OCR Text |
Show by Ulrich Steinberg is told lo Robert D. B. Carlisle ing. But it makes you sad, too; you have to control your emotions. It begins to bring back memories of Elaine as Elsie, the little girl. It makes me .start thinking about how I used to take her to New York City, when she was a baby. We'd go on the subways and buses, and I'd carry her bottle with me. We always took the children with us everywhere We and never left them with think children need their parents. Then there was the time Elsie won the $5 bet for me by reciting the Lord's Prayer in German and English. She was just two. And I remember how she'd dress up in hermother's clothes and go strutting up the street, She was very serious about her school work she never got less than a B plus in high school. At home, she'd make all her own clothes, and when she was about sixteen, she' took two jobs at once, even while going to school, Just to help us out. I remember what she told me after graduating from high school. Sooner or later, she saidshe'd like to go into the movies. I told her, "It's going to cost a lot of money." But I said, "This is America, Elsie, the land of opportunity." And that's what she found out. First she went into modeling, then into television, and finally into her first movie part in "Sailor Beware." She went to Hollywood on Labor Day, 1951. Fifteen months later she was being starred in "Take the High Ground.", These are the things you think about when ou see your daughter's face on a movie screen in a theater. I have to admit that there's one drawback in being a screen star's parents, especially when the family is close: we miss our daughter terribly. She had quite a struggle with herself over going to Hollywood, back in 1951. She wasn't afraid of making good. It was just that she wanted to stay with us, and yet she wanted to go. So she read the Bible a little, baby-sitter- s. . :1 the way she always does before making a big decision, and then said she was going. It was God's way, she said. As it is, Elsie writes us about every week. And sometimes she calls on the phone and we talk for as long as an hour, maybe in German part of the time. She's visited us a couple of times, once over New Year's, 1952. She cried when she came in that time. There just wasn't any place like home, she said. She's already seen to it that our mortgage is paid off because the house holds so many memories IV t i r for her. - I guess one question that comes up is: As' soon as a girl becomes a star, does she forget her family? Maybe some do, but not our Elsie. She always sends us money on holidays and birthdays. She wants us to share her success, she says. Why, one time she said to me, "Dad, do you remember that $3.50 doll you got for me when I was a child? You spent your last penny on that, and I'm going "to repay you a hundredfold." y I don't know how other parents of movie stars feel, but, to me, they don't come any better than my daughter. I wish her all the success inJhe world. Being a movie star hasn't changed her a bit. She hasn't forgotten what it's like to come up the Jiard way. And Elsle'svbeing a star hasn't changed me, either. When they made I like being a pdliceman, and I'm going to stay one. I'm not going to rest on my daughter's glories. But some day the time will come for us to lean on someone else. We don't have any relatives in this country, so we may have to lean on Elsie. If we do, I know one thing for sure: we won't even have to ask her if she minds. That's what it's like when your daughter's a movie star like our own ElsieElaine - Stewart; --- Elaine's parents outside their Montclair home. 0 if 112? : J v.; r s lb-M. Family when Dad was rookie cop; Elaine at right. Growing up; starry-eye- d and high-scho- ol age. A star now, Elaine still comes homo fer Christmas. MARCH 14, 1W4 FAMIIY WEEKLY MAGAZINE 3 |