DRW50

March 1955 TV Radio Mirror

In some ways I think it would work a little better than a Dallas reboot, mostly because Dynasty didn't depend as much on the cast (Joan and John were very good, but the others were...varying), but I will be surprised if it happens.

Either that or, "DON'T CALL ME MR. BLACKWELL AGAIN!"

Esther Shapiro and Joan Collins having talks. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mediamonkeyblog/2011/sep/08/joan-collins-secuere-dynasty?CMP=twt_fd

Thanks. That was fascinating. I didn't know Dick Van Patten was on this show (but then half the time I forget Joyce is his sister, not his wife). I also didn't know the reason Virginia Dwyer left.

Oh I wish I hadn't paid attention. But I was a big Iva fan - I have known so many people like her (that doesn't say very much about me...) and I just hated that she loved Aaron and she lost Aaron out of spite. It would have been one thing if Holden had been shown spending a lot of time with Aaron, and adjusting, but instead he just kept dumping this child off on Emma until she said no more. I used to start fast forwarding every time I heard "a part of each other." That was my trigger word. I remember being interested in Dawn's story too, although it seemed like she went from making a pass at Tom to dying pretty quickly. Or did she go away and then they found her as she was dying. I can't remember. Some stuff from that period, like Dani's arrival, I don't remember at all.

That sounds like a much more interesting character than I had expected. I wish I could see her

Yeah - once again these stories in these magazines usually have an ending not expected (although that's not always true - Mary Linn Beller and her husband stayed together until she passed away). Don Hastings has such a good sense of humor, you can see it in even this interview. He had another one from the early 70s that I enjoyed where he talked about how his tailor wanted him to wear bellbottoms and his wife wanted him to start growing his hair out. He said the tailor called his style "country casual," and that he'd have to tell his wife, as she thought he had no style at all.

Looking back, there was a fair amount to enjoy in 1994, and I was just annoyed/spoiled...I didn't know how much worse the show could get as I had only seen the best (for me anyway) as I'd only started watching in about 1990 or 1991. I was annoyed at Lyla and Iva leaving, by what they'd done to Shannon, by the unbelievably boring Rosanna and Rosanna/Mike, by Holden chasing after dull Lily while he neglected the child he'd yanked away from Iva. At the time the stories I enjoyed most were Julie and Pete, Barbara stalking herself, and Janice's schemes. They were all very interesting stories yet also believable.

