1959 July 12 AMERICAN WEEKLY MAGAZINE Al Parker Cover Menopause Dina Merrill

Description: Condition is very good. The Cover. The Husband's Role in Menopause Social Register Cinderella The School That Became a Home. The Trunk in the Hell Hole. In One Ear. By AL PARKER By T. F. JAMES 4 .By AMOS COGGINS 7 By FRANCES LEIGHTON 12 By LAWRENCE G. BLOCHMAN 14 By JOE MCCARTHY 17 Needlework 18 Patterns 18 Quick Suppers 19 ----------- 2 ----------- BY Y SPECIAL REQUEST, Al Parker, one of America's most distinguished illustrators, created the domestic group on the cover of this week's issue and christened it The American Weekly Family. "I was after something typical," the artist told us, "and by typical I mean different, of course." "Of course," we said. "If that sounds confusing," he continued briskly, "it isn't. Because, you see, the thing about Ameri- can families is the more typical they are, the more different they are-otherwise they wouldn't be American." That point having been cleared up, he went on to say he'd show us what he meant in following covers of the Woods family at work and play. We hope the prospect excites you as much as it does us. If it doesn't, the only possible explanation is that you don't know Al Parker. ----------- 3 ----------- The Husband's Role in Menopause By T. F. JAMES ----------- 4 ----------- "YE GODS, this steak is tough," Fred Har- ris said, sawing at the piece of beef on his plate. The crash of flying silver abruptly interrupted Fred's labors, His wife, Margaret, had flung her fork down on the table so violently she had broken her water glass. "Is that all you have to say?" she screamed. “Criticizing me seems to be your only pleasure these days." "Criticizing you?_ Honey, I haven't said " "You don't have to say it. I get the implication. I can't cook. I can't tell good meat from bad. I can't run my house. I'm ready for the old ladies' home!" Whereupon Margaret Harris fled sobbing to her bedroom, leaving her flabbergasted husband alone at the table. What had he done, Fred Harris wondered? If he had planned to criticize anyone, it was that burglar of a butcher down at the corner, who ought to take better care of customers who had been trading with him for most of their 24 mar- ried years, What was eating Margaret, anyhow? He sud- denly remembered four unnecessary arguments within the last week, all begun by her seizing on an innocent remark. nature, Fret Harris suddenly felt persecuted-and more than a little annoyed. By coincidence, that night Fred was scheduled to see their family doctor for a checkup. Casually, the doctor asked how Margaret was feeling. Fred could not resist a wry remark to this old friend, about women being incomprehensible creatures. The doctor did not smile. "Margaret could use a little help from you, Fred. She's beginning the menopause," he said. "In fact, I don't think I'm exaggerating one bit when I say that you are the key to how well she handles it." "Menopause," Fred said, flushing embarrassedly. "Do you mean that's the end . . , of our sex lífe?" The doctor laughed. "No Fred, not a worry in the world there, Actually it could mean a kind of second honeymoon. But you're going to have to A mild-mannered man by earn it." "How long does it last?" "One or two years. About 18 months is average. But keep calm. It won't be 18 months of hell. Just a little bit of the devil here and there-nothing you can't handle, if you know what you're doing." Obviously Fred Harris was in dire need of some medical education. Anxiously, fearfully, he listened as his doctor began explaining that basically simple, but much misunderstood process called menopause. ----------- 5 ----------- Fred was not alone in his ignorance, if that was any consolation to him. million wives will go through the menopause this year, and doctors, marriage counselors and psychia- trists estimate that fewer than 25 per cent of their husbands have a clear understanding of what it involves. Between eight and ten This is doubly unfortunate because more and more students of the problem are becoming con- vinced that how well or badly a woman weathers this period of her biological life depends enormously on her spouse. What is the menopause? The word comes from two Greek words, menos, meaning month, and pauein, meaning to cause to cease. tionary defines it as "the period of natural cessa- tion of menstruation, occurring usually between the ages of 45 and 50." The end