws II." She also has a series coming up on CBS called "Married," in which her father, Stanley Grover, will be playing her father-in-law. Stephen, who was the little boy Lamont on "The Best of Everything" years ago is going to Stamford. He played John Quincy Adams in the "Adams Chronicles." And Jamie, who was on "Secret Storm" for two years as Clay Stephens, is 12. He's very busy with girlfriends and is going into 8th grade. And I have a book out called Looking Terrific, about the language of clothing. It was in Family Circle in September and was also a Literary Guild alternate selection. It's a fun book on the message you give with what you wear. That's a co-authorship with Emily Cho who is the original fashion image consultant. She goes into people's closest and weeds out what they've got and pre-shops for them, so it was a wonderfully fun book to write. I learned a lot about clothing. Q: Anything you'd like to get across to viewers, apart from the fact you'd like more mail? A: Yes. Tell your friends that "The Doctors" is changing! Tell people they can go back to "The Doctors" and watch it lie they used to. It's like an old friend that may have gone away for a while, but it is coming back and coming back strong! - Gloria Paternostro

chores. Week nights, she usually has a script to learn for the next day's program. Ben cueing her when he has time. Whenever they can find a really free evening, they sandwich in theater or opera in New York, but this necessarily involves planning ahead, in a household where everybody is so busy and there are commuting schedules to be consulted. In their own neighborhood, everybody takes Flo's job for granted, but once in a while someone will tell her that Ben has been bragging about his wife's talent - "although, husband-like, he never toots my horn much when I'm around!" Flo was a stage actress, sharing an apartment with another young career girl, when she met Ben. Her roommate then mentioned an old beau, a Yale man who was "a marvelous musician," and one day she came home with Ben in tow. Flora recalls: "I thought, How Nice! She's seeing him again. But she went off to Florida, saying I should go dancing with Ben in her absence. We both love to dance, so that wasn't difficult to take. Before we knew it, we were going together and enjoying each other's company more than anyone else's, although we didn't marry until about three years later. My former apartment mate, still one of my best friends, met someone she fell deeply in love with and is now a wife and mother. "It was understood, when Ben and I got married, that I had a career I wanted to continue. But I knew then that, if it ever interfered with my home life, I would drop it quickly. It never has. Fortunately, although I have taken time out to have two children, we have had no severe illnesses or other major crises, and neither Ben nor I have ever felt my working was harmful to our family life. Like other mothers who are away from home part-time, I make a special effort to be with the children during every free hour. I am back at the house by three each afternoon, when Creel gets up from her nap, and am home weekends. What's more, I am completely contented to stay at home evenings - to be with the children and to study my script after they are in bed. I feel I am eating my cake and having it, too - trite as this may sound - by combining such a satisfying family life with an artistic career. For Flora Campbell, the dream began when she was a little girl, growing up in Oklahoma. She was born in the little town of Nowata, which her great-uncle helped to found. When she was ten, her family moved to Bartlesville, where she finished high school, later going on to Oklahoma City. At seventeen, she persuaded her father to let her go to Chicago for a year, to study the violin at the famous Chicago Musical College. She went home again in the summer and, even though her mother was ill and in a hospital, she insisted that Flora continue her musical education and take a regular college course, in addition. So, the next year, Flora began to divide her time between academic studies at the University of Chicago and her musical studies. Until something happened to change her course. "I had come to two conclusions, that first year when I was in Chicago alone," she says. "One was that I missed my twin sister, Dorothy." (There is another sister, Beth, three years older, and a younger brother, Jack.) "The older conclusion was that there were many student violinists at the College who were much more talented and much more promising than I. "My twin wasn't musical, but she had been the one to go in for high school dramatics and she was keen on going ahead with a career. Mother sympathized with our ambitions and wanted us to be together, so the folks sent us both back to Chicago, that second ear. We shared an apartment with another aspiring actresses, and gradually I began to think that theirs was the more interesting life. I listened when they studied their roles at home, and I suppose it was inevitable that I should decide to become an actress, too. So I enrolled in the Goodman School of the Theater." After a couple of months, however, discontent set in. Flo found that the one leading role she got would be the last for the year, each first-year student having a chance at just one during the season. When she confided her dissatisfaction to a friend her hurry to get ahead and be a Broadway star - the friend had just the right solution. She herself had been in a Broadway show and had loved tit and filled Flo's head with stories of New York and the theater, and now she produced a clipping from a New York newspaper to the effect tat Eva LeGallienne was holding auditions for a student