at the ripe young age of twenty-two! In love Don certainly is. "Lots of crushes in my time," he says, "three months, six months - then over. But when I met Nan, I knew what love could be."...In luck, too - although the term, as applied to the career of hardy perennial Hastings, is actually misapplied. Don, who was born in Brooklyn, New York, April 1, 1983 - the youngest of four sons (all Dodger fans!) - made his first appearance on stage in the long-run smash hit, Life With Father. After three years of playing, successively, tow of the four children in the company - a record-breaking 1248 performances in all - Don, "fearing he would wind up portraying "Father" himself, quit the road tour at the end of the season and wound up as Uncle Chris' nephew in the stage play, "I Remember Mama." For the next four years, child-actor Hastings appeared in a number of Broadway shows...among them, "Georgia Boy," "Dearly Beloved," "On Whitman Avenue" (which starred the late Canada Lee) and - as he was entering his fifteenth year - Tennessee Williams' "Summer and Smoke," in which he played the hero as a boy during the ten-minute prologue....All this - and radio, too! "I started doing radio," Don recalls, "started getting auditions at each of the major studios, when I was about twelve. Tough, too...had to bring your own material. Mine was a mishmash. I had the scripts of some of the plays I'd done. I read them over, picked out a couple of scenes I liked in each one, and sort of ran them together as one scene. Once you get started, though...not so tough. Your name gets around. You meet people. If you make some sort of an impression, they call you. I never had an agent. Except me," he smiles. They did call Don. They kept on calling him. When he was in a play, he did radio, daytime and on Sunday nights. "I did a lot of daytime dramas," he says, "Portia Faces Life, for one, Hilltop House, and quite a few others. I used to be on the big-time radio show, Cavalcade, quite often, too. On that show, they always had a 'name' star...but the stars I worked with were just like actors without 'names.' Regulars, that is, friendly. Real friendly." "You'd never take him for an actor," Don's pals say, "no one ever does." Don has his folks to thank for this - for being the normal, well-adjusted, well and warmly liked young man he is - and well he knows where the credit is due. "When anyone asks me who helped me the most," he says, "I always answer: 'my family more than anyone.'" As one example of good judgement on the part of his parents: During his childhood years in the theater, young Hastings never took a curtain call. When he was on tour, his father travelled with him and as soon as Don's last line was spoken, he whisked him out of the theater and off to bed. When Don was on Broadway, his mother usually picked him up and took him home before the final curtain fell and applause summoned the cast (minus its junior member) to the footlights. "I never had footlight fever. I guess," Don laughs, "you can't have what you've never been exposed to! "But the best thing my parents did for me was that they left most of it up to me. When a part came up for me in a play or on radio, they'd ask, 'Do you want to do this? Or do you want to stay in school and forget all about it?' If a ball game came up at school, in which I was scheduled to play - and a job was offered at the same time - they'd say, 'You play with the team, and forget about the job.' "When I was six years old," Don reminisces, "we moved from Brooklyn to St. Albans, Long Island, in St. ALbans. I went to the Catholic school, as my brothers did. When I toured, I had to 'go' to correspondence school. Summers, I was always home, and the four of us did the things all kids do. Played ball. Went to Ebbets Field and rooted for the Dodgers, you bet! Went swimming at Long Beach and Jones Beach. Went to the movies. I've always been a movie fan, used to go two and three times a week. To Westerns, mostly. Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart - they were my boys! Later on, as we were growing up, the interest shifted to girls. With four boys in the family - quite a lot of girls! "Charlie, my oldest brother, is now thirty-five and in the textile business. Richard - he's thirty-three - works for Western Electric. Bobbie, thirty-one, is an actor, in radio and TV, like myself. There's quite a bit of difference in our ages, but it didn't, somehow, seem to make a heck of a lot of difference. We were always buddies, my brothers and I, and are now. They did a lot for me, just being around..." A good, sound, sensible bringing-up like this, a family like this, three older brothers to keep you cut down to size...a lad just doesn't learn how to dramatize himself. Even in his "big moments"...such as that telephone call from Du Mont in 1949. "Liz Mears called from Du Mont," he says matter-of-factly, "to say she wanted me to come up and read for the part of the Video Ranger in Captain Video, the new science-fiction series which was about to make its debut on the Du Mont network. I went up and read. After I'd read, Miss Mears more or less told me I had the part. The author of Captain Video was there, too. 'As far as I'm concerned,' he said, 'you're the boy we're looking for.' But I never believe I have a part until I'm actually doing it...When I read for the part of Jack Lane in The Edge of Night, it was about three weeks before I got the call to come up for the final reading. The contract was signed the following week. But, not until Jack Lane faced the cameras, did I believe it... "It was a great job. I enjoyed it. You sort of had the feeling the show was making Space history as well as TV history. I got so that the progress of real rocket-navigation became my favorite reading matter and my favorite topic of conversation. There were other perquisites, too. I got a lot of fan mail from the kids, had quite a few fan clubs. Still have. The kids still write me letters. Very faithful, kids. "During the six years we were on the air, there were two 'Captain Videos.' Dick Coogan - (now in the 20th Century-Fox film, 'The REvolt of Mamie Stover') - was the first one. Dick played it a year and a half. Then Al Hodge. Al was Captain Video for four and a half-years - or until the ax fell. "Al is a real wonderful guy to work with. Good guy just to be with. Weekends, he and I would travel, play theaters, automobile shows, food shows, lot of fairs, and things like that. We did a lot of telethons, too, for muscular dystrophy, infantile paralysis, cerebral palsy and so on. We couldn't either of us sing of dance, so we'd just get up and make little speeches. I used to make one about what a date would be like in Space. We used gimmicks, too, like my standing up there and swearing the kids in as Rangers. "Once, in Washington, D.C., we were doing a muscular dystrophy telethon, and no calls coming in. Then we started directing all our pitch to the kids - and, all of a sudden, they started coming down with their piggy banks. That started the parents. And we came in over the mark we'd hoped for. Kids They're potent. "It was on April 1, 1955 - my birthday," Don observes, "that the ax fell. The network was being broken up. Du Mont was taking off most of its big shows. Captain Video was one of them...Gave you the feeling of jumping, without benefit of a parachute, from Outer Space. If it had to go sometime -- and most things do - it was a good thing for me that it went when I had no such responsibility as I hope to have," Don grins, "within the next few months. "I was worried," Don admits, "although at first, not too worried. With all the experience I'd had prior to and during the run of Video, it wouldn't, I thought, be too tough. But it was tough. From April to October, not a TV show, not one. A few offers came along, but not from the networks. Universal-International Pictures wanted to send me to the Coast. One of those stock $125-a-week deals. They were signing kids off the street for that. I didn't go. I had a couple of chances to do summer stock. I didn't take them. Figured I'd been in Outer Space long enough. What I needed now was to ground myself in the vicinity of Broadway. "I stayed around. But that summer of '55 was rugged. I spent most of it on the golf course. As a result of Video's going off, I now have a pretty good game of golf! Biggest thing that happened to me all summer, in fact, was that I won a pro-amateur golf tournament - the pro and I won it - at Pine Hollow, here on Long Island. "Only other even worth mentioning is