of menstruation, however, is only the external sign of what is happening within the woman's body. There menopause means that the ovaries are gradually slowing down and will eventu- ally stop producing the "eggs" which are the woman's contribution to the biology of conception. More important, for understanding the effects of the menopause on a woman's personality, the ovaries also produce certain hormones called estro- gene and progesterone. Along with playing a large role in childbearing, these hormones operate throughout a woman's body, in concert with other glands of the endocrine sys- tem-the pituitary (at the base of the brain), the thyroid (below the Adam's apple) and the adrenals (just above the kidneys). Webster's dic- Together these glands control the body's physical equilibrium; they are also delicately related to each other. In the menopause, when the ovaries begin to cease functioning, this vital balance is temporarily disturbed. The pituitary gland is the first to respond-it increases its activity several fold. This inevitably affects the other glands-but there is a wide range of individual reactions. One woman's thyroid may be sensitive to this jump in pituitary secretion, and begin pumping extra thyroid hormones into her body, producing a tendency to nervousness, emotional ups and downs. and a sudden loss of weight. In other women the adrenal glands are affected. These glands produce adrenalin, a powerful stimu- ----------- 6 ----------- Social Register Cinderella Rich and aristocratic Dina Merrill is Hollywood's "new Grace Kelly" (P.S. She got the job the hard way) By AMOS COGGINS. ----------- 8 ----------- ALL ACTORS cherish their fan let- ters, which range in tone from simple, po- lite requests for autographed photos to avowals of love, some sublime, others amaz- ingly scampish. It's different, however, when the fans write to Dina Merrill, a rising Hol- lywood star who is getting the big build-up as "the new Grace Kelly." Like the Princess of Monaco, Dina is a beautiful, blue-eyed blonde-and "ladylike," a term which Hollywood does not apply to all its feminine stars. The fans don't ask Miss Merrill for photographs. They ask for money. There is a good reason for these requests. Dina-a contraction of her real name, which is Nedenia-was born into one of America's richest families. Her cousin is Barbara Hutton. Her moth- er is the much-married Mrs. Marjorie Merri- weather Post-Close-Hutton-Davies-May, who inherited $100,000,000 give or take a couple of millions, from her father, C. W. Post, founder of the Post cereal empire which became the General Foods Corporation. She married a succession of millionaires, including Dina's father, Edward Hutton, a financier philanthropist, and Joseph E. Davies, a diplomat who was U. S. Ambas- sador to Russia and Belgium. And Dina's husband is Stanley Rumbough, Jr., a former Marine flier who is one of the heirs to the vast Colgate fortune, and head of another family enterprise, the Metal Container Cor- ----------- 8 ----------- poration. What with all this money and social background, which is far more impressive than Princess Grace's, whose father, after all, did once carry a hod, not very many people, including her family, friends, her fellow actors, and the editors of the Social Register, take her acting career seriously. "It's a little depressing," she told me, "to be still listed in the Social Register after all the acting I've done. They've al- ways dropped people who became actors, and it seems to me that the only reason they keep my name in is because they don't take my career seriously, either. "I've made five movies, co-starring in four of them. I've been on more TV shows than I can count. I've played the lead in 11 summer stock and Broadway productions. I've studied acting at the American Acad- emy of Dramatic Arts and with leading coaches and people still think I'm just playing at being an actress for kicks." Miss Merrill sighed. "Even after I'd been under contract for two years to 20th Cen- tury-Fox, and after I'd made a couple of pictures for them," she said, "Buddy Adler, head of the studio, called me to his office when I was being considered for a new part. He leaned across his desk and he looked at me peculiarly for a while, and then he said, "Tell me, Dina, are you really serious about all this?' " I said, "If (Continued on following page) (Merrill is just a stage name.) ----------- 9 ----------- The