group which would form a part of her Civic Repertory Theater. Out of fifteen hundred, Flora became one of the fifty to be chosen. "Only because no experience was required, only some promise," she says. It was here she learned the fundamentals of acting, and such essential things as make-up and stage deportment. She had speech lessons and lessons in dancing. She played "walk-ons" and tiny parts, and she learned much about the traditions of the theater, the hard work demanded of any successful actress, the humility with which each small success must be accepted. Miss LeGallienne and her excellent repertory company inspired Flora with a deep love of the theater: "It was the greatest good luck for me. Stimulating. Wonderful. The ideal first year for any young actress." Before the LeGallienne season started, Flo and Dorothy determined they would get some work in summer theater, so they made the rounds together. One of the places they aimed for was the Cape Playhouse, at Dennis on Cape Cod, but at first they were told that only experienced people could be used. They had to admit they had no real experience - marveling a little that their talent didn't stick out all over them and make such mundane qualifications unnecessary! As they were leaving the casting office, the manager seemed to relent and suggested he would make an exception and let them come as "paying apprentices." A little haughtily, they said they expected to be paid, and swept out. But he came after them again. "You two seem so fresh out of Oklahoma, and yet so sure of yourselves, maybe we can use you, anyhow. You can come with the company, without paying." They grabbed at the chance. It was a good summer. Flo worked unusually hard, and did so well that she was asked back the next summer, and the next and the next, as company ingenue. She played with some of the greatest names in the theater, Ethel Barrymore, Ruth Gordon, and Humphrey Bogart. By this time, her twin had married and was living in New York. This helped a lot, during the winters when Flo was pounding pavements and jobs were few. When she needed a good home-cooked meal, she could have one at Dottie's. "If you were really ambitious you got out and looked for a job, rain or shine, and sat in dingy outer offices for hours at a time lunching at drugstore counters on hot dogs and coffee." This is the way Flo sums up the next few winters, until finally she got a walk-on in "The Country Wife," and then her first real role in "Excursion," an artistic play which received fine notices but closed in three months. However, it did begin a period of fairly smooth sailing for Flo in Broadway plays, such as "Many Mansions" and "Angela is 22." About midway in her career as a stage actress, she married Ben. And, when Tommy came along she took a year off to play the role o f mother and housewife, until he was old enough to be left in competent hands. She did a few plays after that - "Glamour Preferred," which was a flop, "The Land Is Bright," which certainly didn't have much of a run, and "Foxhole in the Parlor," with Montgomery Clift. Her last play was "The Curious Savage," after Creel was born, but by this time she had discovered a medium called radio and another called television - in fact, she had played in one very early adaption of "Jane Eyre" on TV, 'way back in 1940 and in one of the first daytime dramas on television around the year 1948, called The Far Away Hill. By now her list of radio and television credits is long and distinguished - from the "nice women" roles in The Strange Romance of Evelyn Winters (radio) and the mother in A Date With Judy (TV) to fifteen appearances in Kraft television dramas, roles in The Web, Danger, Big Town, T-Men, Robert Montgomery Presents, and Studio One - and, before Valiant Lady, the starring role in a daytime drama called The Seeking Heart, in which she played Dr. Robin McKay. When she was first asked to play the "Valiant Lady" herself, she had some misgivings. "She sounded so 'noble' that I was afraid she wouldn't be a very interesting person. I was quite wrong about her. Helen Emerson is a warmhearted, delightful human being, a woman I admire and like. A believable person with a fine sense of humor, who makes mistakes as all of us do, tries to correct them as all of us try, and usually comes out on top. I think the world is filled with other women - and, men, too - who are like, Helen, trying to do the best they can." Sharing Helen Emerson's strong feeling about family ties, Flora Campbell finds her a sympathetic person to play. This feeling, fostered by having a family of her own, was bred in her during her Oklahoma childhood. Although her mother passed on some twenty years ago, she has never forgotten the brave woman who always had such great drive and ambition for her children. Flo says of her: "She went out to Oklahoma to teach school, and there she met my father. All her life she was interested in education. She was a Browning scholar, a bird lover who lectured on the subject in our home state and taught others to love them. Even her name was beautiful and unusual - Isis Justice Campbell." Now Flo's father has retired to Coffeyville, Kansas, to be close to some of his family - Flo's Aunt Rebecca, her Aunt Frank (for Frances), her Uncle Al and her cousins Bob and Bill Hill - all of whom live either in Coffeyville or the nearby town of La Fontaine. They see Valiant Lady on television and tell her it's like getting a letter from her. "It keeps us close," she says. This, again, is "eating her cake and having it, too." With Ben and Tommy and Creel by her side, with the rest of her family looking on as she plays that other lovely woman, Helen Emerson, Flora Campbell knows she's a lucky lady indeed.

