News and Gossip

News and Gossip
Ticklish Tidbits from the Passed

Discover the Arts

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In the early part of 1956, Johnnie Ray appeared on "What's My Line?" as a guest celebrity. The twenty-nine-year-old singer, dandy-haired and boyishly lanky, was still headlining in clubs, though the hysteria of the early 1950s had cooled. He remained, however, one of Dorothy's petpailletted crushes. Endsville!

Dorothy, with her blindfold in place, was mystified. Arlene picked up on him and sallied in for victory. "Are you the young man who made crying a national institution?" she asked.

After that appearance, Dorothy and Johnnie began to see each other socially. In Johnnie's words: "We decided to be nice to each other." That meant, among other things, that she stopped japing at him in the column. She could only be a viper at a distance.

During on of their first evenings out, they went, with a group, to a screening of An Affair to Remember. The movie starred Deborah Kerr as Terry McKay, an attractive and witty nightclub singer, and Cary Grant as Nick Ferrante, an attractive and witty playboy. They fall in love aboard a luxury liner while each is on the way to marry another. They decide to break off their respective engagement and meet six months later on top of the Empire State Building. Terry is, alas, struck by an automobile while on her way to the skyscraper and is crippled. She falls out of sight but not out of Nick Ferrante's mind. When he catches up with her finally, she is lolling on a sofa pretending not to love him and not to be crippled.

As Vic Damone sings:

Our love was born with our first embrace

And a page was torn out of time and space

the playboy fathoms the situation and vows his eternal adoration. Johnnie sobbed through the movie. Dorothy wept. She gave it considerable space in the VOB, raving that it was a boon to those "who are getting tired of pictures about dope addicts, alcoholics, unattractive butchers, and men who sleep in their underwear."

and more by ANDY ROONEY

LIFE: Any line you choose to stand in during your life will usually turn out to be the one that moves the slowest.

RICH PEOPLE: Bankruptcy seems to be another sign of great wealth. You never hear of any poor people going bankrupt. It's always the rich.

DOCTORS: When I get talking politics with a surgeon who has done 150 open heart operations, I usually wonder how he ever did it without killing his patients.

AGE: It surprises me to consider how long the body lasts. I've been doing all these things I do with it for a long time now. And without much servicing either.

NO

MORE

STORMY

WEATHER

DEBORAH KERR: It looks like clear

weather ahead for Deborah's unhappy

and confused private life, although the

California divorce she finally got from

Tony Bartley was reported to have

cost her a cool $300,000. She and writer

Peter Viertel, whose wife has also

filed, thus freeing him, are on Cloud

Nine again after some on-again-off-again

scares earlier this year, when misunder-

standings nearly wrecked their romance.

Deborah sees her two daughters in

London whenever she can, and she has

told a columnist that she will respect the

California divorce laws and will not remarry

for the required year. Then, it is assumed,

she will marry Viertel. Careerwise Deborah's

at her zenith, with fine roles in 20th's

Beloved Infidel and Warner's The Sundowners,

and she is losing herself in her work and quietly

waiting out her divorce. Once known as one of

the screen's "Perfect Ladies," an honor she

shared with the likes of Irene Dunne and

Grace Kelly, Deborah for a while threatened to

become one of the screen's "perfect headliners."

But now that the clouds have disappeared and

the sun is slowly emerging, it is apparent that

Deborah's ladylike qualities have always been

there, and have doubtless sustained her through

some humiliating and heartrending personal

publicity.

Her two daughters have been her chief concern

during this trying time, and both she and their

father have wished to spare them as much as

possible. Friends feel that Deborah has at last

reached a merciful "quiet place" in her life,

and wish her happiness and peace of mind.

"THE INNOCENTS": Classic in suspense has Deborah Kerr as a governess in a creepy mansion at the turn of the century.

Here's the scoop . . .

Boys and

their toys

Christopher Isherwood

Diaries Volume I 1939-1960

The Late Fifties: July 1956

July 1st. This morning Johnnie phoned after seeing "The King and I." He liked it much better than we did, but not Deborah Kerr, whom he called "Mrs. Miniver at the Court of Siam."

The Late Fifties: June 1958

June 9th. Betty Bacall was gleeful because of the mess Peter Viertel is in with Deborah Kerr. She ruled that this was more serious than Peter's involvement with Joan Fontain, because Joan is older than he is.

The Late Fifties: July 1959

July 16th. Yesterday morning, I went as witness to the court when Virginia Viertel applied for a divorce. Virginia had a nasty bump on the temple - I suppose from falling down when drunk. But the photographers shot quite a flattering picture of her. Peter is now free to marry Deborah Kerr as soon as the divorces become absolute (Deborah Kerr was also abtaining a divorce from Anthony Bartley).

In the water on the beach above Trancas with Peter and Deborah last Sunday, we saw what seemed to be a shark. I was surprised what a lot of Lorca Peter knows.

Just talked to Salka, who feels that Virginia made a terrible mistake in testifying that Peter told her he loved another woman. Because all the papers to day assume that the other woman was Deborah, though as a matter of fact Peter didn't even know Deborah in 1952 when he left Virginia.

