Deborah Kerr: Hollywood's best loved actress and for years considered a model wife and mother - shocked even her closest friends when she announced her separation from husband Tony Bartley while in Vienna last May where she was co-starring with Yul Brynner in "The Journey." Bartley, promptly retaliated in London a few days later when he filed a writ charging his wife had been "enticed" by screen writer Peter Viertel, who was also working on "The Journey," and, seeking to protect the sanctity of his marriage and the welfare of his children, had them made wards of the British court. While Deborah was silent at first, Viertel - whose own wife is now in the process of divorcing him - called Bartley's allegations "nonsense, and pure malarkey." Deborah herself, took more decisive action when she returned to Hollywood the following month, and filed suit for divorce from Bartley, charging "cruelty" - but didn't go into details which isn't necessary in California. She also asked for the custody of their two daughters, Melanie, 11, and Francesca, 7. The great pity, of course, is the effect the scandal has on the children, which is the reason Deborah at first refused to coment on it at all, although recently she has denied emphatically that there was any truth to Tony's charges. Yet even Deborah couldn't deny that difficulties had existed between them for almost six months. Once before their marriage eas in rough water, shortly after she first came to the United States. Tony had followed her a few weeks later, after he settled their affairs in England. He first served as his wife's business manager and then went into television and films as a producer. He has never been anywhere near as successful as she was which, friends feel, was the major reason for the difficulty. He is supposed to have been both proud and resentful of Deborah's career. Tony and Deborah first met during the closing days of World War II. As she and Stewart Granger - in Belgium to entertain British troops - got ready to leave the officers' club in Lille, the door flew open and a tall, good looking squadron leader burst into the room, yelling "Damn it, somebody stole my jeep. If I ever get my hands on that bloody ---- "
And then he spotted Deborah, and stopped cold.

 

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Deborah Kerr: Trying to make a man fall in love with you is the quickest way I know of making him run far away. If a girl is interested in a man she should try to discover something about him - his likes, interests, hopes and even his faults. If he should make demands that go against your principles, gorget him. A girl can and should, however, use all of her natural feminine charm to intrigue a man. She can make it a point always to look her best not only when she's with him but at other times, too, and she can develop her own personality so it is impressive to others as well as to the desired man. She can also learn to mix easily since no man likes to feel he has to "guard" his girl. The rest is up to - just plain chemistry !

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Frank Sinatra & Montgomery Clift: Two months after his screen test for FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, Frank still did not know if he would get the part. So poor had his chances seemed that producer Buddy Adler had not intended even to watch the test. He did see in eventually, at director Fred Zinnemann's request, and was impressed. Zinnemann and scriptwriter Dan Taradash were interested but not convinced.
"The test was all right but not great," said Taradash. "We'd tested Eli Wallach, and in terms of acting his test was much better. We'd all settled on Wallach." Still, they were struck by Frank's physical appearance. "The scene was one where he was stripped to his shorts and drunk, really wobbly," Taradash said. "Sinatra looked like a plucked chicken. He looked the part of Maggio, whereas Wallach was a well-built guy, muscular. We all finally agreed he probably could do it."
Without the acquiescence of Harry Cohn, who held the power at Columbia, it did not matter what anyone else thought. In the end Cohn was coerced into giving the part to Frank. He gave in grudgingly, on the condition that Frank be paid a minimal fee.
The news reached Frank in Boston, where he was performing at a club called the Latin Quarter. He shared the good news with Pearl Bailey, who was on the bill along with the Duke Ellington band. "He said, 'Pearl, they've offered me a movie called From Here to Eternity,'" Ellington's drummer Louis Bellson recalled. " 'They're paying me $1,000 a week, which is nothing.' Pearl told him, "Take it, and don't look back.'"
The shooting of Eternity began in March 1953, and Frank forged a drunken friendship with Montgomery Clift, the brilliant, doomed alcoholic cast as Maggio's buddy Prewitt. They worked on their parts together, got plastered together. At their hotel in Hawaii, they tossed beer cans from the window and yelled obscenities in the lobby. Burt  Lancaster and Deborah Kerr, whose passionate embrace on the beach would soon scandalize and thrill audiences, often had to put Frank and Clift to bed. They drank themselves into oblivion every night, according to Lancaster "We would get very, very loaded," said James Jones, who often joined the pair. "We talked about the injustice of life and love, and then Monty and I would listen to Frank talk about Ava Gardner."

FOR ALL HIS VICISSITUDES, the gamble of casting Frank in From Here to Eternity had paid off. The movie had been a hit from the moment it opened in August 1953. Critics who in the past had blasted Frank's acting now praised his portrayal of Maggio. "When the mood is on him," the Newsweek reviewer declared, "Sinatra can act." The New Yorker hailed him as "a first rate actor."
The Prayers were answered on Oscar night in March 1954, when the Best Supporting Actor award was announced. As the audience broke into tumultuous applause, Frank ran down the aisle to be presented with his statuette, a moment he recalled as having marked the "greatest change" of his life. "It's funny about that statue. You walk up to the stage like you're in a fream and they hand you that little man before twenty or thirty million people, and you have to fight to keep the tears back. It's a moment. Like your first girl or your first kiss. Like the first time you hit a guy and he went down . . . . I don't think any actor can experience something like that and not change."   