Do you agree with those who feel they have ruined Paddy with his casual dismissal of Aaron? I didn't realize that my favorite from Hollyoaks, Joe, was the one who is playing the new vet. Some are saying he will be with Rhona. Others say he will be with Aaron. And I thought burning to death was a bad story

August 1955 Radio TV Mirror.

February 1979 Afternoon TV.

Yes but it's hard to develop wealth even with saving when the cost of living goes up without any real increase in wages, when jobs are increasingly scarce, when safety nets are cut. People just keep their heads above water, if they're lucky. I guess I just don't see why we are always talking about cutting spending and never about any incentive to grow. Surpluses are bad, tax increases are bad. Companies that ship jobs overseas are coddled by both parties. Companies give more and more work to less and less employees. People end up being screwed.

Yes but the more people save and save, the less money goes to develop anything. It's similar to the way that many people have been tightening their belts, because of the economy. If the government follows suit then it's a catch-22.

I never understood the assumptions a few years ago that the economy had to be improving, or the disdain heaped on any effort to grow the economy. Instead it is always just let's cut, and cut some more, because if we keep cutting, then everything will be great. Great for who? Billionaires, I guess. Even dollar stores are struggling. http://www.slate.com/id/2300828/

They all disowned Ellie? Even Seth? That sucks. It seems like the family was going in a more and more judgmental, cold direction. I wonder what Marland had planned for them if he'd lived. I think Rattray's colder demeanor cut through the Lily whining that I hated with Byrne, but by this time Lily had clearly become a plot device. Although honestly she always was a plot device. Heartbreaking work from Rex Smith and Mary Ellen Stuart here.

have come about in his life. Unexpectedly. In some cases, almost casually...Like the way he began to date his wife, Judith, although they had known each other for four years before he really noticed her....The way he broke into radio because a lovely young actress, Jan Miner, happened to hail his uncle's taxicab one morning, and they struck up a conversation...The way he began a writing career, along with his acting....All of them big, important things in his life, growing out of small incidents. Seeing Steve in his own living room - a pleasant harmony of greens and beige and tans and modern pieces - with Judy and their two boys, Eric and Peter, you sum him up as a handsome man, in his early thirties, tall (almost six feet), broad, athletic looking. A fellow who loves all active sports yet would be equally at home on a dance floor. His hair is black, his eyes hazel, with always a spark of humor. Judy Gethers has a twinkling look, too, though she's a non-professional - "and expects to stay that way," Steve comments, as if delighted that there is only one career to be coped with in the family. Judy is a graceful, compactly built brunette. The boys have her merry smile and their dad's charm - and their own personalities. Peter, who can hardly wait to be three this summer, is the family clown, with marvelous imagination. At the moment his great ambition is to be a monkey, rather than a policeman or fireman like some of his more prosaic young friends. The reason for this departure from conformity? "He wants a tail," Judy explains. "He's fascinated by the way monkeys can climb and hang by their tails." Peter admires cowboys, too, and bucking broncos, and things you can pound with and on, as an outlet for some of his bubbling energy. Eric has the humor that is a family trait, and a more serious side, as befits a fellow going going on ten years old. He's the reader, the writer of poetry (free verse and the rhyming kind, and both unusually expressive for his age). He goes to the public school near the huge apartment development in which they live, right in the heart of New York, built around lawns and playgrounds and curving walks. Eric is crazy about baseball and isn't sure at this point whether to become a ball player, a writer, or maybe something he hasn't even thought about yet. Steve himself always knew what he wanted to do, even at an early age, although the idea probably took definite shape when he played roles in school dramatic shows at New Utrecht High School (in Brooklyn, where he was born on June 8, 1922). He wanted to be an actor, and he knew it then, and because of that he matriculated at the University of Iowa, majoring in drama. After about two years, he came back to New York to enroll