that Al Hodges and I did a play together - 'Detective Story' -- with a group of actors who live on the Island and work together summers. Al, who is married and has two children, lives in Manhasset. My folks and I now live in Franklin Square. Still in the character he made fabulous and famous from Coast to Coast, Al - as Captain Video - is currently introducing science films, et cetera. Al's the right man for that job, all right - but in my opinion, the job is not big enough for the man. "I got my first break in October, when I did a role for Studio One. Played a naval ensign. I wasn't around long enough -- I got killed in the first act! I did some slide films, too, including one for the Chrysler Corporation. Slide films, which demonstrate new selling techniques, are not released to the public, just to salesmen. Salesmen of cars, chewing gum, household appliances, any commodtiy you can name - with the exception of unemployed actors! Pretty thin going. Freelancing is tough, anyway. Especially when you've worked steady all your life. "Now comes November - the red letter month in my life! A new TV series of Philip Wylier stories was being filmed in Bermuda. It's called Crunch and Des - the names of the main characters - and they've now filmed thirty-nine episodes. I was in just one of them. One out of thirty-nine isn't a big deal. But, in that one, I am the villain. Having been a hero for six years - and, prior to that, usually cast as a college boy, the kid next door, a good kid - I found it kind of fun to be a rat for a change. Besides, a trip to Bermuda for free...a week's work...what did I have to lose? "Nothing to lose. And as I found out, everything to gain - everything worth the having...For, in Bermuda, I met Nan. "She was working as cashier in the dining-room of the Princess Hotel, where I was staying. I got there on a Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, but I didn't talk to her (time wasted) until Sunday morning. I'd noticed her, thought she was cute. But I was dating back home, so I wasn't thinking, or noticing - much. Although, if anyone had asked me to describe her, I think I could have told them, even then, that she's five-foot-four or five, has light brown hair, wears it short - blue eyes, almost the same color as mine - only she has pretty eyes, really pretty. 'And, of course, I would have said, ' she smiles a lot.' "Sunday morning, I had a date to play golf with Forrest Tucker, the star of the Crunch and Des films. I was on the porch of the hotel waiting for him to call. He didn't call. I didn't know how to reach him. So, when I saw Nan on the porch, I asked her if she could get Tucker's home number for me. She did, and I called him. There'd been a mix-up on time. He couldn't make it, so I went out and played alone. Before I left, I talked with Nan for a few minutes. About baseball and stuff like that. I thought she was very cute and pleasant, but didn't think of taking her out - even when I heard myself asking her if she was going to be busy that evening. She was. She was dating, too, it seemed. 'Tomorrow evening,' I heard myself saying then, 'how about that?' Tomorrow evening would be very nice, Nan said. "We went to a place called the Clay House, a sort of calypso joint, and danced. I didn't intent to get involved. Neither did she. Just out to do a little dancing, have a few laughs. What could happen? But something did. The next night, she again had a date with another guy, I was going to ask her to break it, but I didn't. 'If you get home early,' I said, sort of off-hand, 'I'll be around.' "She got home early. I was 'around.' I'd been around (and around) waiting for her to get back. When she did, we took a walk. And started talking. All of a sudden, I was telling her about myself and my family, about my brothers and their wives (all three of my brothers are married) - and about my nieces and nephews, eight in all! Telling her other things, too. The kind of thing you don't tell people. Or you tell to just one person. The one. "Nan, whose full name is Noretta Kennedy, told me about her life, too. She was born in Sudbury, Canada, and now lives in Toronto. She has an older sister, one brother. Teaching is her real job,. In Toronto, she teaches the fourth and fifth grades at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, a Catholic grammar school. The preceding June, she'd taken a leave of absence from teaching. She hadn't been feeling well and, when her doctor advised her to get away and relax, she took the job of governess with a family who were to spend the summer in Bermuda. The summer (and the job) over, Nan decided to get another job and stay on a while. The job she got was that of cashier at the Princess. She's back in Toronto now, has been for some months, and is teaching again. The kids in her classes, by the way, are all crazy about her. "In the few days left after that night, we talked and we were together as much as possible. We went to Castle Harbor, to Elbow Beach. The morning of the day I left we went swimming at Coral Beach. ... Before I left, I knew. But, even though I told her I'd be back, Nan didn't quite believe it. She sort of thought that, when I got back to the normal routine, Bermuda would be out of the window! "You have a dream - I guess most fellows do," Don says slowly, "of what a girl could be like. But you tell yourself, they don't make them like that. Then you meet a girl better than anything you ever dreamed. As I did. Her way of doing things. The way she enjoys doing things. The way everything seems so much fun with her, so much better...even things I've done a billion times before,...like dancing, like singing together, in the car, like just talking, or just not talking. We laugh together. She thinks I'm a riot, I think the same of her. We're each other's best audience, I think. The way she feels about her religion, which is my religion, too. The way shes's helped me understand my religion more than I ever did before. The way her blue eyes are sometimes gray, sometimes greenish. The way she smiles, the way everyone likes her... You only get one chance - and boy, it looked awful good! On New Year's Eve, I flew back to Bermuda. I was down there a week. During that week - I don't know what day it was, or where it was...I just remember saying, 'I'd marry you tomorrow'...and she - you don't believe in miracles? - felt the same." When the CBS contract was offered to him a couple of months later, Don felt it was the signature to his happiness. "It's the standard contract," Don laughs, "with the standard thirteen week options - at the end of any one of which I can be given the gate! Meantime, it's 'working steady' again. I like that. I like the part I'm playing. He's basically a nice kid, but a nice kid who is taking the wrong turn - which gives the character some variation, some dimension. I like Irving Vendig, who created the show, and John Wallace, who directs it. And the cast is real great. Teal Ames, who plays my sister Sara Lane, is a very sweet girl. As most of our fan mail remarks, we look alike, Teal and I. "Nan also enjoys the show, which they get in Toronto via Buffalo, New York. She get s on the bus at school at 3:30, races home and watches the opus. She's watched other daytime dramas, and thinks this is the best. Could she be prejudiced? ...But I wish she were watching it from the living room of the ranch house we hope to get - hope to buy, if we can - here in Long Island. Not a big house - (she has to clean it) - but big enough for the family we'd like to have as soon as we can, by the grace of God. "We write every day and I call her once a week. It's tough, by the way, writing to a teacher. I'm bad at spelling. She could correct my spelling, but she doesn't. (A love letter sent back with the spelling corrected - how about that?) It's tough being separated, period. We want to get married now. Seems a waste of something that shouldn't be wasted even for a day. But a priest, a friend of Nan's in Toronto - I've made three trips up there, to date - advised us to know each other a year before marrying. And Nan's family feels the same. "We're hoping, though, for the fall. October, maybe. Or maybe November - which will be a year, come to think from the day we first met...We may have to wait longer, depending on her family's consent to it being sooner, but it won't be any longer," the young man in love says firmly, "than the first of the year. And then it will be for as long as we both shall live." In love - and in luck. May it always be that way!

