"Why Hollywood Teens Are Headed For Trouble"

This article, by Mike Connolly, appeared in the August 1959 issue of Screen Stories Magazine

"I would like to ride on a motorcycle just once," Sandm said. "But it's not because I like to wear blue jeans and leather jacket. I leave them to the Beatnik kids; I gladly give them to the Beat mob. I want no part of them. Then why the cycle kick? Because I like to go fast; it must be exciting to zoom along the highway with the wind blowing your hair and nipping a frost into your cheeks. But once would be enough.
"Look, Mike, I have a lot of fans among the Beat set. At least, they tell me they're Beats in the letters they write. I don't want to offend them. Here's the way I feel about it:
"I love to see nice, beautiful, happy movies and plays. I love music, too, and I play records whenever I get a chance. Not the 'way-out jazz, but show tunes--music from Pal Joey, Redhead and The King and I. And I like to read a lot of good novels and biographies. I also like psychology and philosophy. I've decided not to go to college because I love working in movies; I don't believe I can combine the two. But between pictures I am going to attend classes in psych and philosophy."
So far it's been a hectic life for this particular seventeen-year-old---going to school and making eight movies in two years, from Until They Sail to A Summer Place. Finally, Sandra asked, "Will it sound like I'm bragging if I say how proud I was when I graduated from University High this past June, in my cap and gown---with a B-plus average? Please, when you write this, don't make me sound like I'm bragging, just that I'm--oh, just sort of proud, because it's been a tough grind.
"It really was tough--math, psych, English, art, geography, French; all that on top of all those movies. My favorite subject? French! I loved it. Four years of high-school French, and then four months of speaking that beautiful language in Paris while John Saxon and I were making Reluctant Debutante. I want to go back to Paris. I always wanted to go there. Doesn't every girl?
"Am I getting off the subject? I don't think so. I think I could easily become a member-in-good-standing of the Beat set. They seem to have fun, although sometimes I think they only think they're having fun. Jimmy Dean--poor Jimmy--and Marlon Brando seem to be their idols. Dean and Brando made it big. So the Beats slouch around in leather jackets and torn shirts and think they're making it big, too. What they don't seem to understand is that Brando has graduated from A Streetcar Named Desire to Sayonara and The Teahouse of the August Moon, and now his new movie, a Western called One-Eyed Jacks. Just before Jimmy's death, he was graduating, too. Remember how dignified he looked in the closing scenes of Giant?
"I think it's a fad: one starts it; the rest follow. They all want to belong, to conform to a false ideal.
"I'll tell you something else: I don't like the no make-up bit that seems to characterize the girl members. They sit around the coffee-house half the night, with boys who look like they've just stepped out of a Jack Kerouac novel, and listen to Kenneth Patchen's poetry set to dissonant music.
"They all look alike, and that's where Hollywood is heading for trouble if this keeps up. Because if all the stars start looking like the boy and girl next door, their fans will stop going to see them. If you want to see the boy or girl next door, you go next door--not to a movie.
"I take pride in being well-dressed and made-up. One of the nicest things that ever happened to me was when Joan Crawford told a reporter I was one of those helping to uphold the glamor of Hollywood. As a result of that, we have become good friends. Because although I never met her, I wrote to her and thanked her, and we started corresponding. I was so upset when her husband died. In a letter, I pleaded with her to return to Hollywood and go to work in movies again. I'm glad she's back to do The Best of Everything; it will help her recover from the shock of Al's death.
"It helped my mother. Did you know she was only seventeen when she first marriod? No, I'm not hinting that I'll do the same. Incidentally, her mother was only fifteen when she was married! But it doesn't necessarily run in the family. Let's get back to that later. You're getting me sidetracked.
"Mother's second husband, Eugene Douvan, died a little more than two years ago just before we came out to Hollywood. Eugene was buried on a Saturday. The following Monday I got a call from Ross Hunter, the Universal-International producer who has been so wonderful to me. I didn't want to come to Hollywood and leave my home and friends. It always happens like that, it seems, when you're not in a hurry for something and don't particularly want it. But it turned out to be the best thing in the world for mother--to get her out here among new faces and places, away from the scene of her grief.
"I take pride in being well-dressed and carefully made-up. I know I'm extravagant, but there's nothing that picks me up more when I'm feeling depressed than going on a clothes-buying jag. That, and make-up and perfume--lots of it! I almost lost my mind over the clothes and perfume in Paris.
"Did I tell you my favorite song of all the show tunes I play? It's the one Pat Suzuki sings in The Flower-Drum Song-- I Enjoy Being a Girl! I enjoy being a girl, too. Closetsful of beautiful clothes, and drawersful, too. Shelves full of cosmetics and perfume. Nice jewelry; nothing fussy. Mother knows what I like. She gave me a beautiful string of strictly non-flashy pearls and some nice clothes for my seventeenth birthday last April.
"Did I tell you what else happened on my birthday? If I'm talking too much about myself, promise to stop me. But you know, you wanted to know about the Beatniks; it does tie in, in a way. Delmet Daves, my director on Warner Brothers' A Summer Place, tells me I have a wonderful ability to concentrate; no matter how much commotion there is on the set, I'm able to concentrate. So don't throw me off the subject! Where was I? I can't concentrate. Oh, yes!
"It was bad enough that on my birthday we were finishing A Summer Place--I always break up when a picture breaks up; I can't stand to think of separating from the cast and crew I've worked with, because they're wonderful--on top of that, on this day of all days, my mother didn't even wish me a happy birthday when I woke up!