at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, from which he graduated and went on into summer stock. There was another reason for coming back to New York, which may have outweighed the first. Judy had finally emerged as the, not merely a girl, and Judy lived in New York, a long way from Iowa. They had met at the same summer camps since he was fourteen. "It was this way," Steve says. "We said hello at the beginning of the season and goodbye at the end. That was about it. "Until one night, four years after our first meeting, there was a concert at the camp and all the fellows had dates afterwards. They were going to the local ice cream parlor. Someone told me to grab a date, too, and Judy happened to be the girl sitting next to me. She said she would come. That was the beginning." They became engaged while Steve was in the Army. "He took me into a neighborhood bar one night and pulled a ring out of his pocket, without preparing me at all," Judy tells you. "The reason we had to go to a bar was that there was just too much family around at home, and he couldn't wait to find a more appropriate place. I was too surprised and excited to make much fuss over the ring. We never did really plan our marriage. He spoke to his father, not to me." "Because Judy wasn't home when I telephoned," Steve explains. "No one was home at her house. I was on maneuvers with the Field Artillery, in Louisiana, and i had asked my captain for a furlough to get married. When I couldn't reach Judy I called my father and asked him to tell her I was coming home for our wedding. He suggested that may be a girl would like to be consulted about such an important event, but I knew she was ready. We were twenty-one and twenty then, and had been going together a long time. We had only six weeks together before I went overseas for more than two years." With separation from the service, finally, there came a period of readjustment for Steve. Things seemed rough for a while, but his training and his background of summer stock led to his getting a job as stage manager and understudy in a Broadway musical, "Toplitzsky of Notre Dame." He toured after that with another play that "died" in Boston before ever reaching New York, and he went on tour with "Joan of Lorraine," starring Sylvia Sidney. His one big chance to act on Broadway was with Mary Boland, in a play called "Open House" - but it closed in a week. Kids he knew in show business were doing all right for themselves in radio, and Steve yearned to join them but didn't quite know how to begin. "My cab-driving uncle, Harry Silverman, took care of that for me, although I kept pleading with him not to. Whenever he picked up anyone in his cab who seemed to have any connection with show business, especially radio, he would turn around and start by saying, 'I have a nephew - ' "Usually he got the brush, of course. There seem to be plenty of New York cab drivers with talented members of the family - according to them at least! My uncle's fares had heard variations on this story before. But, one day, he telephoned in great excitement and said I must see him at once. It seems he had picked up a wonderful young actress in his cab. As usual, he had turned around and said, 'I have a nephew -' Only, this time it had worked. She said that any day, after her broadcast, I could see her at the studio and, if I really had talent, she would introduce to people who might help me. "I didn't want to go. My uncle insisted. When I got to the door of the studio I stood outside, feeling foolish. I finally did go in and introduced myself to her. She was Jan Miner, who today plays Terry Burton, on The Second Mrs. Burton, and stars in many of the big night-time TV dramatic shows. Even ten years ago, when we first met, she was already established in radio. "Jan asked me about my training and experience and told me how to go about getting auditions. She introduced me to people who could help. Through her introductions, a program called Radio City Playhouse began to give me bit parts and - finally - a big, fat part on one of their programs. After a while I was getting good parts on many shows and playing running roles in a number of daytime serials. All during this time, Jan was just wonderful about giving me advice and teaching me. She does more nice things for people than anyone else could count up, and I owe her a great deal. She is married to a great gut who is an actor, too - Terry O'Sullivan." The way Steve got into Love of Life was almost as unusual. His agent told Love of Life's producers that he had just the right actor for the role, one who perfectly fitted the physical description and had all the other qualities to play Hal Craig. They had asked for two other actors to