January 1953 Radio TV Mirror
as when she says, "I don't care about possessions too much. Never think of running around, buying those bits of glass! This comes from my feeling about possessions, from losing everything, so that I think now - collecting? For what?"
Susan's name, her real name, is Zuzka Zanta. She stands a doll-sized five feet and three-quarters of an inch in her nylons. She weighs ninety-nine pounds. "But my weight should be nine-five pounds," sighs this animated Dresden figurine.
And, tit for tat, Susan always went out with American boys, none but American boys (tall ones, too). She didn't want to marry a European because she'd heard, she says, that American men make better husbands. "Then, boom!" laughed Susan, "I met Jan in Canada - Jan, who is a Czech, both of us half a world away from our native homes - and we fall in love, and marry, and make a home together here in New York City, U.S.A."
But this part of the story is part of the love story and comes later on...
Susan changed her name because, when she was trying to break into radio and gave her name, Zuzka Zenta, agents and producers cried out, in pain, "Oh, please, no, not another foreigner!"
Susan did her pavement-pounding, she explained, during the war, when refugees were a dime a dozen and the hue-and-cry was on to give our American girls the breaks.
"So finally, out of desperation," she said, "I chose Susan - which is, by the way, a translation of Zuzka." She picked the Douglas out of a telephone director as, many years ago, the late great David Belasco rechristened another little girl, name of Gladys Smith; the name he picked for Gladys Smith was Mary Pickford.
"I had to have something that didn't sound foreign," Susan said. "I wanted something that was pretty usual and all-American. I wanted a plain name and, next to Smith and Jones, which seemed to be going too far, there were more Douglases than any other name in the phone book."
As a teenager in Prague, Susan went through the Conservatory. "I had seven years of ballet," she said. " I had music, drama, languages. After the Conservatory, I was in the National Theatre in Prague for a year before the Germans came. Then they closed the theatre.
"When I arrived in New York, the people who gave me my affidavit to come here - the affidavit which declared I would not become a public charge - met me. I stayed with them for a little bit. When my mother came, I lived with my mother.
"Because I didn't know English, and also because I was told you must have a high-school diploma if you hope for any work in the theatre, I went for one half-year (the last half of the senior year) to George Washington High School. I took courses in English, which was a good way of learning English and of getting, at the same time, a diploma. During this time, Mother went to work as a beauty consultant for Lord & Taylor, so that the bills might be paid.
"After I was graduated, I went and worked at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's New York offices. I was an assistant to one of the publicity directors in the publicity department. I liked it, too. I like publicity. It was fun to be a part, even an assistant part, of telling people about Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Powell, Gene Kelly, Clark Gable and all the glamorous others. But, Whether I liked it or not, I needed a job, I had to work. By this time, I had caught on to the fact that there is no National Theatre in America, where you can go and work for the rest of your life. And that it is a matter of a job here, a job there, for the one who has the time to seek jobs. This made me realize that I had to save enough money to take time for auditions.
"I stayed at MGM a year. During that year, I'd use my lunch hours to see agents. One agent, who was really wonderful to me, was Jane Broder. She took me to see Katharine Cornell in 'Three Sisters.' The two people I most wanted to see in America were Katharine Cornell and Helen Hayes, so this gave me a big, big thrill. I also learned from Jane Broder how difficult the theater is. Not as it is in Europe, she made plain to me - no security. Why didn't I, she asked, try radio?
"This was fine with me. I'll act in anything, just so long as I can act. I've done all four mediums now - theatre, movies, radio and television - and in these I've done everything but sing. I can't sing," Susan added ruefully. "Imagine that - and me married to a basso profundo!
"But for radio, as for any other medium, I had to have time to get around and meet people and try for auditions. So I lived with a family, helping them take care of their kids, which was mostly a matter of getting them up in the morning and helping them with their homework in the evenings. Since I didn't have to pay any room rent, I saved enough from my salary to live for six months without working, which was the whole purpose...
"Once this purpose was accomplished, and the money in the bank, I went to live at the Rehearsal Club on Fifty-third Street - a non-profit organization where you can live (I did) for thirteen dollars a week for room and two meals.
"So that's when I started the radio rounds, applying for auditions. I must have taken about sixty auditions, over a period of three or four months, before I got my first job, which was a part in a dramatic educational program called School of the Air. Dick Sanvdille was the director and out of that first job - and thanks to Dick - came my first running part in the serial, Wilderness Road. I played the daughter, who was one of the leads. I was in that for a year - which was really terrific!
