DRW50

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

This CBS soap ran from October 12, 1953- August 16, 1957. The show had the same name as a radio soap which fan from 38-46 and 51-52, but their stories were different. The radio version focused on Joan Barrett's fight to keep her "brilliant but unstable husband" on "the pathway to success." The TV version was about Helen Emerson, and her family - husband Frank, 9 year old Kim, 19 year old Mickey. Mickey was in love with Bonnie, a married woman. Helen and Frank also had a daughter, 17 year old Diane, who eloped with a divorced man but waited to marry until Helen gave her blessing. Helen was widowed in the first year, and struggled to cope, both with money and family problems. When Mickey stood up to his fiancee's controlling father, Helen finally gave her support to their union. Helen then began dating Gov. Lawrence Walker, marrying him on Valentine's Day, 1957. Nancy Coleman was on the show for a year, but left because it took up too much of her time. Flora Campbell, star of TV's first soap, Faraway Hill, replaced her. James Kirkwood Jr. was a lead player for the entire run. His mother, silent film actress Lila Lee, tried out for the Helen Emerson role, but they told her she looked too young. Kirkwood went on to write Legends, as well as the iconic musical A Chorus Line, before passing away in 1989. One of his last works was a book on dealing with Mary Martin and Carol Channing during their run in the play Legends. Valiant Lady was created by Allan Chase, produced by Leonard Blair and Carl Green, written by Charles Elwyn, and directed by Herb Kenwith, Ted Corday, and Ira Cirker. The show aired from New York, 12-12:15 PM, EST. (thanks to the Soap Opera Encyclopedia for a lot of this)

Did anyone save the early episodes that were taken off Youtube? If not, and you watched them, could you tell me what you thought some of the highlights were?

Do you think if NY goes they should bring back DC or Miami, or just stay with the shows they already have, or try a new city?

That's fascinating. Do you remember what was in the promo?

How much influence does Bravo have over the season? Don't they script the meetings between the ladies (as much as they can anyway) and edit most of the material? I wonder if they were surprised at this not getting a good reaction, or if they just did what they could with the material and they aren't happy either.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl_kcEpK6IE

I wonder why they got rid of Elliott. I guess Raven was moving on into other stories, but I love the days when Raven has Elliott, Derek, and then over in the corner, Logan is pining for her. I see what you mean about the group of April, Draper, Logan, Elliot, and Steve and Deborah too. And Calvin. I think they add a lot of believability and quiet energy - as good as some of the episodes from a few years earlier are, they drag a bit, as does some of the early 80's material. What did you think of the story with Frank Gorshin?

August 1954 TV Radio Mirror.

Tax increases on the rich are popular, but the politicians will never go along with it, because they're bought and paid for.

Max, poll after poll has shown that much of the public does not want to cut these programs. I would like to agree with you, but not when Michelle Bachmann is involved. Her track record in Minnesota was heinous. She feels gay people are part of Satan.

I guess I won't be listening to anything by Randy Travis anymore. http://www.politico.com/blogs/click/0811/Michele_Bachmann_recruits_Randy_Travis.html?showall

Oakdalian has put up some more November 1992 material. I can see why soapfan said this was depressing - it really is. The stuff with Hal's "death" on top of the implosion of the Snyder family and Ellie's abortion is just tough to watch. Probably the best of this is Ellie's abortion story, the little we see of it (does anyone know who is playing her doctor? He looks like one of the 80's Franks from Ryan's Hope). Wonderful acting from Renee Props, and a serious issue, one we would never hear about on a soap today. One thing I notice is how badly telegraphed some of this is, moments like Lily repeatedly saying she can't imagine going through this without Iva, or Ellie calling up to talk to the Snyders and Angel gives her a long confessional on how she can never have biological children. I wasn't overly fond of Tonio's exit. I didn't even know this was his final exit - I thought he left after Bob and Susan operated on him. To have this end in a Raging-Bull type slugfest seems so cheesy to me, like a parody of machismo. I also don't like the part where Duncan keels over and Jessica wakes up gasping. They should have just ended it with Sabrina holding a gun on Tonio and turning him in to the authorities. It seems like production-wise the show was kind of going downhill at this time. I did get more of a jolt out of Barbara mourning Hal and tearing into Frannie. I'd heard a little about this but had never actually seen it. It's sad to watch them this way, although I never saw a ton of bonding moments between them (Barbara was usually in her own stories, as was Frannie) so I'm not as invested. I'm sorry this didn't get to play out further. Marland was going to recast Frannie and play out more of this, wasn't he? I wonder where Kim was at this time. I wanted to see her reactions.