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Anthony Perkins: b. April 4th, 1932, New York, N.Y. - d. September 12th, 1992, Hollywood, California. Anthony was forever identified with his portrayal of the murderous motel owner Norman Bates in the chilling Alfred Hitchcock thriller PSYCHO (1960), and he reprised this role in three sequels (1983, 1986, and 1990). Mr. Perkins made his film debut in THE ACTRESS (1953) while still studying at Columbia University in New York City. The following year he starred on Broadway as the sensitive adolescent, Tom Lee, in Tea and Sympathy. In the film FRIENDLY PERSUASION (1956), he portrayed a young Quaker worried about protecting his family's homestead while being true to his religious beliefs. That performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor. He then specialized in playing awkward, anxious, and gawky young men, notably in FEAR STRIKES OUT  (1957), THE TIN STAR (1957), and DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS (1958), before achieving international stardom in PSYCHO as the maniac who stabbed Janet Leigh in the shower. Perkins then appeared in several films in Europe, including THE TRIAL, THE CHAMPAGNE MURDERS, and TEN DAYS WONDER, before playing an assortment of roles in U.S. motion pictures. He was a psychotic arsonist in PRETTY POISON (1968), the chaplain in CATCH-22 (1970), and a political assassin in WUSA (1970), but he never recaptured the success of the original PSYCHO. Some of his other screen credits include THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN (1972), MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1974), and EDGE OF SANITY (1989). Perkins also appeared in such plays as Look Homeward Angel; Harold; Steambath; and Romantic Comedy. In one of his last roles Perkins starred as a police detective in the television movie IN THE DEEP WOODS, which appeared posthumously. His death was attributed to complications from AIDS.   

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Deborah Kerr: A while back, Sheilah Graham announced that she wouldn't be surprised if Deborah reconciled with Tony Bartley because "a court battle for her daughters would make her too ill." It's a nice idea, but so far there's no sign of reunion - only of misery all around. On location in England for COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS, Deborah refused to take a hotel suite in London, preferred a small private house in the suburbs. And there she stayed, even refusing to shoot outdoor scenes, because public opinion in her own homeland was so vioently against her. Yul Brynner, her co-star, came back from England with the report that aside from the possibility (now slight) of losing her daughters, it's the English press that has hurt Deborah more than all the accusations and talk. As soon as the movie was finished, Deborah whisked away to Switzerland for a badly-needed vacation. Now, friends say, she'll be applying for American citizenship, making her home permanently in Hollywood and New York. We're delighted to have her, of course. But its' a shame that she's leaving England not as a friend, but a fugitive.

 

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Deborah Kerr: Delicious in a pale blue trouser suit and lively as a teenager. At 51, she exudes a kind of cuddly glamour and still has the cutest nose in the world. "People have talked about my nose all my life," she laughs. "And I'm always getting people wanting to know who my plastic surgeon is. And my daughters say they don't mind anything else, but why didn't God give them my nose? "So here I am, an old woman known for her nose. I really think it's what put me on the map. I was pretty, but I didn't have huge, fantastic eyes or marvelous cheek bones. Just this silly old schnozz. "And before you can ask me, no I've never had my face lifted. I'd be afraid of coming out looking Chinese." Deborah Kerr is still a striking beauty and currently enjoying success in the London stage hit, "The Day After the Fair," which is playing to packed houses - a tribute to the star quality of Deborah Kerr just walking across the stage because the show itself didn't get good reviews. She doesn't hide her pleasure. Her voice goes a bit squeaky with triumph when she says that now they know the box office is full, the management is ready to redecorate her dressing room. There's over a month's wait for seats to the show - something almost unheard of in London. Down the street you can walk in any nite to see Maggie Smith in "Private Lives." But for Deborah Kerr you have to book well in advance. "Isn't it lovely" she giggles. After 20 years away from the theatre, she has a right to feel happy. The last time she trod the boards was in the celebrated "Tea and Sympathy " which ran for two years in New York and a year on the road. Then she made the film. She thought there would never be an experience like that again "because people just don't write great parts for women or, if they do, Elizabeth Taylor gets them.
"Unless you want to march around stark naked - and I don't. Although if I were 20 and had a gung-ho body I wouldn't mind," she smiled disarmingly. I reminded her that not all that long ago she appeared in pretty close to the altogether in The Arrangement with Kirk Douglas. "Ah yes, dear. A mistake. A big mistake. But then I wasn't exactly - how do they say it now - full frontal was I? "
But she is not without honor in her contribution to the permissive society. It was in a film called From Here to Eternity that she made her screen bid for great sexual freedom when she and Burt Lancaster grappled urgently on a hot Hawaiian beach with the waves lapping over them as they lapped over each other. Strong stuff at the time and definitely one of the most memorable moments of on-screen history.
"Being considered such a lady rally bored the pants off me but in retrospect I suppose it was better than being thought of as a sex symbol. A sex symbol I'm certainly not. Especially at my age." Speaking of age, I reminded her that I had once read that she said it was tough for a woman to be left on her own at 50 -
"But if she's reached 50, she's had a darn good go. "Ah, but that was before I reached 50 myself," she said. "Now it doesn't seem nearly such a good go as it did. But I still tend to take it for granted that a man of 56 is almost bound to be off with an 18-year-old. It's happened to all our friends. But not yet to me, fortunately, as my marriage to Peter (Viertel) is better than it ever was. Thank God. "Our marriage is a success because we both work at it all the time. And we laugh. That's the most important thing to do in life, laugh. Except when I'm having my picture taken - if I laugh then I always look like a chipmunk  with the mumps. "And Peter and I never make plans. Just live life day to day. That's best - day to day." She goes back to the subject of age and doesn't mind talking about it at all.
What is nice, though, is that she gets on well with both men and women. "I've worked more with men because I've been a leading lady, but I adore women and worked with only women in "The Chalk Garden " and now in The Day After the Fair. I'd give my right whatever to be directed by a woman, say the French lady Agnes Varda because she is so brilliant, or to be in a play by Marguerite Duras. Not because they're just woman but because they happen to be major talents. I'm no women's libber, believe me. But I don't think it's entirely a man's world either."

 

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