test, however, and felt time was too short to bother with seeing Steve. Neither actor got the job, nor did any of the others they tried out. Finally, they had about decided on one, although not completely satisfied with their choice. At this point, Steve's agent suggested again they see Steve. "Just let me send this guy over and you can take a look at him," he asked. "Reluctantly they agreed. Steve read for the part on a Thursday, went into the show on the following Monday, and signed for the usual thirteen weeks - which have now lengthened into three years. On the show he plays opposite a stunning actress named Jean McBride, who is Meg Harper in the script. The mail about the good-looking, suave Hal Craig and the troubled, restless Meg has been rather overwhelming. Apparently the sight of these two handsome, strong-willed people being pitted against each other and setting off sparks in their acting has caught the imagination of viewers. Steve admires Jean, praises her ability. "I can truthfully say that, although I have done some 300 shows on television and worked with many, many people, there has been no one like Jean. She never comes to a broadcast unprepared, she never does the wrong thing. "There's no tension anywhere on the show. Everyone concerned with it is just great. Dick Dunn, who produces the show for the agency, Larry Auerbach, our director. The whole cast, the staff, and the crew. All just great people." Steve's knowledge of television is no longer limited to the actor's side, either. Not since a couple of years ago, when he turned TV script writer. And this, too, happened in an odd an unplanned way. He came home one day, complaining about the awful sameness of his roles on crime shows. He had played every gangster role in the world, he felt, and was dizzy from getting hit over the head - or hitting someone else over the head - as he expressed it to Judy. She had a constructive answer: "You always wanted to write, so why don't you sit down and write the kind of script you'd like to play?" Steve thought she might have something there. He worked out an idea for his script, wrote and re-wrote, and eventually sold it to The Clock. They gave him the lead role. After a while, he added magazine detective stories to his writing schedule - until he realized that, in order to earn some fast dollars, he was turning out the same monotonous plots he had resented playing. So he quit, and determined to write more serious stuff. When he had been on Love of Life about a year, he tried his hand at a one-hour dramatic TV script and, through his effort to market it, he met the woman who has helped him tremendously with his writing. For he finally submitted his play to Marion Searchinger, script reader for an important agency. "Once more, however, I would have held back," he says, "if it had not been for Judy. One Monday, when I was going to rehearsal, Judy reminded me to take the script along to Miss Searchinger. It was late in the season to sell anything on the theme of baseball, and maybe it wasn't good enough. 'Take it in,' Judy said. 'You have nothing to lose." Later, Steve learned that Miss Searchinger had agreed rather reluctantly to read the script, only because someone else in the office had asked her to, because someone had asked him. "As far as she was concerned," Steve notes, "I was just another actor who thought he could write. Next day, shortly before Love of Life went on the air, I had a call from her at the studio, asking me to get over after the show. The sum of what she said was that - even if she couldn't sell that particular script - she was sure I could turn out others, if I were willing to work hard. "She did sell that script, five days later, to the US Steel Hour, in time for the World Series season. It was produced under the name of 'Baseball Blues.' Between her help and that of Mark Smith, who is editor for Maurice Evans and does the adaptations for his shows, I learned more about script writing than I imagined there was to know. I have since sold to Kraft Theater, NBC Matinee Theater, Lamp Unto My Feet, and others." The way things were happening to Steve it could hardly have been a surprise when Long Island University asked him to teach a class in playwriting this season. He wasn't sure what kind of teacher he would make, but he liked the idea at once. In his opening speech to the class, he said that it seemed to be a choice perhaps of getting a teacher who couldn't write, or a writer who couldn't teach, but he would do his best. At home, the family watches television together when they have time. Steve never misses a major sports event if he can help it, and Eric is right there net to him when it doesn't interfere with his work or