situation..."until," as he says, "it came time ot consider the matter of Vicki and the new baby." Admittedly, then, both Hal and Ruby were concerned. Ruby, who is taking a few years' hiatus from the footlights to star in her important real-life role of being a mother, explains: "I had never been separated from Vicki. We knew she was bound to suffer a s hock if ever she thought she might have a rival for our affections." To prevent it, they began to take Vicki into their confidence many months before the baby was due, seeking to share the coming child with her. "When she asked questions," Hal says, "we'd tell her straight. We didn't go in for any of this stork stuff." On the whole, their approach was most successful, but it did produce certain small consternations. With a chuckle, Hal recalls: "It was bad enough when Vicki would run up to strangers on the street, bend backwards, and announce proudly, 'See, I've got a big tummy - just like Mummy's!' But, the day she almost broke up a friendship, we wondered if we had gone too far." That happened during a weekend spent with another young couple who had just bought a new home in Connecticut. The place adjourning was one of "estate" proportions, owned by an older woman who most kindly invited them to use her swimming pool. Hal and his friend were loafing around the stone fence, talking with her, when small Vicki dashed up, all eyes, Surveying the woman's ample figure, she piped in penetrating childish treble, "You have a big tummy." Hal says, "Thank heaven, our host was quick-witted. Pretending to misunderstand, he replied, 'Yes, Vicki, she does have a big Tommy. A beautiful big Tom cat. Let's go try to find him.' That saved the day. Later, when I found out how self-conscious the woman really was about her size, I shuddered to think what Vicki nearly did to a fine friendship." Noticing a small undercurrent of fear in Vicki's growing excitement, Hal and Ruby realized they must plan the actual homecoming of the baby as carefully as the would a second-act climax in a play. Vicki went to stay with friendship when Ruby left for the hospital and, on July 1, 1955, David Vining Holbrook made a safe debut into the world via Caeserean section. When they arrived home, Ruby put tiny David in his crib in the bedroom before Hal went to fetch Vicki. On meeting her, he had much to say about "Mummy's anxious to see you" - but not a word about the baby. After opening the door for the excited child, he vanished. "We wanted Vicki to have her mother all to herself when she came home," he explains. Mother and daughter were left alone in the living room and, for half an hour, they talked and played just as they always had. At last, when Ruby felt Vicki was happy and calm, she asked, "Do you remember, Vicki, what I promised to bring to you from the hospital?" Vicki's eyes widened in delighted recollection. "Ooooh, my baby!" she exclaimed. "Mummy, did you bring me my baby brother? Where is he?" Ruby replied gently, "He's waiting for you in his crib." Hand in hand, the petite, dark-haired woman and the sunny, sandy-haired child walked in to meet the new member of the family. Drawing on their skill as actors, Hal and Ruby had controlled a crisis and brought it to a happy conclusion. From then on, David was Vicki's baby," Hal says proudly. "Instead of having a rival, she had some one new to love and share generously with us. She feels secure and her nose was never 'out of joint,' not for a minute." Hal, Ruby and their children live in a modern apartment with large rooms and big windows, high above Manhattan's busy streets. It is conveniently close to a park, a playground and a good nursery school which Vicki attends. But, like many young parents, the Holbrooks are considering a move to the country. "It sounds as though it would be good for the children - until we realized how it would cut down the time we have with them. My schedule would make commuting difficult, and Ruby would have a real problem when she goes back into show business eventually." Ruby, whose present contact with the theater is restricted to a class in modern dance, has no immediate plans beyond the hope that, when she does return, it will be to some production where she and Hal can work together. That's what they've always done, since they met on the bare stage of The St. John's Players, a civic theater group in chilly Newfoundland. Hal was then in the United States Army Engineers. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Mr and Mrs. Harold R. Holbrook, Sr., he had been reared in Boston. He prepped at Culver Military Academy in Indiana, from which both his father and his uncle had been graduated. "There's where I got lured into a play," he says. "And, from then on, it was show business for me." Joining a summer stock company in Clevleand proved decisive, for its director was Edward A. Wright, head of the drama department at Denison University, Granville, Ohio. Hal says, "Ed persuaded me to go to Denison, and we've been friends ever since. He was best man at our wedding and he got us started in the theater." Hal had a year at Denison before the Amry called him at Denison before the Army called him and sent him to St. John's in Newfoundland - the jumping-off place for Europe. Ruby was a native of St. John's, the daughter of Emanuel and Amelia Johnson. My father," she smiles, "was the only member of his family who broke away form the fishing village where they all lived and went to the big city (pop. 67,000) to become a traveling salesman." In high school, Ruby appeared in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, learned to be a stenographer, and wondered how she would ever get from remote St. John's to the theatrical production centers. Romance and career merged the night both she nad Hal joined the Players. "In a little Chinese play, 'Lady Precious Stream,' we were cast opposite each other. While being make-believe lovers on-stage, we fell in love - for real." At the end of the war, when Hal was shipped back to the United States, Ruby flew to New York and they were mrried Stpember 21, 1945, at the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration. For them, the place held a double significane. Hal's favorite uncle had been married there. It also is beloved and famed among actors as "The Little Church Around the Corner." As soon as Hal completed his Army service, they both enrolled at Denison. They were graduated in 1948, and the two left on tour immediately. The idea for this had its germ in one of Ed Wright's class assignments. "He gave me Mark Twain's 'An Encounter With an Interviewer' and suggested I work it up into a sketch," Hal says. "I read it through, then grabbed the telephone to protest this was utter corn and I couldn't do a thing with it." Wisely, Wright suggested Hal take a second look, paying particular attention to the philosophy behind it: "That's the way I discovered Mark Twain's straight-faced satire. It's just as sharp, just as funny today, as it was when he wrote it. I've been a Mark Twain fan ever since." The resulting skit became the foundation for a series of small dramas, based on historic characters or scenes from famed plays, which Hal and Ruby worked into two hours of entertainment - a show which one friend