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Shirley's hubby Sieve Parker is producing films in japan.
MacLAINE
( Continued from page 9)
cost $25 a week, which my father paid until I started to earn
money on my own.
I didn't stay there long. Not that I minded the restrictions,
but when I got into a show which wasn't over until 11: 15, I
couldn't possibly get my make-up ofT and be home before the
doors closed. So I moved into my own apartment.
For a while I did very well financially by doing com
mercials for a traveling trade show. I was one of a group
of girls dancing around refrigerators during one-night
stands, usually at conventions and in theaters. I was doing
it illegally. I was only 17 at the time, and you had to be 21 to
travel with a show, but I fibbed about my age.
Actually, I should have grown up in a hurry with all
those balding, middle-aged customers who try to play Romeo
with traveling show girls. I was terribly naive about things
like that. If someone asked me to a movie, I went along
thinking I'd see a movie. Live and learn! Since I was bigger
than most of the fellows I met, I was quite safe, however.
Which brings me to the part of my life that causes the
most talk and raised eyebrows my love life, my marriage.
It seems to be such a puzzle not only to newsmen but even
to my friends. But as you will see, it's not so unusual.
I love my husband more than anyone or anything in the
world, and I happen to believe that if there is a compromise
to be made in marriage, it's up to the wife to make it. My
husband, Steve Parker, has very definite ideas about his
work and about this world we live in. I go along with almost
everything he's doing maybe because I agree with him;
maybe because he's my husband and I love him.
You see, Steve feels that in Asia there is a fantastic movie
and television potential that hasn't begun to be tapped yet.
He believes that all this will be of great interest to our
Western world. In 1956 he went to Japan to begin his dream.
We had been married for two years. I had just told him
that Sachie (her real name is Steffie) was on the way. I've
never told Steve this, but I've always felt that it was this news
that gave him the impetus to go there.
The first couple of years he divided his time between
his new work and endless conversations with me on the long
distance telephone, telling me how lonely he was, wondering
if I was lonely, too, and questioning whether or not we both
had bitten off more than we could chew.
Before long (long ha! It took two years!), things began
to pay off. He made two experimental Japanese short sub
jects and won awards with both.
In the meantime, my career began to catch on, too. But
if I had a quarter for every time I thought of giving it up
Family Weekly, January 29, 1961
to be with him, I'd give Rockefeller a run for his money!
Each time I began to feel I couldn't stand being alone, Steve
would step in and say, "You'd look back on that decision
and blame yourself the rest of your life for not having the
character to go through with what you set out to accomplish."
So I stuck to my guns. So did he. And the newspapers
had and are still having a field day!
I never have been one to get sticky and sentimental pub
licly over my personal life, so when I was in Europe a few
months ago and the English press asked me hoio I managed
to stay married, I got flip and said, "Because we don't live
together." Did that raise eyebrows!
Sachie Becomes a Traveler
One of my gravest concerns with the separation has been
the effect it might have on Sachie. Maybe I'm only justifying
things, but I think Sachie not only has accepted our situation
in a healthy manner but is thriving on it. I never left our
country till I was over 21. She has been around the world
three times, and she's only 4V4. When she conies home from
Japan, she speaks fluent Japanese to our housekeeper who
speaks only Spanish, and our housekeeper speaks fluent
Spanish to me( but I only speak English! Nobody knows
what's going on in that house half the time.
Our daughter Sachie is named after another very special
little girl whose name was Sachiko. She was three years old
and a Japanese, and Steve met her in Hiroshima. Her parents
were dead, and the rest of her family had died of radiation
sickness. She was alone in the world. When Steve found her,
he didn't know her name. For some reason she was always
smiling, so he named her Sachiko because that means "happy
child" in Japanese.
He fed, clothed, and nursed her, and took out formal adop
tion papers in order to bring her back to this country. But
she died, too of radiation sickness.
Sachiko's tragic life perhaps makes my separation from
Sachie all the more painful. Take that time a year ago when
I took Sachie to the airport for one of her "alone" trips to see
her Daddy. She was going to spend Christmas with him. I
was making a film and couldn't go. I knew I would be spend
ing the holidays alone again, but that wasn't really what
made me cry. It was Sachie. As I began to leave her, she
looked up at me and said, "Don't worry, Mommy, I won't cry.
And you shouldn't cry, either, because Daddy and I will call
you on the telephone and say, 'Merry Christmas!' "
Happily, I believe this present separation from Steve is
nearly at an end. We are finally going to make our first pic
ture together in Japan. It will be called "My Geisha."
If there ever was a time for me to feel happy and secure,
I suppose it's now. I think a few years ago I was afraid our
successes would end somehow, and we'd be left with nothing.
I don't feel that way now not because our careers are
going well, but because I've come to realize what's really
important in my life my husband and family. If I never
worked again, I'd still be left with a gold mine.
The only thing I can't figure out is shall I try to erase
the last 4'2 lonely, hectic years or shall I always remind
myself that that's how I got to be what I am today?
Denn Mnrlin eoslnrs with Shirley in "AM in a Night's Work."
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