bedtime. Peter, of course, likes the cowboys and spacemen. They see as many of the dramatic shows as possible, too, and all the big productions that everyone likes. And daytime dramas, when Steve isn't working. Most of the time at home he's back in his room, pounding on his typewriter. As the keys click to the rhythm of his ideas, life goes on in the apartment around him. Peter brings his favorite pounding toy into the hallways and starts banging his colored pegs into the holes designed for them, until Judy gently draws him into the farther corner of the apartment where the sounds were muffled. Or she tactfully substitutes something less noisy. She doesn't even fuss if Peter jumps up and down a little on the big living-room sofa as and down a little on the living-room sofa and leaves his sticky fingerprints on the glass of the mirrored wall behind it, as , so long as he keeps quiet so Daddy can work. Eric may come bouncing in from school, hungry as only a boy can be, wanting to talk about the day's doings and and the plans he has afoot. The telephone has been ringing, there is marketing to be done, but Judy has managed to keep this state of confusion well under control. So...even if on Love of Life, Hal Craig is a suave, devil-may-care sort of fellow - the kind the movie sets used to say "you love to hate"...at home. Steven Gethers is a hard-working actor writer who wouldn't change his own satisfying life for that of anyone else in teh world. The glint of good humor which lurks in his eyes tells you so.

Thanks for adding the Smith writeup, soapfan. There was a very very good Soap Opera Weekly piece on this show in early 1993 (the first Weekly I ever read). I wish I had it. Google Books has some of a biography on Kirkwood. They talk a little about a writer who hated Kirkwood or Mickey and planned, over Flora Campbell's objections, to send Mickey to the Amazon and have him killed offcamera. Then a new writer came in and liked Mickey and kept him around. This is one of the things that made Kirkwood decide to become a writer. So did his time with Tallulah Bankhead, who saw him as a great storyteller. When he first met her, to audition for her show, she cut off his attempts to talk about his credentials and instead just wanted to know all about Valiant Lady, as it was one of her "soapies."

Mickey Emerson, of Valiant Lady. Not long ago, we were walking down the street and I heard a couple of girls gasp and say, "Why, there's Mickey.' One of them whispered, 'Isn't he good-looking!' And the other said, 'Isn't it wonderful to run into him like this!' No one paid any attention to me. I was the one who felt shy then." "You needn't have," Jimmy said, "because you'll remember that, just then, Fay Emerson happened by - and nobody paid any more attention to me, either." And they both laughed at the memory. People often come into night clubs where Jim and his partner, Lee Goodman, do their comedy act - places like the Ruban Bleu, the Bon Soir, and Cafe Society, and at the first opportunity they go up to Jim and tell him, "You know, there's a kid in a daytime television drama who looks so much like you it's unbelievable. You should watch him some day." This also amuses Jim and Muriel, because , of course, he is that kid - even though he's sometimes up until 3:30 earlier in the morning making the night-club rafters ring with laughter and applause. Actually, then, there are three Jimmy Kirkwoods, or, perhaps more accurately, four! The night-club comedian,; the host to teenagers and spinner of popular platters on a radio program; the youthful Mickey who is trying to take his dead dad's place in the life of the valiant Emersons on television; and the real Jimmy Kirkwood, who is a combination of all the others. The real Jimmy is a rather quiet-acting, shy-seeming fellow, a lean six feet in height, with dark brown hair and rather dark blue eyes with the suspicion of a twinkle most of the time. A fellow who is a little star-struck himself, in spite of being a star, a little afraid to ask a girl for a date because he thought of her as 'way up there! "I didn't ask, for a long time," Jimmy admitted. "Lee and I were working, and Muriel would come into the club with this escort one week and another one the next, and I would see her and be conscious of her all evening, but I was still a little shy of her. Then, when I was doing the role of Toby Smith in The Aldrich Family, on radio, some of us were invited to a party for one of the cast members of the stage hit, 'Wonderful Town.' I can't even remember now who the actor was, or anything about the occasion. I only remember that there as Muriel, at the party, and that I must have been feeling particularly pepped up after our show. Muriel had on a big picture hat. Her long black hair was caught up under it, with just a fringe of careless bangs across her forehead. Her eyes looked even bigger and darker and more beautiful than I remembered them... "I suddenly walked up to her and bent over and kissed her! Just like that. Without a word of warning, to her or myself. "She didn't slap my face, as I deserved, and she didn't say anything. She just looked startled, as well she might. Not to be routed again by my fears, I grasped the advantage. 