tress - in fact, she turned professional at the ripe age of twelve - her adolescence was anything but haphazard, thanks to two unusually understanding non-professional parents. "Honestly," Mary Linn glows, "my mother and father are the greatest. I know I'm prejudiced, but they really are. They're the type of people to whom I cold always take my problems and discuss them freely. You know, none of this treading lightly until I saw which way the wind was blowing...and then retracting until a better day. In other words, I never had to think in terms of 'campaigning.' Whatever my problem, right then and there was the time to discuss it...clarify it. "I may be wrong, but it occurs to me that this is the very reason I don't make mountains out of molehills. Disappointments, for example, don't become tragedies. I was raised to look at a problem squarely, face and accept the facts, and then proceed accordingly. And - perhaps of equal importance - I was raised not to create problems. "For instance," she explains, "my wanting to become an actress must have presented a problem of sorts to Mother and Dad. Not being theatrical people, what they knew about the theater was only what they gleaned from from newspaper and magazine stories. In a word - 'instability.' Mother and Dad could have made a terrible problem out of this lack of knowledge. But they didn't. "Admittedly, that it was a fact which would have been pretty hard to ignore...since, at the age of six, I wrote, produced and starred in my first play. I can remember it as though it were yesterday. It was a play in pantomime...mostly...and the minor dialogue consisted of handwritten 'yes' and 'no' signs. Just why I thought the signs were more effective than a good nod or shake of the head, escapes me at the moment. It was probably just what I wanted to show off my written vocabulary!...Anyway, from that point on, I had stardust in my eyes. And, within the bounds of normal, everyday living, my folks encouraged me." In the course of growing up, the time came for music lessons. Mary Linns' abilities at the keyboard were such that for a while it seemed she might enter the entertainment field as a pianist rather than as an actress. In fact, for a time she did play the piano on the old Horn and Hardart Children's Hour radio program. It was while she was playing for The Children's Hour that her parents decided dramatic lessons would help her, and it was a teacher at the dramatic school who suggested she take a CBS Radio audition. "Despite the fact that I wrote my own script," Mary Linn laughs, "I passed the audition, and CBS put me on their list of newcomers to be called upon for bit parts. It must have been quite a list, for it was a full year before I heard from them. But the day finally did come. I was twelve - and I was to make my professional radio debut on Our Miss Brooks. And wouldn't you know...the day before rehearsal, I came down with laryngitis! But good! "Mother must have been beside herself. But, if she was, she didn't let on to me. She just sprayed my throat...and sprayed it...and sprayed it. And, by the time we got to the studio, I had recovered enough to be audible. However, Mother had agreed to do all the talking, except script reading, of course, so that what little voice I had could be saved. Well, after all that, my part turned out to be one short giggle...for $7.50!" Be that as it may, it wasn't long before CBS was calling her for bit parts - and, as Mary Linn explains, "One thing led to another, and you can be sure I never again made a mountain out of a molehill, as I did that first time. I learned to relax and take things as they come." Two years later, during summer vacation, Mary Linn went to Ridgefield, Connecticut, where Alexander Kirkland operated a little theater. In connection with the playhouse, Mr. Kirkland ran a drama school for young hopefuls. In addition to their studies, these apprentices also had the opportunity of doing bit parts in a number of the summer productions. If you were lucky, an agent in the audience might spot you. An agent did spot her, and the result was better roles. "Then, the following year," Mary Linn recalls, "along came what, at fifteen, I thought was the answer to my heart's desire - an opening night on Broadway! Funny, the way things work out...for almost any actor or actress, the really tremendous thrill is a Broadway opening night. I couldn't have been more excited over getting a small part in a play called 'Leaf and Bough.' We opened out of town and, after playing three cities, it became obvious that our stay on Broadway - assuming we ever arrived - would be, shall we say, brief. "To make matters worse, it was Christmas and I was lonely and homesick. This was the first time I had ever been away from the family during a holiday season. Well, we did make it to Broadway...and I must admit that, despite my state of mind, the opening-night thrill was beyond mere words. But...when we closed three nights later...I must also admit I suffered no great depression. I had had my opening-night thrill. But, of even more importance, I was ecstatically happy to be home. Someday, I hope to be on Broadway again." In 1950, Mary Linn was graduated from a New York City high school and, after a family conclave, decided that - even though she wanted to be an actress - she should first complete her education. Bennington College in Vermont seemed to be the perfect answer, since part of the curriculum consisted of "work periods" during which the students actually work in their chosen professions for credits. During her first work period, Mary Linn was lucky enough to pick up a contract for an important role in TV's first daytime serial, The First Hundred Years. It proved to be the end of her college career - and the beginning of a highly successful TV career. "When the time came to return to college," Mary Linn explains, "I just couldn't bear to give up my TV role. At the time we all wondered whether I was doing the right thing. But it was soon clear that the decision had been a good one." Then came 1952. A red-letter, banner year in Mary Linn's young life. Besides walking off with the title role of A Date With Judy, she won the radio role of Babby in The Brighter Day...eventually annexing the TV role, too. And on June 19th, she met a young man a t a party! "Bob Pitofsky made quite an impression on me that first night," she grins. "No matter what I did, I couldn't get him to pay one bit of attention to me. I finally resorted to asking my date about him and was promptly told to relax...Bob was going steady - and, anyway, I looked too young. "Up to this point, looking younger than I was had always been lucky for me. What I mean is, when iI first got the role on Brighter Day, for instance, Babby was supposed to be about fifteen. Well, it's hard to find a fifteen-year-old with as much acting experience as a nineteen-year-old who looks fifteen - as I did. The same thing had been true of Judy." "So, up to the time I met Bob," she says ruefully, "it had never occurred to me to wish I looked a couple of years older! And there didn't seem to be much I could do about it. You know, you are what you are, and that's that. Anyway, if he was seriously dating a girl, that, too, was that. But it didn't stop me from thinking...and, the more I saw him at parties and dances, the more I found myself comparing my own dates with this young man I barely knew. Then, when I least expected it, it happened. Exactly one year to the day after we met, Bob called me for our first date. Believe it or not, we had a miserable time. Everything was wrong. We couldn't, either one of us, be ourselves. By the end of the evening, we were quibbling over everything. "But Bob, bless him," she beams, "didn't let too much water run under the bridge...and, by the time he called for a second date, we had both settled down to being ourselves. The result was a wedding in September, 1954. Forgive me for saying so, but it was a lovely wedding at the Waldorf-Astoira Hotel and a scrumptious honeymoon in Florida. And, when we came back, we came back to the apartment we're in now. Of course, there wasn't as much furniture as there is now... in fact, there was very little. But Bob and I could come back to our own place, and fix it up bit by bit. "Neither Bob nor I are very handy around the house, but we do have ideas, and with the help of my aunt - who's a perfectly wonderful decorator - we've wound up with what we think is a really attractive home. We love it and hope all who enter it will love it along with us." Mary Linn has every right in the world to love her attractive five-room apartment across from New York's Central Park. If things like her wall of bookcases in the living room - which open up to reveal four closets hidden behind them - are the envy of New York, it's with justification. "Every once in a while," she admits, "somebody questions why two working people need five rooms...and aren't we foolish to invest so much in permanent renting? I think the idea behind the latter question is: Why make a home out of an apartment? Maybe it's strange to lots of people, but not to me. You see, I was born and raised in a New York apartment. So was Bob. We're not suburbanites. We like the city. Our friends, from childhood up, are here. So, this is our home. As for the five rooms and two baths...Well, someday we hope there will be more of us and, as far as space is concerned, we're ready for that event. And then there's the park right across the street...and that's what city parks are for, isn't it? "So perhaps you can see why I think I'm such a lucky girl. I have the happy blending of two wonderful families near by - mine and Bob's...a husband I love very much...a career that is extremely satisfying - and a future that looks brighter every day. What more is there?"

