After a few stabs at college, a WWII tour in the Middle East and a trip to London, my father, Walter was ready to go west, young man, with an itch to act. It wasn't gold that attracted him to California, but silver - the silver screen.
So, Walter traded the Middle East heat and desert sands for California palms and rolling hills; he exchanged the four seasons of Massachusetts and a disappointed father, for two seasons in the Golden State and a chance at Hollywood.
1943. What a head shot!
He had studied acting at Clark University and was ready to give it a go, despite his professor father's urgings to finish college.
Yes, these were the golden days of Hollywood. And he had that 24 karat look.
His quest for stardom only led him to a day job as a taxi driver.
I don't know how many scripts he read, auditions he had or interviews he made, but the closest he ever got to becoming a movie star was driving Lucille Ball and John Wayne in his cab.
While in Hollywood, though, other things were brewing that would soon change his life. A mutual friend introduced him to a young woman named Isabel who lived, ironically, back in Massachusetts, not far from Walter's hometown.
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| Isabel MacDuffie - visiting her dad, E. 57th, NYC - 1940 |
So they wrote letters cross-country. For 2 years they wrote letters. Love letters that stoked their chemistry enough for a meet-up to be planned.
If it was 2014, they would have connected online and then decided to meet their mystery friend. Here it was a pen-pal connection. My father booked a flight to New England.
The first woman he saw debarking the plane was fat and he got scared for a minute. But then he laid eyes on a young woman with dark wavy hair, crystal blue eyes, thin and poised. He was pleased and very much relieved.
When he met her family, not so much.
All they did was talk about money, he said. I don't think Isabel's family was too taken by Walter either. He was what? A taxi driver? For a girl brought up in homes with names like 'Marimonte' and 'Lordvale,' the disparity of pedigree was as glaring as a Timex next to a Tag. (Sorry, dad).
Whether it was Walter's dashing looks or the need to escape her family, or the fact that she was 28 and unmarried, she followed Walter out to California.
But wait, I forgot the proposal.
Their first visit was nearing an end. Walter was headed to the airport and he realized he was 34 and missing the chance of a lifetime. Strange family or not, this was a good woman and he needed to act fast.
So he headed for the nearest phone booth. He waited in line and called her and right then and there, asked her to marry him - over the phone.
Unbeknownst to him, two little old ladies were in line behind him, watching and listening to his conversation. He hung up and turned to catch his plane. They stopped him abruptly.
"Excuse me, sir, did you just propose to that young lady over the phone?"
"Why, yes I did!"
"Well, I hope she refused you, " they said indignantly.
How gauche it was, in their minds, to offer marriage any other way than in person. Today, it would be the equivalent of proposing by text.
Yet it didn't bother Isabel. As you know, she accepted and Walter flew back to LA to plan his wedding at the Wee Kirk of the Heather chapel in Forest Lawn.
They were married October 17th, 1949.
"We were forty-niners," my mother would tell me with a twinkly smile, when I was a little girl.
Yeah. Forty-niners who struck it rich!!
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