School That Became a Home With 20 acres, a swimming pool, playgrounds and five pianos, it seemed ideal for a family of 10 By FRANCES LEIGHTON Washington Editor ----------- 11 ----------- EVERY VERY growing family wants a home with room to grow into. But few are lucky, or imaginative, enough to solve the problem the way Vic and Hilda Orsinger did. Vic and Hilda, who met and were mar- ried while he was working his way through college in Washington, D. C., set up house- keeping in a single room 'on $90 a month. Five children and a law degree later, they had graduated to a four-bedroom home, and Vic was embarked on a prosperous career in law, real estate and other investments. But when two more children arrived, it was time to look for more elbow room. About two years ago they found it- the abandoned Honeywell School on the out- skirts of Washington. The only "students" were spiders and stray cats, but Vic and Hilda saw possibilities in the big stone building with a dozen classrooms, 20 acres of ground, foot- ball and baseball fields, a basketbail court ----------- 11 ----------- and a swimming pool. Room enough for 22 elbows (an eighth child was born after they moved in; and a ninth is now on the way). So they bought the place, got rid of the cats and the cobwebs, and went to work. Today the old school is an elegantly furnished home with seven bedrooms, six baths, five classrooms that haven't been done over, and "rooms we haven't counted yet." The dining room used to be the principal's office; the old kitchen is now the library; the chemistry lab became the new kitchen; the science room, language room, history room and English room became, respectively, a family room, girls' bedroom, boys' bedroom and master bedroom. Vic's office used to be the music room and the laundry's in the old storage room. It's a lot of house to keep but, as Mrs. Orsinger's remarks on the accompanying pic- tures show, it's fun to live in. ----------- 12 ----------- The Trunk in the Hell Hole It was shared by an 'army of crabs and a dead man By LAWRENCE G. BLOCHMAN with Henry Pignolet, Veteran Paris Crime Reporter ----------- 13 ----------- THE FEBRUARY storm sweep- ing in from the Bay of Bis- cay had at last blown itself out, leaving the coast of southwestern France strewn with jetsam. Three school- boys in black smocks and berets were taking the long way home across the beach near the resort town of Sables-d'Olonne, seeking pirates' treasure. Low tide beckoned the young adven- turers to the exposed rocks at the foot of the cliffs. One boy spotted what ap- peared to be a big sea chest wedged into a rocky crevasse known locally as Le Trou d'Enfer-the Hell Hole. As he ran whoop- ing to claim his find, an army of crabs scuttled out through the lid of what he now saw was a battered wicker trunk. He pulled the lid open-and the circling SECRETS OF THE PARIS POLICE gulls echoed his scream of terror. There was a dead man in the trunk. He had been a distinguished-looking man of about 60, balding, with a close- cropped white mustache. Labels and all identity marks had been removed from his clothes. There were no clues- until a wine- shop owner in Sables-d'Olonne told local police that on February 8, 1949, three days before the macabre discovery, while bi- cycling home after closing his bar, he had nearly been forced off the road by a Renault sedan with a big trunk strapped to the roof. It was chauffeur-driven and had a woman passenger. It was headed in the direction of the Hell Hole. The key license letters indicated a Paris registration. So, although the Paris police had no record of such a missing person, the Sables- d'Olonne police sent the body and the bloody wicker trunk to 36 Quai des Or- fevrés, headquarters of the Police Judi- ciaire, detective branch of the Paris police. The case was assigned to Chief Inspector Andre Morin, one of the ace detectives of the Brigade Criminelle. Morin picked a dozen detectives to try to run down the origin of the unusual wicker trunk. They soon uncovered a Paris salesgirl who remembered selling such a trunk to a woman on February 7. The salesgirl had remarked: “It's big enough to hold a man, isn't it?" The purchaser was an attractive, stylishly dressed woman of about 40, name and address unknown. She was driving a Renault sedan. Meanwhile Inspector Morin was pa- tiently checking every car - rental and

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