"Like Jimmy Durante always says, I was mortified. Then I arrived on the set, still not a word about my birthday. I got made-up, went through wardrobe, and then Troy Donahue and I got in front of the camera for our big love scene. Honestly, Mike, it was tough. I had been crying because everybody had forgotten poor little me. My eyes were red. The make-up girl must have thought I'd been up all night.
"We rehearsed and Delmet shouted 'Roll 'em!' and off we went. And then, right in the middle of our big love scene, without even shouting the customary 'Cut!'--Delmer led everybody on the set in singing Happy Birthday to me. That was when I really cried. Everybody was so wonderful.
"Oh, sure, we had a cake. Ross Hunter's card read: I still love you even though you're growing old. Say, I guess we are getting up there at seventeen, aren't we?
"No! I'm not thinking of getting married. Yes, the studio has arranged dates for me--doesn't every studio? But only when I approve of the boys they suggest. Sal Mineo, for instance. They asked me if I would like him as my escort to a premiere, and I said yes. He was a perfect gentleman.
"I have never steady-dated. I have been out with Sal, Tommy Sands, Dean Stockwell and Lin Crosby. Dance? Certainly I love to go dancing! Now you aren't concentrating? Remember my eight pictures and my B-plus average? How could I do all that and go out dancing all the time? I'm not Superwoman.
"It's the truth--I don't have time for romance. Movie-making is a full-time job. Yes, I would like to have a real, true romance. I would love to go steady, go out with someone I really like. Believe me, there's nothing I would like better than true love and perfect companionship. But I don't know of anybody of whom I can honestly say, 'This is my first real crush!' Does that mean I'll be an old maid? Golly, I hope not?
"I have never steady-dated. Lin Crosby? What about Lin Crosby. Oh, that. No, you couldn't call that steady. I only dated him twice. I like Lin. I like to talk to him. But it's no romance. We just have fun together. What am I talking about? We had fun. I haven't seen him for two months!
"Well, there was that publicity pose--when a photographer wanted me to pose kissing him. But let me go back to the beginning.
"One of the girls who handles my mail also handles Kathy Grant Crosby's. So, I met Lin. And then Joan Cohn had a baby shower for Kathy. Lin stopped by after the shower; we had a date, and then another, and that was it.
"We talked on the phone every day. Then I went up to Monterey, California, to location on Summer Place. He came up, too--his father owns that place on Pebble Beach, near Monterey, you know--and we did some publicity posing. Then he had to come back to Hollywood. I was supposed to call him when I got back, but I never did. And then he went to Las Vegas. Our paths haven't crossed since.
"To tell you the truth Mike, I love picture work so much I don't think I could combine it with marriage. A wife should be home waiting for her husband, with his dinner all ready for him, when he returns from work. I seldom get home before seven at night. It's been rough lately, too, because our housekeeper left and I've had to do the marketing on the way home from the studio. Then I cook for mother and myself. She washes and dries the dishes because that's the part I hate. There aren't many dishes anyway, because I just have coffee and juice for breakfast, and no lunch. But I love to cook! We have a beautiful kitchen, too, in the new home we bought in Beverly Hills, high up off Benedict Canyon. We lived in an apartment before that. Then we sold our property in New York and bought the house. At first I missed New York. But now that we have the house, I love it out here.
"I still miss my half-brother Eugene Douvan Jr. very much. He lives in New York. In every picture, I wear the ring he gave me for good luck.
"No, mother never comes with me on interviews like this. She's not the 'typical stage mother' at all. But she's very helpful and understanding; we're very close. She's on the set all the time because she has to be. A California state law requires that a juvenile--that's me, and isn't that a horrible word?--has to have a guardian on the sound stages during working hours. And what better guardian than a girl's own mother?
"Guess what? Right now I'm playing Cupid for mother! But she's like I am. 'The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.' No, I won't explain it. You figure it out.
"Just the other day I asked Mother if she thought I would know the fellow I'm going to marry when I met him. Wouldn't it be funny if I knew him now, and don't like him at all? What if he's a Beatnik who's going to reform one of these days?
"I like to be realistic about the movie business-and it's a business, or why would we talk about our careers? What I would like to do would be to settle down after I've established myself as an actress---if I establish myself as an actress!---and then make one picture a year instead of four.
"Sometimes I say to myself: 'Sandra, when you get married you'll slow down.' Then I do a retake: 'Sandra, you'll slow down and then get married.'
"Favorites? My favorite actress is Audrey Hepburn. Does that give you a hint? Nothing of the Beatnik in her, is there?
"My favorite color for eyes? Blue. Mine are brown and I hate them. I've always prayed that some day they'll turn blue. "My favorite ball club is the Los Angeles Dodgers, not the New York Yankees. I'm from New York----so sue me! I love the Dodgers!
"My favorite part is the one Susan Kohner did in Imitation of Life, not the one I did in the same picture. For that part, I would have dyed my hair black--or done anything from standing on my ear to memorizing Romeo and Juliet backwards. But then came Susan; she played that role much better than I could have. Discouraging, isn't it?
"When you're writing my story, please don't give anybody the notion that I hate Beatniks. I think it's just a protest they're making against whatever is bothering them. Personally, I don't understand it. I hope it's just a fad. I hope they outgrow it.
"Would I throw over my career for the right man? No, not completely. But then a woman has the right to change her mind!
"I've got to go back to the set now. Tonight after work, I'm going shopping for clothes. Maybe I'd buy some blue jeans and a leather jacket. Maybe one of my Beatnik friends will invite me for a motorcycle ride. But just once--and then the blue jeans and the leather jacket will go to the Salvation Army !"



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