"But I must tell you a funny story," Susan laughed, "about the first job. When Mr. Sandville interviewed me for the part in School of the AIr, he asked the key question: 'What experience have you had?' I'd answered that one many times before with the honest, one-syllable word, 'None.' And 'Nothing right now, I'm sorry,' was the answer I got in return. So, this time, what with the passing months eating away at my savings, I told a real whopper. 'Well, I worked for two years in Scranton, Pennsylvania,' I said. (Why Scranton, I will never know - I had never, so help me, heard anything about the place!)
"But Mr. Sandville appeared to accept the story and I got the job.
"The first day in the studio, he told me during a scene, 'Now you fade.' I hadn't an idea what he meant. 'Fade.' What was that? In another scene, a short while later 'This time,' said Mr. Sandville, 'you cross-fade.' I didn't know what that meant, either.
"When the rehearsal was over, Mr. Sandville said, looking me straight in the eye: 'Even in Scranton, they know what a fade and a cross-fade is.' And I knew that Mr. Sandville knew I had never before seen the inside of a radio studio, either in Scranton or any other place!
"But from then on, I worked pretty steadily...a new thing, a new job, always seemed to come out of the job before. Out of the three or four shows I did for Theatre Guild on the Air came my first Broadway play, 'Prologue to Glory,' in which I played Ann Rutledge. And out of 'Prologue to Glory' came an offer from the Theatre Guild to play the part of Consuelo, the girl lead, in 'He Who Gets Slapped.' I then did a couple more plays and a couple of movies in Hollywood, 'The Private Lives of Bel Ami,' 'Lost Boundaries.' And then I did a movie in Canada called 'Forbidden Journey.'" As she spoke of the movie in Canada called "Forbidden Journey," the color of Susan's eyes changed, deepened, for it was during the making of "Forbidden Journey" Susan met her love.
"We were doing the picture in Montreal," Susan said, "and were looking for someone to play the part of a Czech stowaway. Jan, whose full name is Jan Rubes (pronounced Rubesh), had just got over from Czechoslovakia - he left soon after the Communists came in. And someone who knew about the film, and had met Jan, suggested to him that he try for the part. He did. He was given a test and he got the part. So there we were, playing the leads, and Jan - a Czech, who spoke almost no English - practically playing himself!
"The first scene we played together having barely and briefly been introduced was - the love scene! With which we had so much difficulty that we had to do it thirty-eight times! It was a jinx - sort of a lovely jinx," Susan smiled and sighed, "for, halfway through each take, something happened, either to the camera, or the birds made too much noise, or a plane zoomed overhead, or we forgot our lines, for which the 'penalty' was - Jan and I going into the clinch time after time after time up to the count of, as I've said, thirty-eight!
"Yes, it was 'at first sight' with both of us, I guess. But speaking for myself, no guesswork about it - and why not? He's six-foot-one," Susan said, eyes blue now, and shining, "he weights 195 pounds. He has light brown hair and gray-green eyes and, as a singer, he's a basso profundo, the rich volume of which shatters your heart - and mine!
"Originally, Jan wanted to be a doctor - as I, originally, wanted and hoped to be a ballet dancer - but when the Germans came to Prague they closed the University, so he couldn't continue with his studies. Music was his next love, so he went to audition at the Conservatory of Music in Prague and won the scholarship over 280 applicants. After he finished at the Conservatory, he was engaged as bass baritone at the Prague Opera House. He was the youngest bass baritone at the Opera House, the youngest that had been three for twenty years.
"The only thing Jan likes better than singing is his sports. He is a big sportsman. In Czechoslovakia, he was cross-country ski champion and on the Junior National tennis team. We ski together now, every winter, Jan and I. The only dance we like to dance is the waltz - to the strains of 'Tales from the Vienna Woods.' - and the polka, to a Czech polka we both remember from back home...We can't play tennis together - it would be too ridiculous of me - but now we've started a new hobby, playing golf, which we can do together.
"All this, and more, I learned about him, as he learned my life from me, between takes on the picture and at dinner in our hotel on the picture and at dinner in our hotel after work at night. It was one morning, toward the end of the picture, while we were waiting for the down elevator, that he proposed to me. In English, as a matter of fact! I said 'Yes' right away.
"After the picture was finished, we saw each other every weekend in Montreal - for I flew up there to see him until such time as he could be admitted to the States. Practically a year form the day we met, we married.