I believe Josh was back but trying to stay hidden because he was involved in flushing out the evil trucking scheme that was going on at this time, and had just killed poor Mindy's husband Kurt. That was part of the kind of ludicrous, but also sad, scenes where they kept putting off telling her because they wanted her to enjoy the wedding. Here's the last half of a February 1988 episode. I guess this was not long before the strike. Geez I think Will and Reva have the same hairdo! Only in the 80's.

and carried a live turkey up the steps of City Hall in New York...Yet, when Orson Welles first went to Hollywood and needed a "real lady" to play his wife in "Citizen Kane," he sent for this same Ruth Warrick - the ex-Jubilesta queen....and when the producers needed someone who wasn't a "lady," but down-to-earth enough to play the "other woman" in As the World Turns, the new CBS-T daytime drama - they, too, sent for Ruth Warrick. But you've driven along the Hudson River as far as Sing Sing Prison...time to turn off the road for Ruth's place. There it is - the Gate House, as charming a retreat as you've ever seen, complete with grounds and flowers, grass and trees, and a dog who jumps all over you. There's even a view of the Hudson flowing self-consciously by. And then...out comes a woman so beautiful that you wonder what's wrong with television. Why don't they catch the delicate coloring, the soft red hair, the womanly radiance of her? "And how do you do, Miss Jubilesta?" you gulp. As she introduces you to the family, however, her grace as a hostess comes into play. This, you recognize, is the "real lady" of "Citizen Kane." Her husband, Bob McNamara, seems like the happiest Irishman you've ever met. Then you shake hands with Jon, her thirteen-year-old son. You try not to frighten Timothy, the baby. "Such a cutie pie!" Ruth cries, referring to the baby. Then, noticing the cap on her fourteen-year-old daughter's head, she explains: "Karen's been wearing her hair under a sailor's cap ever since she saw Mary Martin in 'South Pacific.'" It's such a happy family scene, you suspect the real Ruth Warrick will turn out to be Mrs. Bob McNamara - in her favorite role as wife-and-mother. But then she ushers you into a huge studio living room, filled with antiques and fine old furniture...and, sitting before a ten-foot fireplace for a private chat, you're in for the surprise of your life. For of all things, Ruth Warrick turns out to be a philosopher. She's a real student - of life, as well as books - and much too intelligent, much too busy, to have time for off-stage pretense. She's a wife, a mother, an actress, but she's also a thinking human being. The real Ruth Warrick is like geometry: The whole is equal to the sum of all its parts. When she speaks of her acting, she refers to it as "communication." And she is much more concerned about communication in life than she is about communication on the stage. "The greatest thing in human existence is communication," Ruth claims, "and all unhappiness is the inability to communicate." She isn't referring to the means of communication. We may have the telephone, the cable, the singing telegram and the loud speaker, but there must still be someone to send the message - and someone else to receive it. All our technological progress cannot substitute for the art, the skill, "the feel," it takes to really project to another human being or to really hear with your heart that someone else is trying to say to you. Ruth was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, the daughter of Frederick Roswell Warrick, Jr., and Annie Laurie Scott. Ruth laughs, "You think that's something? Wait till you hear my aunt's name. Now hold your hat!" And then she tells you: Bonnie. "I was a big girl," Ruth recalls, "before I knew there might be anything strange about their names." If their names were Scotch, so was their character, and Ruth speaks proudly of her Scotch ancestry: "Some of their opinions may seem narrow-minded today. But, in their actions, they always came through with honor and integrity. They had courage, the unostentatious kind. And, though it made them seem a bit reserved at times, they had humility and pride - both in the same breath." It was because of them, Ruth admits, that "every time I found myself in a spot ready to throw in the cards. I'd think of them - and then I couldn't." A good inheritance for an actress...except, of course, that the Scott sisters would never approve of any of any "well-brought-up lady" being an actress. "They were a little on the Southern side," Ruth says, "my mother especially. It was all right to sing, however. That was a ladylike art." Mrs. Warrick was quite a singer herself. In fact, she had once been asked to sing on the famed Chautauqua Circuit. "Naturally, she turned it down. It was something ladies just didn't do - on the stage...Even today when she learned that her granddaughter loved music, she said: 'How nice for Karen to have music for a hobby.' Hobby??" Ruth repeats. "It's my daughter's whole life!" In Ruth's own case, the "hobby" started at five, when her father took her to see "Blossom Time." It was love at first sight. She knew then she had to be either a great actress or a great singer. It didn't matter which, just so she could stand up there on the stage - and it wasn't till later that she learned the verb she wanted. The verb she wanted was "communicate." It meant to share with thousands of people, in a hushed auditorium, the feelings you could no longer contain within you. Hushed auditoriums, however, are not always available to young girls in St. Joseph, Missouri. But Ruth had to express herself...so, until the day she could get to New York, she decided she would be a great writer. She majored in English, won prizes for a number of essays and short stories, and directed several theatrical sketches at school. One of those sketches was about Greta Garbo, and Ruth had written it herself. She had chosen as her idol a supreme artist of communication...and, naturally there was no girl in Ruth's school who could impersonate the great star to the director's satisfaction. It ended up with Ruth having to play Garbo herself. That did it! Communicating with a sheet of blank white paper in the typewriter was nothing compared to to communicating with a live audience. In spite of her mother's objections, she knew she just had to go on the stage. "My father was all for it," Ruth recalls. "He loved the theater. Every time he went to New York on business, he used to send me the music from the latest shows, and clippings about my favorite stars." Although she was determined to go on the stage, she still hasn't made up her mind whether to be a singer or an actress. "Today," Ruth explains, "they expect you to be both. In those days, however, you had to be one for the other." During her senior year in high school, the family moved to Kansas City, where Ruth became active with the Center Theater, a local repertory group. The following year, at the University of Kansas City, she played leads in a number of school productions. She also continued with her singing. She appeared in college productions of Gilbert and Sullivan, as well as on the local radio station. Then, one day, she just made up her mind. She decided to be an actress rather than a singer. "I knew my voice wasn't great enough," Ruth admits. Besides, she had discovered an exciting new way to make her acting more expressive - more communicative. Today, thanks to the popularity of such Actors' Studio graduates as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and Eva Marie Saint, there is a lot of talk about "The Method." (The actor prepares for his role, not only by studying the script, but by figuring out the character's life before the curtain goes up. Then, when he is on stage, he can be that person, living the part, rather than acting it. Students at the Actors' Studio are asked to do exercises: Eva Marie Saint had to be a weeping willow tree. Marlon Brando had to live the part of a wax statue melting in the sun.) But, long before Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg had popularized "The Method," Ruth had devised one of her own. "The important thing about acting," she says, "isn't so much knowing how to read a line as knowing who the character is. That's why I started using what I knew as a writer to help my performances on the stage. I would write out the complete story of the character I was to play...background, history, habits - everything." Reminded that this is like "The Method," she says: "I worked it out all by myself. Besides," she laughs, "I agree with Orson Welles. He never said you had to make like a tea kettle in order to make like a person." But she might never have met Orson Welles...if Fate hadn't taken a hand in her affairs. Kansas City decided to have a "Jubilesta" - a fall festival to attract visitors to its city. "A man I had worked with at the Center Theater," Ruth recalls, "happened to be directing the Jubilesta. He called me up and asked me to come down. He thought I could be Miss Jubilesta. I said no. I could just see my family if I ever tried out to be a beauty queen. 