Son Jody entertains this time.
L 4 -
Dinah
(Continued)
probably the hardest sales job Dinah ever
. had to do was on herself. The
problem: convince herself that she
could do a successful television show, and
be a wife and mother, too.
Dinah had seriously considered retiring
twice. The first time was when Melissa
was born, 10 years ago. "I just didn't feel
like going back to work," she recalls. "I
wanted to be with my baby." And she did
stay home for a while.
But she missed show business. Further
more, the baby slept most of the day any
way, enabling Dinah to make a few guest
appearances. This whetted her appetite to
get back to work full-time.
She faced a more difficult decision when
Missy was four.
By then she had been signed to her
present show and had less free time with
her family than ever. When asked why
she occasionally cooked lunch for the
iacw, jufiiiaii aaiU) x nave w xj suuicriiiiiig
to keep my domesticity."
But it was no laughing matter, as she
found out one afternoon when she drove
Missy home from the Farmers Market. On
the way back, Dinah turned on the car
radio and started to hum to the music.
"Please don't," Missy pleaded.
The woman whose voice had thrilled
millions was taken aback by this response
from her own daughter. But she dismissed
it as tiredness on Missy's part.
A couple of nights later, after tucking
her daughter into bed, Dinah started sing
ing a lullaby. This time, Missy broke into
tears. Dinah couldn't figure out why.
The normal Hollywood procedure might
have been to call a psychiatrist for help.
Dinah preferred asking her sister Bessie,
who seemed to know the right answer.
Mrs. Seligman felt that Missy associated
singing with Dinah's career which kept
her away from her.
This is the end, Dinah told herself. A
person can cut herself into only so many
slices, and obviously there wasn't enough
time for everything. Besides, between
their savings and what George earned, she
could easily afford to retire.
That she didn't was due to her ability
to convince herself that if she rearranged
her time properly, if she improved her or
ganization to the highest peak of effici
ency, she could still be a good wife and
mother as well as a TV star.
Today, Dinah's schedule is one of the
most strenuous in television. When this
writer complimented her on the spontane
ity of her show and its "unrehearsed"
flavor, she smiled and said, "Just the op
posite is true. It flows easily because we
George Montgomery with Jody and Melissa.
rehearse it so thoroughly. We go over our
lines and songs again and again until they
are so much a part of us that we don't
have to ask 'what comes next?' By the
time we are on the air, we can have fun
because we are relaxed."
Since Dinah herself makes the final de
cision on all material and guests, she has
to put in considerably more hours than if
she were merely the star of the show. Her
working day frequently stretches from
early morning till after midnight.
' Just how well coordinated her activities
have become was obvious when I visited
her at NBC one noon, during what she
optimistically referred to as "my one-hour
lunch break." During this time, she ate a
large bowl of mixed salad, a piece of cake,
a roll, drank two cups of coffee, discussed
a song with her arranger, decided on sev
eral wardrobe changes, was fitted into a
dress, had her hair put up, went over a
scene with a writer, discussed a list of ap
pointments with her secretary and still
had time to answer my questions without
looking harassed or making me uneasy.
She has managed to arrange her sched
ule to have breakfast every morning with
George, Missy, 10, and Jody, 4. She takes
Missy to school almost every day of the
week, and invariably manages to stop re
hearsals in time to be home for dinner
with her family before she returns to NBC.
Week ends are for the family.
There are some who claim that only a
woman who has an unhappy home life and
wants to escape will concentrate on her
career as Dinah does. That is not true. In a
town where marriage contracts are often
canceled at the drop of a dirty look, the
Montgomerys' 15 years of married life is
one of the most heartening unions in the
entertainment field.
One question Dinah often hears is:
"Where will you go from here?" After all,
she seems to have everything a woman
could ask for.
To this Dinah replies, "There's always a
new challenge. It isn't the money a person
makes. The Government gets most of that,
anyway. But there is an excitement in
show business that you can't find any
where else. As long as I feel the way I do
now, I'll stay in it."
That promises to be a long time.
Family Weekly, October 5, 19.r
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