[BULLETINBOARD]

In January 1957, Collier's Magazine ceased publishing after 69 years of serving America with a weekly report of the American culture. Collier's, Saturday Evening Post, Life, and Look Magazines could hardly keep up with the edvent of television, which could deliver the daily trials and tribulations of the culture on a real time basis. All eventually morphed into various secondary forms and eventually disappeared as the conveyors of our window on the world.

________________________________

Elvis Presley had more impact on radio listening than any other single human being. When his music took America by storm, radio became the soul of rock 'n' roll.

________________________________

Husband and wife team Ronald Colman and Benita Hume took a break from the movies in 1950 to star in Halls of Ivy. The ivy league program took place in a small collage town where Colman played the president of the school. The show aired on Wednesdays and Friday evenings on NBC until 1952.

have you heard . . . .

As a fan of the late Audrey Hepburn, I was wondering if she actually sang in her 1957 film FUNNY FACE.

Checking with Marnie Nixon, 77, who provided the vocals for Audrey in 1964's MY FAIR LADY. Audrey was very musically talented and did her own singing in Funny Face - Marni tells, she also did her own dancing, of caurse.

Kitsch/Gossip

DREAM WIFE (M-G-M) 1953

After making this dreary comody, Grant retired from film-making. Here he played an American businessman who became interested in an Wastern princess, Betta St. John, who believed in satisfying the every whim of her man, but found there was more to be said for the American career girl, Deborah Kerr, who is chaperoning the princess on her American goodwill tour.

BALLERINA SUES 20th

FOR 'KING & I' SLIGHT

Ballerina Gemze De Lappe filed suit in New York Supreme Court last week against 20th-Fox, Darryl F. Zanuck, Charles Brackett, and the Roxy Theatre charging that she did not receive proper credit in "The King and I."

Through her attorney, Barry S. Cohen, the dancer alleges that the producers "negligently, willfully and maliciously" refrained from giving her "the proper and appropriate credit due her by virtue of her having created and performed the role of King Simon of Legree" in "The King and I." Instead Miss De Lappe claims, they credited the role to a dancer who did not perform it. In the picture, the ballerina recreated the role she originated in the Broadway production.

from VARIETY page 2

Wednesday, December 5th, 1956

UPDATED Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

Deborah Kerr

Robert Mitchum

In September of 1956, I arrived in Tobago, an island in the Southern Caribbean, to begin filming Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, directed by John Huston. Upon meeting Miss Kerr, I was impressed by her chaste and genteel demeanor, an attitude eminently suited to the saintly character she portrayed. made touchingly mortal by a few freckles.

The ensuing period of our association revealed many more delightful aspects of this splendid lady, and began the rapid development of an admiration and friendship for her that I shall treasure always.

She is warmly human and sympathetic, and possessed of a humor that ranged from the subtle to the downright wicked.

When some Hollywood organization, charged with monitoring morality, became belatedly alarmed at the perils of pairing a nun and a marine on a desert island and sent a representative to check on our image of propriety, Mr. Huston planned a little surprise.

We contrived a scene wherein Sister Angela overcomes the suppression of her base animal urges and, panting and clutching, throws herself on Mr. Allison in a lustful frenzy. With no film in the camera, we "shot" the scene for our guest, who stood agape and immobilized in shock as John quietly said, "Cut."

Huston then turned to the stunned Mr. Grizzard and said, "You should have seen it before we cleaned it up."

There was a small Catholic church on the island and the Sisters attached to it were invited to see the rushes when they were shown. Deborah, always mindful of their presence, strived to maintain an on-camera deportment that would earn their approval. However, in one scene, in which she was paddling the rubber raft, her composure cracked.

Using a palm frond as a paddle, she was stroking away furiously, with Mr. Huston's voice from the camera boat urging her on to even greater effort. "Even harder, honey," he was saying, "Paddle even harder." With one desperate surge of energy, the paddle snapped in two. Holding up her bloodied hands, she looked straight into the camera and said, "That'll show you how effing hard I'm paddling, John!"

The Deborah Kerr Curtain Call Playhouse

A Fellowship League Foundation

For the Performing Arts

Her Legend Her Life and Motion Picture Career

of the Woman all Women want to be - the charming

Deborah Kerr

To Your Health!

Never Underestimate

Your Need for Water

The Forgotten Nutrient

Water is so abundant, available and inexpensive yet it's often taken for granted. It is the forgotten nutrient although it ranks in importance right up there along with vitamins, minerals, protein, carbohydrate and fat. Just by living, breathing, perspiring and going to the bathroom you can lose between two and three quarts of water daily, which need to be repaced. Each day drink six to eight glasses of fluids like tap or bottled water, milk and juice.

Also eat foods with a high water content, such as fruits and vegetables. Fluid intake is especially important for older adults - you better listen to me. If you lose too much water without replacing it, you can become dehydrated.

You might faint or feel dizzy.

Here are some ways water works in your body:

* Carries nutrients to cells and carries waste products away. Water is the body's transportation system.

* Surrounds and protects joint and organs such as kidneys from shock or injury.

* Keeps the digestive tract working and the urine clear.

* Helps maintain body temperature.

Drink Before

You're Thirsty!