'But it's not that,' my friend insisted. It's not a gag. It's a job. Thirty-five dollars a week, and all the clothes you can wear." Ruth was chosen Miss Jubilesta, and toured the Midwest, inviting people to the Jubilesta and recording interviews which were later broadcast on the radio station in Kansas City. But she ended up where she wanted to be - in New York City...with "all the clothes she could wear," a return-trip ticket she was determined not to use, and thirty-five dollars she had saved from her job. The train ticket was part of her prize as Miss Jubilesta. It was also the one thing which made her family change their attitude about acting. They couldn't very well stop her from going to New York when she had a ticket. Ruth's one regret was leaving the University of Kansas City...but the president, a friend of the family, told her: "Ruth, if you were like the majority of my students, I would hesitate and try to dissuade you from leaving. I H have a feeling, however, that you are one of those persons who wont't stop their education just because they're leaving school." She hasn't. To this day, she confesses to "running a temperature just walking through the door of a library. I am transported, any time I find a new subject - a new field to explore." And Ruth, with her goal of being a well-rounded person, has explored most of them. But, before she was finished with her job for Kansas City, she had one last assignment as Miss Jubilesta. She had to walk up the steps of New York's City Hall carrying "a live and kicking thirty-five-pound turkey" and present it to Mayor LaGuardia. "It was the hardest job I ever did," says Ruth. In retrospect, however, it seemed easy compared with the job of breaking into radio. "You just stand in the halls," she recalls, "and you wait. It's the test of fire. You hear the statistics. They tell you you haven't a chance. It only makes you more determined. It isn't because you think you're better than the others, it's because you're you. And so, you keep standing in the halls." (This was one of the times when Ruth was tempted to "throw in the cards." But Scotch determination kept her fro m returning home.) "And then, one day," Ruth continues, "someone gives you two lines to do - maybe because he thinks you're attractive. You do the two lines. You don't goof. And it goes on from there. You become a member of the union. And you find that, once someone uses you, you've passed the test. They all start using you." Ruth appeared in network radio on Joyce Jordan and Grand Central Station, then moved on to Aunt Jenny for her first real success. She acted in a Broadway play that ran two nights...and now the scene changes to Hollywood, where Orson Welles - in most ungentlemanly fashion - kept insisting he couldn't find any "real ladies." ("That's where my mother comes in," Ruth says, thanking her for the training.) Ruth was sent for, and went to Hollywood to test for the role of the wife in "Citizen Kane." "It was a wonderful break," she recalls, "and I was terribly nervous. But you should have seen Orson! He had been on the lot two years without making a single picture. This was his first day of shooting, so all the big brass came down to watch on the sidelines. I was trying so hard to keep him from being nervous that I forgot about myself and settled down." As it turned out, she settled down with the coveted role and a seven-year contract at RKO. During the next ten years, she appeared in more than thirty motion pictures. In 1952, Ruth returned to New York to do a play, but it closed in Philadelphia. Then she turned to live television, which excited her. She finds it much closer to the stage than to motion pictures. And as for communication - television is the great est opportunity in the history of the world! She starred in Robert Montgomery Presents, Studio One, Lux Theater. And then she took over the role of Janet in the popular daytime drama, The Guiding Light. She had had recognition as a motion-picture star, but never anything like this! When she left the show, strangers stopped her in the street to scold her: What did she mean, leaving The guiding Light? All she meant was...she was having a baby. For a woman, it is the ultimate communication with life. She never meant to return to acting again... Ruth can tell you exactly how she met Bob McNamara, a television executive: "A girl friend of mine, whose husband works in the same company as Bob, used to use him as a bachelor to 'fill in' at her dinner parties." Ruth pauses, and you gather that she was asked to one of those dinner parties. "She was quite chagrined when I took him off her list." She must also have been surprised, for no two persons could be more unlike. Ruth has a strong sense of duty, so that her Scotch conscience must be a battleground of conflicting loyalties - to husband, to children, to self, to career. Bob, on the other hand, prides himself on being "the real ham in the family." He is also one of the few living soft-shoe dancers left, and likes to demonstrate this at parties. In fact, he likes nothing better than a party, and the McNamara's throw one frequently. (Particularly on St. Patrick's Day. That's the big night at Bob's house, not New Year's Eve). A friend, thinking of Dale Carnegie's popular book, once suggested that there ought to be a special book for Bob called "How TO Stop Living and Start Worrying." But the nurse who came from the hospital with Ruth, to help with the baby, paid Bob a much kinder tribute. All the time that she lived in the house, it never occurred to her that Karen and Jon - the two older children - are not Bob McNamara's own. She never knew that they were Ruth's children by her former marriage to Eric Rolf. Ruth herself finds - and she passes it along to other girls: "A man who can laugh and have fun makes a much better husband than the serious type. He doesn't look for his lighter moments elsewhere. He has his fun right at home." And they do have fun. The most prominent spot in the living room is taken up by a set of rums, for Bob has organized McNamara's Band - which is ready to play your favorite request number at any time of night or day, even if you don't request it. Bob plays the drums, Karen the clarinet, Jon the trombone, and Ruth a bad but "enthusiastic" piano. There's trouble brewing, though. Baby Tim not only inherits his father's "ham" - he wants to take over the playing of the drums. He was fifteen months old when Ruth received the offer to play the role of Edith Hughes in As the World Turns. It seems so simple. The baby was old enough to spare her a few times a week. And yet, Ruth admits, she went through agonies of indecision, before she finally took the role. "I make myself suffer. No one else fights me. I keep asking myself: 'Do I have a right to be an actress?' And then I get sick. It was the doctor who advised me to go back to work. 'You're no good to your family this way,' he pointed out." And Bob, who's quite a communicator in his own right, simply said to her: "Hey, why don't you relax?" But she had never relaxed in her life. Here she was, still a young woman, and she wan't doing anything with her life. She remembered her grandfather - on the Scotch side. He went bankrupt at sixty-three, but he started up again. What's more, he ran a successful business until he was eighty-three. That was when Ruth got out of bed, grabbed the phone, and said: "I'll take the part." She realized, "I'm no good as a mother, unless I'm a whole person." For those who must communicate, there's no stopping place. For those who are blessed with searching minds and feeling hearts, life is always a continual striving rather than a permanent achievement. That's Ruth Warrick McNamara's strength! Sh e has not settled for being any one of her parts but for being all of them. Today, she is truly a complete person. What's more, if you want to know what "communication" really means, watch her on As The World Turns. Story-wise, she must know that Edith Hughes is neither heroine nor saint. But Ruth doesn't play her as a villainess, either. Ruth plays her like a human being...a complete human being.