describes as "a sort of Ruth Draper, doubled." They loaded two costume trunks, a sound system, and a trunkful of lights into a station wagon and hti the road. Hal sums up those eventful and hectic years: "Between 1948 and 1952, we gave over 800 performances. The only states we missed were Arizona, Oregon and Florida. We did go into Canada. We played everything from the swank women's clubs of the North Shore, outside Chicago, to high schools in tank towns where they hadn't seen a live show since Chautauqua. We'd teach a piece in the afternoon, install our lighting and sound equipment, set the stage with the furniture we had asked the local committee to provide, eat a hasty supper, play our show, catch a few hours' sleep, and get going for our next location. Our schedule while playing high schools was even worse, for then we'd do twelve or thirteen hours a week. "We drove a thousand miles a week, forty thousand miles a year. In all of that, we missed only one date. A flood marooned us in a town in Texas and we were a day getting out. But we rebooked the week and made up the show. The pace was so furious that once RUby fainted. Fell right down flat in total exhaustion." "It sounds almost foolish now," says Ruby, "but we were young, we took ourselves seriously - almost too seriously, perhaps - and it was wonderful experience." That phase of their lives ended when Ruby became pregnant. As Hal says, "We didn't want to take any risks, so another girl took Ruby's place to fill out the remaining dates we had booked. Then a summer-theater job in Massachusetts helped us make a transition to New York." That most important young lady, Miss Victoria Rowe Holbrook, arrived (also by Caesarean section) on April 22, 1952. Ruby's only non-maternal assignment that summer was to spend two weeks apartment hunting in New York. She returned tired out and discouraged. "I was the lucky one," says Hal. "I got two days off and came in late one Saturday night. Sunday morning, before going to look at the advertised apartments. I stopped to see a friend. An apartment was just being vacated in his building and I got it." For two years, Hal has played the role of Grayling Dennis on The Brighter Day. He particularly enjoyed the sequence last summer when Grayling married Sandra Talbot: "It was such a contrast to Ruby's and my hasty ceremony, away from home and minus the usual trimmings. The wedding on the show went on for days and it really was done beautifully. My 'father,' the Reverend Richard Dennis - Blair Davies - read the service, word for word, with absolute solemnity. It was so moving, in fact, that, if Blair actually had been ordained, I'd feel like a bigamist." While this was being broadcast, Ruby was appreciating it, too: "That's when I was in the hospital, having David. I really shocked a nurse the time I said, My husband got married yesterday.'" Apartment living had been difficult for Ruby at first. "I felt alone and cut off from things," she recalls. "I had always worked." Shortly, however, the closeness of Hal's and Ruby's partnership provided an antidote. She became what Hal calls, "My chief audience and critic. We work out new material together." Most of this new material concerns Hal's increasingly important characterization of Mark Twain. As this is written, he has been booked to introduce it, for national viewing, on the Ed Sullivan Show, but the exact date has not been set. Nightly, however, New Yorkers enjoy it at Jimmy Di Martino's supper club, on Grove Street in Greenwich Village, called "Upstairs at the Duplex." Downstairs at the Duplex is the bar, but the parlor floor of this charming old house which dates back to the American Revolution is Upstairs. Where Colonial ladies once danced the minuet, Hal and several friends, who have a participating interest in the room, stage their show. It is a quiet, intimate little place, so delightful that, following the premiere of "Guys and Dolls," Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, Wally Coxand a group of friends came in "for a few minutes" and stayed for hours. In such a place, Hal's Mark Twain is as much at home as if that sharp-witted gentleman had just strolled over from Tenth Street, where he once lived, to have a leisurely nightcap and a bit of conversation with friends. For Hal's impersonation of him is amazingly accurate, from snowy white curls (Hal wears a wig) to the white line n suit which Mr. Samuel Clemens made Mark Twain's trademark. With such an illusion of reality, it is not fitting that a beloved humorist repeat himself too often, so Hal and Ruby continue to increase his repertoire. Hal, now an intense student of Mark Twain's writing, admits he gets carried away. "I want to include everything. But, since that is obviously impossible, I tend to swing to the other direction and cut it too tight, assuming that everyone else also knows what has gone before. Too often, that can result in people not even knowing what I'm talking about. That's where Ruby turn s critic. Whenever I prepare a new Mark Twain piece, I try it first on her and we work it out together." "Working it out" involves far more than memorizing Mark Twain's words. The characterization takes on life because Hal and Ruby are among the growing group of college-trained young actors who are capable of working in all dimensions of show business. Not only can each play a scene movingly, but they are also able to do everything necessary to produce that scene. They can write or edit a script. They are equally adept in "mounting" that show. Each one can design a set, paint a flat, install the scenery, arrange the lights, hook up an amplifying system. When, in large productions, such work is not required of them, they have the confidence which comes from knowing how it should be done. They also can design and sew a costume. While costumes usually are Ruby's responsibility, Hal did his own for Mark Twain. "It became sort of a dedicated thing, once I had started," he explains. "I had had a couple of white suits when we were on the road. But, by the time we reached New York, they were worn out. I went to a costumer and the price they wanted was staggering." So Ruby and Hal shopped: "We found some white linen of a quality which Mark Twain would have liked. Then we bought patterns for slacks, vest and sports coat. We altered them to suit the style of his period. Then I cut them out and sewed them. I intended to do every stitch myself but, when it came to the buttonholes, I was stumped. Ruby had to do those." It's no wonder, with such careful attention to detail, that Mark Twain has become as much a member of their family as a great-uncle. While neither Hal nor Ruby admit, at present, to having any plans to have their youngsters try impersonations of Becky Thatcher and Tom Sawyer, Vicki's hair is turning the right pinkish-blonde color and tiny David's eyes already hold the right mischievous twinkle. With the Holbrook talent and the Holbrook habit of sharing every experience with each other -w who knows? Perhaps, with the help of the Holbrooks, Mark Twain's wondrous dream children - as well as Mark Twain himself - may gain come to life. That would indeed be a brighter day for all devotees of Americana, as well as for the many admirers of Grayling Dennis!