'What are you doing for dinner tonight?' I demanded. "She had come with a date, but somehow I managed it so that the three of us left together, rather early and perfectly amicably, in search of dinner. During the evening we 'lost' Muriel's date. He wasn't a steady beau, only good friend who had asked her to the party and didn't seem to mind getting lost." Muriel says that the reason Jimmy kept up his interest was that he fell in love with her dog, a black miniature French poodle inappropriately named Too Much, and nicknamed TM. He's a friendly little fellow who drapes himself across Jimmy's ankles and looks up as if to comment, "Now you see how cozy this is?" Muriel insists that it was Jimmy's fondness for TM which drew him back again and again. Jimmy says that the greatest bond between them, from the first meeting, was their ability to laugh together, to find the same things amusing, to discover they shared a sense of the ridiculous. In spite of the fact that Muriel has the darkly glowing face associated with the portrayal of dramatic emotions, with the portrayal for comedy and most of her dancing has been along comedy lines. Yet their first dates didn't always run smoothly. Jimmy was working in a club, starting his job at 10:30 or 11 at night, when Muriel's work at the Ballet Theater was finishing. If she could manage to stay awake, she would wait around for him. Then, when he began to do the role in Valiant Lady, a noontime television show, he still had night-club commitments and would often go to his early morning rehearsals at the TV studio after only three hours sleep. "This made for a very cranky boy at times, and I don't see how Moo - the name I had begun to call Muriel - put up with me at all. When I had a free evening and we went out together, I could hardly keep my eyes open. This was great companionship for her! A lot of the time, I was learning my scripts and she had to sit around and cue me, instead of being out and having fun. My mother often came over and helped things along. She and Moo get along famously." (People who remember silent motion pictures knew Jimmy's mother as a beautiful little girl called Cuddles, and later as a grown-up, beautiful actress named Lila Lee, who married a tall, handsome idol named James Kirkwood - Jimmy's father.) Trying to make up to Muriel for some of the things she was missing, Jim outdid himself on a Christmas present that first winter of their friendship. He knew she wanted a black fox muff, and that's what he got her. "I was overwhelmed," Muriel recalled, "and not at all sure he could have done it. I just never dreamed anyone would buy me anything so lovely." Her eyes filled up a little as she talked about that first present of Jim's. Last Christmas there was a pearl ring and matching earrings, something else she wanted very much. Her first Christmas present to him was a watch. "I broke it," he said. Her second was a camera. "He lost it," she said. But there's a ring he hopes to keep forever. Muriel gave it to him last summer, when she was leaving to travel with an ice show as the assistant choreographer and Jimmy was going to stay in the East to do summer stock, and they would be separated for the first time. They were having dinner at Sardi's before she left, and Muriel was wearing the plain gold band she always wears on her little finger. "Jimmy had a habit of grasping my hand and twisting that ring, and when he put his hand over mine that evening, I said, 'Wait a minute, I want to show you something.' I dug into my handbag for a small box, opened it, and took out a similar ring. 'Try it on,' I said. Jim put it on his little finger, commented that it almost fit him, and started to hand it back, thinking it was the mate to my ring and I had decided to wear both. 'Yo're supposed to keep it,' I told him. 