September 1956 TV Radio Mirror

September 1956 TV Radio Mirror

September 1956 TV Radio Mirror

They do make a striking couple. I wish more were out there. I guess you've seen this. It's a fun little clip and seems very different for that time.

Do you think they should have recast Andi's brother or stayed with the first actor?

I was going to ask if you remember Leslie Bauer? I've only seen her in some clips from the mid-60s, and I like her, she has a lot of energy and strength which offsets the typical ingenue role. The Dobsons seemed to kill her off and Mike never really looked back. I wonder if she'd lost a lot of her appeal as a character. I know the actress said she wasn't happy with the writing for the character and was considering leaving, but was still surprised and sad when she was let go.

I didn't know Kyle was such a heavy part - offcamera - in the Alan/Reva story. I wonder if they should have brought him back, with a recast, when Chris Bernau had to leave. She never really said specific reasons but I always thought she was annoyed at Alex being reduced to obsessing over Nick and being a shrew. Is that Sally scene online? She gets on my nerves in every clip I see of her but that's an awful way to die.

her professional career as a dancer and, when Holiday Hotel left the air, she got a chance to dance with a group of American girls in Cannes, on the French Riviera. Johnny's work took him out to the Pacific Coast. They both got back to New York at about the same time. From out of nowhere, he suddenly phoned. "I have to catch Bea Lillie's show tonight. Would you like to go with me" he asked. She was surprised into saying, "But why are you asking me?" And he was surprised into answering, "Frankly, because I just got back from California and couldn't think of anyone else who might like to go." His honesty made her say yes. They began to go out together, became good friends, with no thought of anything more serious developing. At least, not on her part. He was sent to England to cover the Coronation of Elizabeth, for NBC. When he got back, he proposed to her. But why me? she thought. He never seemed to be that interested. Because I had to go that many miles away to realize I was in love with you," he answered the question almost before she could ask it. Even then, she didn't say yest to him for a while. Marriage was important, and she had to be sure. The wedding was on February 10, 1955. Jay was born on August 12, 1957. Blond like his mother, with mischievous eyes and with dimples like his daddy's. "The day Jay was born," says Audrey, "happened to be the same day that John quit a good agency job to go into business for himself. That took real courage. But I was with him completely. Our work jibes well. He works with actors and show-business people, is sympathetic to the demands an actress has to meet. I understand many of the problems connected with his business." Her own family background was as one of five children brought up in the quiet town of Maplewood, New Jersey. Her father is a dentist. ";I am the only black sheep who went into show business. My older sister is married and lives in Lima, Peru. I'm the next oldest. My brother is married. And I have younger twin sisters." Along with her older sister, Audrey was sent to dancing school at four, as so many little girls are sent to learn the social graces, with no thought of anything more far-reaching in mind. Sister didn't like dancing class. Audrey took to it right away. But when they put her in ballet class, and her unaccustomed little feet rebelled at toe practice, she clung to the bar, crying her heart out. "Get down if it's hurting you," her mother urged. "You don't have to get on your toes - you don't have to dance at all," she pointed out. "It does hurt, but I love it," the child kept insisting, the tears still flowing, persisting until she grew used to it. During high school, when the other kids wore congregating at the local soda fountain, Audrey was over at the dancing school, working with any class that happened to be in session, helping to teach in some of them. Dancing was more fun than anything else, she had decided. So much so that, when her classmates began to talk about clothes and what they would major in, she suddenly realized she didn't ant to go. Her parents were taken aback. All sensible girls went to college, got married, had children, and lived in the small towns where they had grown up. Their daughter wanted to go to New York and become a professional dancer. "My father is really a sweet person," Audrey says. "He told me I could have a year of study, provided I would live at home and commute. None of this living by myself in a hotel in the big city, or even sharing an apartment with other girls. He wanted me home when I wasn't working. There was one other stipulation: If, after a year, I had no job, I was to make plans for college, like the rest of the girls my age." At the time, all she wanted was classical ballet. She dreamed of becoming a ballerina - until she reminded herself that a ballet troupe spends most of the time on tour. Her parents would never agree to that. By late summer, the year was almost up, so she started to think about a job. The gates just opened for her, as they have seemed to ever since. She was lucky at her first audition, a musical stage revue. "A flop show on Broadway, but I Thought it was the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the most fascinating production I had ever seen. Every time I walked through the stage door, I would think And they pay me for this! Before the show was brought into New York, there was the usual road tour. Her parents came to the train to see her off. "I was supposed to be a pro, trying so hard to act grown up - and my father was asking the stage manager to look after me! I was teased plenty, after that. But everyone was really nice and said they did look out for me." There always seemed to be a job when she wanted it. When her friends came home from Christmas holidays, she might be glad to have time off - but, when they went back, she could always return to work. When her family went to the shore for summer for summer vacations, she could go along - but there was always a job for her in the fall. "I got spoiled by it, didn't