"The Czech custom is, when you get married, you break a plate and keep the pieces, which are lucky pieces. For my marriage present, Jan gave me a bracelet of gold and pearls. And, after the marriage, he had a bit of the broken plate put in a gold link as a charm for the bracelet. For my first wedding anniversary gift, he gave me the Roman funeral I, made out of pearls and gold. For my second, which he gave me the Roman numeral II, also made of gold and pearls - which are my favorites of all jewels. I am not crazy about jewelry," Susan said, "except for the gold and the pearls - and Jan's imagination has gone into them."
Thanks to CBS Radio and TV's Guiding Light, and Susan's lead role thereon, no honeymoon was possible for Susan and Jan, at the proper time for a honeymoon. But last year they flew to Havana, which was a honeymoon (even though a belated honeymoon) heaven.
"My husband went there," Susan said, "to sing 'Il Trovatore' and 'The Marriage of Figaro.' As, at another time, he went to New Orleans for 'Don Giovanni.' In addition to opera, Jan does concert and has made some TV appearances. He is now on a cross-country concert tour all through Canada. I flew to Canada - on a four-day leave of absence from Guiding Light - to be with him at the start. But back to Havana, beautiful Havana...in Havana, apart from the work Jan did, we danced in the moonlight, swam in the moonlight, did everything romantic honeymooners are supposed to do."
Now in New York, these two - who met, as if by inscrutable design, half a world away from their native home - make their home, In an apartment which Susan describes as "very small and not too interesting...except for the furniture, most of which Jan built."
As a housewife, Susan doesn't, she said modestly, think too much of herself.
"I'm not neat around the house," she sighed, "only in the kitchen. You could eat off the floor of my kitchen. And I can't stand an unmade bed or unwashed dishes. Always have to have the bed made five minutes after I step out of it, and always have to do the dishes right quick! But otherwise...I don't care about possessions or taking care of them too much....
"I do enjoy cooking, love to cook, love to experiment with things. One of my favorite recipes is a graham-cracker-crust pie filled with a layer of lemon chiffon, then sliced bananas, then a layer of strawberry chiffon, another layer of sliced bananas, the whole topped with whipped cream and sliced strawberries."
When young Susan and Jan are not cooking, painting, performing in radio, on TV, on the concert stage, in movies or in opera, they have any number of hobbies to keep them happy. They take a lot of eight-millimeter pictures of each other and the places they go, Susan says, then cut their own film, edit it and caption it.
They play games. Charades, for instance. "And a wonderful new word game," Susan said, a glint in her eye, "called Scrabble. And we love cards - bridge, poker, canasta and gin. Jan loves to play chess, but I haven't the patience.
"I can't sew, but I used to love to sculpt. And I fool around some, even now, with pottery.
"We hate parties, big parties. If we have more than eight people for dinner at one time, my husband doesn't have a good time. We go to the theatre a lot, and to the ballet, and we go dancing, as I've said, usually to the St. Regis Roof.
"I'm not much of a one for new clothes. I can't, just can't stand shopping. I just loathe it. When girl friends call up and say, provocatively 'Let's have lunch and go shopping,' nothing could excite me less or bore me more. I never go. About once a year, propelled by necessity, I hurl myself into a shop, say, 'I'll take this, and this, and that - goodbye!"
"Except for evening clothes," Susan said. (With Susan, who is as feminine as filigree, there is usually an "except.") " I love evening clothes because of the big, voluminous skirts - it's the romantic in me, I guess - and also because, with evening clothes, I can wear platform shoes!
"But if I had my way - my ideal way of life - I'd live in the country in sweaters, slacks and skirts.
"The minute we have enough money, I'd like to have a farm in the country - especially because I'm mad for fireplaces...we listen to music so much, to sit by a fireplace and listen would be lovely...and mad for dogs. And horses. In Czechoslovakia, we had a town house in Prague and a farm outside of Prague where my dad used to breed horses. I rode side-saddle.
"At home, we had dogs, too, lots of them. We had five police dogs, one Irish setter and one cocker spaniel. When I have a dog again, I'd like to have a police dog, or a St. Bernard - only they eat so much...
"Our immediate plan is to stay in New York and work for another five years, during which time we hope to have two children, one right after another, as fast as we can. Then to the country, where - instead of working every day - we'll do a TV show once a week, a movie, a play, a concert once or twice a year.
"How we make out financially will determine, of course, whether this dream comes true, or not...If it doesn't," Susan shrugged, "life with Jan and with the two one-right-after-another children we hope to have will still be, for me - in town or in country, with or without a fireplace and a dog -the ideal way of life."
The years have been good to Susan, for indeed she has found love's guiding light.
By
DRW50 ·