'Look inside.' Jimmy took the ring, held it up to the light, and read, "To Jim, with love, from Moo-Moo." And the date. Then his eyes filled. The fact that in re-sizing the ring to his finger the jeweler rubbed off a bit of the "love" hasn't bothered them. It has nothing to do with the facts. Muriel isn't a girl who likes much jewelry, and Jimmy dislikes seeing a girl hung with a lot of gew-gaws, so the pearls and the ring that is like his are the pieces she wears the most. The first time they danced together, Jimmy was really scared, partly because Muriel is a professional dancer and partly because of the surroundings. It was the occasion of the Ballet Ball, a fashionable social and lovely annual party. Muriel had been invited, but there was no extra ticket for Jimmy. But she had called at the last moment and said she knew there were unused tickets available, if Jimmy could get there in time. Wouldn't he hurry and dress and come over? His dress clothes had been hung aside because he wasn't working in a club at that time. And, when he went to take them out, everything was hopelessly out of press. It was too late to find a tailor and, while he was wondering what to do, his mother came in with a guest, a newspaper woman who was visiting her from Washington. "My mother volunteered right away to do a pressing job, but she was never very handy at such things and we both laughed at what the clothes might look like when she got through. Then this newspaper woman said, 'Give them to me,' grabbed the board and the iron, and did a bang-up professional job. What a good sport she was! I felt like Cinderella being sent off to the ball. "Until I got there - and realized I was going to dance with Muriel for the first time. 'This is it,' I told myself. 'This is where you make an idiot of yourself. With all these trained professional dancers, and these society people who have been versed in this sort of thing from their childhood, you'll be the only awkward lout there.'" "He wasn't," Muriel broke in. "He danced very well, so well I was amazed. No one had ever build up his confidence about dancing, that was all." Someone has, since then - namely, Muriel - so much so that he has added dance steps to his night-club routines, and one of his proudest moments was when he read a recent review of a new club show he and Lee had done and it mentioned hi s dancing very favorably! Justin and Muriel have never quarreled over dates or dancing or anything at all important, but they have had spats over small things. "Silly little things," according to Muriel. "We'll be talking and Jim may be telling me about something - and I will break in and say, 'Oh, Jim' - and he will stop and ask, 'What did you say that for?' Maybe I didn't say it for any reason that seems important enough to argue over, so I will say it wasn't for any particular reason - and why not go on and finish what he was saying? But he won't, because by now he's really curious about it, and maybe by now I won't even remember why I said it, and we'll start fussing at each other as if we were really angry. Then we see the funny side of it and start to laugh, and it's all over." Jim isn't the bossy type, but Muriel is glad he "bossed" her about her hair when she wanted to cut it short. If she had, she would have faced a problem when she suddenly got the role of Lover George, the Angel, in the ballet called "The Small House of Uncle Thomas," a wonderful sequence in the stage hit, "The King and I." A wig just wouldn't have been satisfactory. She was happy to get that role, but it's separating them - because, three weeks after she took it over, the show was scheduled to go on the road, all the way to the West Coast and back across the country. So, for a while at least, Jimmy can't call her up as he used to and say, "Moo, I"m having company for dinner tomorrow night and you're invited. What shall we cook?" Knowing that she knows this means: "Please come over and tell me what to have - and cook it - because you know that, no matter how hard I try, I don't seem to be anywhere near as successful a cook as you are!" By the time you read this, many miles may be separating them. Jimmy will be playing Mickey Emerson daily on Valiant Lady in a New York television studio, doing teen-age interviews and spinning records and small talk with Lee Goodman on Saturday afternoons over radio, and filling in with night-club engagements. Muriel will have been to the West Coast and the show will be coming back to Chicago - which isn't quite so far from New York as California is, but is far enough. Meanwhile, the long-distance telephone system will be getting richer every day. And, whenever "The King and I" is playing a town which Jimmy can reach by plane, between shows, you can count on his being there. Because he has to make up for all that time he lost when he thought he wasn't a big enough star in his own right to ask a lovely ballet dancer for a date!

April 1956 TV Radio Mirror.

July 1954 TV Radio Mirror

Mittness Protection http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=34BF3250-6326-42C2-B561-DA314148D4D9