realize how hard it could be for me if I weren't so lucky." She has danced in six Broadway shows, including "High Button Shoes" and "Barefoot Boy With Cheek." She had offers for screen tests and turned them down because she thought of herself as a dancer, not an actress. Until one day she tore some cartilage in her knee, and it suddenly dawned on her that she wasn't equipped to do anything but dance. Doctors had said she needed an operation and might have a permanent limp. She worked with the knee and overcame any tendency to limp, but firmly resolved to study acting and combine it with dancing. She began to take instruction from drama coach Alice B. Young, decided this, too, was fun. After that, she studied with Sanford Meisner for four years and alternated between dance and drama. She was one of the Toastettes while Ed Sullivan was still featuring them to open and close his show. Just before the group broke up, she left to be standby for Gena Rowlands, who played the part of the young girl in the Broadway play, "The Middle of the Night." Gena never missed a performance - until two weeks after Audrey had left the show, because she was pregnant with Jay. To date, her most frightening experience was on filmed television, in her first TV part of any importance. She was supposed to be a nurse in a hospital, busy, capable, sure of herself. "At rehearsal, I worked with a doll wrapped in a blanket to look like a real infant. Nobody told me that, on camera, a live baby would be substituted. We got read to film - and in walks a real nurse, terribly efficient and sure of herself, and hands me a two-weeks-old baby. I wasn't used to young babies then, had never held one so tiny. I was afraid to breathe. The laws to protect babies and small children in show business are necessarily strict, so a stop watch would click every few seconds and the bright, hot lights would go out. I stood there, afraid to take a step for fear of tripping over a cable or some other object in the dimness. Audrey now admits, "I felt a little the same way when I first held my own small son." When Jay was born, Audrey dropped out of everything for a while, except to fill some previous commitments to do filmed commercials. She had already played parts on many nighttime dramas and, after a while, she began to do some again. Her credits include The Verdict Is Yours, The U.S. Steel Hour, Studio One, The Jackie Gleason Show, Schlitz Playhouse. One morning, she was down on the front walk with Jay, planning to take him to the park later. "I kept saying to myself that I was in a slump and I missed working at least part of the time. When I went upstairs, I called my agent to inquire if there was any job activity. He said there was nothing much, but later he called and told me about a change in the cast of Love of Life. I phoned personally, said I was Audrey Peters and I would like to meet them. The woman on the phone must have confused me at first with an agent by the same name, whose mail and messages often get mixed with mine. She thought I wanted to send girls over to read. But they evidently looked me up and found I was an actress blonde like Vanessa, and invited me to come over that afternoon. "I read that day, I went back, the next day, to read again. The director of the show, Larry Auerbach, was on vacation. When he returned, I met him and he asked me to be at a camera audition. I expected to find at least five or six other girls. Instead, there was just one other actress. To be so close! I thought. But I didn't dare hope too much. By this time, I wanted it very much." They thanked her for coming, they thanked the other girl. The audition was over. She went home, wondering. At five-thirty the next morning, she woke up, still wondering. Why am I so nervous? she thought. I didn't get the part, so forget it. It happens every day in this business. Johnny left for the office after breakfast. The telephone rang at nine-thirty. She ran to answer. It was her mother-in-law, usually a welcome call - but, this morning, Audrey cut the conversation short to keep the line open. Finally, she got under the shower - and the phone rang again. She raced out, dripping, to answer it. "You have the part," a voice rang in her ear. "You're Vanessa. Could you come over later and discuss a few things?" "Do you mind if I bring my baby?" she had to ask. "I planned to take care of him myself today." So Jay went along, captivating everyone with a quick smile, thrilled to be taken "visiting" - but not as thrilled as his mother was! The little boy provided unexpected excitement on the morning of Audrey's first broadcast of Love of Life. She had to leave the apartment early, for rehearsal. She had laid out the clothes she would wear, putting them in the living room so Johnny's early-morning rest wouldn't be disturbed by drawers being opened and shut, and the closet door wouldn't squeak even a tiny bit. She wasn't going to let her professional life interfere one iota with her home life and the comfort of her menfolk. Suddenly there was a loud scream from the baby's room. For the first time in his little life, he had fallen out of bed. "My poor husband was wakened suddenly. We looked over and found he was unhurt. But I left him still pacifying a frightened little boy. I was too worried about Jay to be nervous about the show. When I got off the air, the director said, 'Now you can run home to your baby.' I didn't relax a minute until we had guards put on Jay's crib" Since then, the two roles Audrey plays - actress and home-keeping mother - have run into no conflicts. Jay is happy with the woman who cares for him during the day. The studio is less than ten minutes by cab from the comfortable apartment where they live. "Johnny wants me to do the thing I love to do" says Audrey. "Being in a daytime show is wonderful. Especially this one, which seems to me to be so truthful, so interesting. With a fine professional cast and crew, and excellent production and direction. "The way I feel about it now, I would like to be Vanessa until she's a grandmother!"

September 1959 TV Radio Mirror

May 1974 TV Radio Mirror. Posting this mostly because it's such a striking photo of Liz Hubbard.

That's fascinating.

They look like they're in Hell. Which sums up The View.