There was a late 95 interview with Petronia where she praised Rauch for his efforts at AW regarding black characters...of course, by the time he got to GL, the Grants were already basically done, although he could have made more of an effort if he wanted to (all he did was bring back David for years of non-stories until finally the character just vanished). I guess Vivian was a nice departure for Petronia, after playing noble Quinn, but I just hated how the character ended up. I guess GL thought Meta should be aged up, since she was Kathy's stepmother, and Joe was older, but I think it would have given more story if they'd had her with a baby, Kathy being jealous, Bert feeling like Meta was her competition in the motherhood sweepstakes. Later on, the Bauer family friend Jane had a later-in-life pregnancy. That could have been Meta. Around the time of Kathy's baby lies, there was an episode where Meta and Joe fought over Kathy being in a dream world and calling her daughter "Robin." Joe was sure this was her way of hanging on to her dead husband, Robert. Meta tried to convince him that Kathy was getting better, but he was angry with her, and told her after her own past she should be more aware. It was a nice, raw bit of conflict that I wasn't expecting. Of course, he was right, and Kathy had a complete mental breakdown, culminating in a harrowing, ahead-of-its-time scene of the lights fading in and out as Kathy mistook the nurse for her mother and kept going back to her idyllic childhood with father, mother, and brother...and without evil Meta swooping in to get Joe. She kept rambling, in between her screams, about the merry month of May (the episode aired in May), 31 days hath September (her due date before going into premature labor), hearing robins, etc. Robin being in her 30's by about 15 years after this was another Irna Phillips classic.

April 1956 TV Radio Mirror.

October 1953 TV Radio Mirror