The San Bernardino County Sun from San Bernardino, California • Page 30

D(4 THE SUN Thursday, April 19. 1973 Fashion Is Important to Actress Nanette Fabray After a Fashion is his opposite. "One day when my husband was changing a light bulb I buzzed around him like a May fly making silly suggestions. He exploded. Gradually I had to learn to be less of a supervisor." Once the marital road was smoothed, Nanette discovered she had a happy marriage by dying.

My husband made me see that the reaction of outrage was selfish and childish. At last Evelyn and I talked about death and I was with her the moment she died. The friendship was so profound. We found peace with each other even in the end." (Distributed by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.) even when the aura was sad. A few years ago Nanette's best friend, lab technician Evelyn Gilbert who "stuck" with her during the ear operations, learned she had incurable cancer.

Nanette says: "I couldn't talk with her. I was furious angry beyond words that she was hurting me so much when I really looked at her I thought she was prettier, smarter and more dazzling than I ever be. There was a bit of competition between us. I understand things better now." When Nanette was of age, she cut the umbilical cord and zipped into New York to seek fame and fortune without Mom's guidance. Soon she landed a role in the play, "Bloomer Girl," and was off to Chicago on a pink cloud of unparalleled optimism.

Disaster struck. The year was 1942 and the first day onstage Nanette discovered she couldn't hear one chord from the orchestra. Deafness was settling in. In a fit of panic she thumbed one easy way for a woman to be her most gorgeous self." Radiant Nanette, who's slightly cross-eyed, is a very pretty 50 with a lean figure and a flair for wholesome honesty. She's just insecure enough to need real and psychic support a humanizing trait that adds to her immense charm.

Fashion obviously is a way to put her best foot forward. "Xanny," says her second husband, Ronald MacDougall, "you just don't realize how powerful you are!" It's a favorite, often-uttered assurance addressed by his favorite pet name. MacDougall, president of the writers Guild of America West, is a veteran of 40 major movies, including "Mildred Pierce" the flick that made Joan Crawford famous. The two had known each other for years. But each was married to someone else Nanette to publicist David Tebet.

Often they met at theatrical parties in New York and the conversation was more than polite. Nanette describes their electricity as mutual admiration. By MARIAN CHRISTY tfhen Nanette Fabray starred In the Broadway play, "Jfr," PreskJent," 10 years agj.j she was a facsimile of Jacqueline Kennedy and that miant plenty of couture clones. Producers put her In Chris-tiaji Dior originals and she has befn hooked on fashion ever sire. jut the baptism into designer getups was not without trauma.

JJQne day, when I took a big leap across the stage, my heel caught in the hem and the wftole thing sort of ripped off;" says Nanette who just there frozen in her pantyhose. The audience giggled because they thought the Sret Service made her ner-vtiis and the strip was in the 4 $ince then she hit the best-dressed list, wears the best of Paris ready-to-wear mostly Christian Aujard and has a dozen new Revillion furs that range from poncho to blazer to maxi mink. "Fashion," she says adjusting her hearing aid, "is ACCESSORIES INLAND CENTER Mm i "I admired i monumentally," she says. One day, years after each was divorced, there was a chance meeting with MacDougall. He asked her to lunch.

"I got awfully prim and proper and made all sorts of nuances about not caring to date married men," says Nanette. "He laughed, explained he was divorced, we had one date and I proposed," she says, rattling off the rapid events. Nanette is the product of complex influences which have added to her determination to succeed and subtracted from now-overcome 1 i gs of inferiority. She's the type who has always been able to turn lemon into lemonade. Her mother, now 85 and living in Los Angeles, is the former Lela McGovern, a 3 Exciting Collection of "NEW SPRING" STYLES at Reasonable Prices Handbags Fashion Jewelry Cocktail Rings Cocktail Watches Small Leather Goods by Prince Gardner Bankamericard Master Charge Layaways 0i ACCESSORIES throught the telephone book, picked a doctor at random and zoomed to his office.

The word was sobering. The doctor predicted wrongly she'd be totally deaf in five years and, not so incidentally, would lose her ability to speak. "I left the office a tortured girl," she says. Within a few weeks she was back in New York. Deafness would mean death to a budding career.

But she had to know if there was a chance even a slim one that something could be done to save her hearing. Friends took her to a noted surgeon. Four operations later three for otosclerosis and one sta-pendectomy deafness was averted. Today there's still the ever-present hearing aid but: "The point is I came to grips with my problem. It has given me strength, force and energy.

Once I licked this thing I felt tremendously uplifted." It isn't easy for a so-called "star" who's as strong-willed as Nanette to subjugate herself to another human. Self came first. That was the major problem Nanette had to lick in her marriage to MacDougall. "We never fought over big things," she says. "Just the little things.

But they were symptomatic of our basic differences." MacDougall, for example, is known for his immense power of total concentration. He is single-minded and applies the same fixed attention to minor household chores. "I'm volatile," says Nanette, who Uss Your BankAmericird or Mister Charts mm stunning beauty queen from New Orleans who was "trapped" by marriage and became the prototype pushy stage mother seeking self-expression through her child. It was a kind of human bondage. At one point the mother was with Nanette's pug nose and had a plastic surgeon redo it.

The doctor inserted a metal bridge. In winter when it was terribly cold Nanette's nose turned purple. There was a second operation to remove the bridge and, much later, a third to plump it back to its natural shape. Each operation made the nose smaller. Nanette on the tie that bound her to ambitious Mama: "I loved her.

But I hated the way she propelled me. I thought of her as being totally unreasonable. Besides, the new play 515 W. FOOTHILL BLVD. CLAREMONT (714) 626-2411 EftSTERQ 11 i ea.

OVER BOO QUALITY LEADERSHIP BRANDS Nanctle Fabray packs to leave stage husband Eddie Albert in mm 'No Hard Feelings' amies sxfr ymw In. stiretcSn pairatyliose HOMEMADE EASTER GOODIES 0 Use Your BankAmericird or Master Chirp 2 Right now, just buy one pair of any Iane5 pantyhose (including Hanes Everyday) aajp'ckupafreespeciaUyrnarked packaga of Hanes Everyday. This is stretch pantyhose the way Hanes makes it Pantyhose that comes in your size with a stretchy fit that hugs your legs all day. So hurry down and pick up your free pair of Hanes just buy one pair of any Hanes pantyhose and set Hanes CAKES RAINBOW 0 00 .4.29 Decorated cute as a bunny 7 inch .1.89 8 inch 2.49 Colors of the rainbow in Coconut CAKES 7 inch 8 inch iiB BUNNY INDIVIDUAL CAK Beautiful! Colorful! BUNNY SHAPED CAKES COOKIE nncirTC DHOrCIO Coconut Coated CAKE EGGS Fondant Coated FILLED WITHGRISWOLD'S BUTTER 'n LOVE COOKIES PX cKes I INDIVIDUAL NEST CAKES Ifete 9o9Qo zz iRV nest and eggs. ijil- DECORATED WITH BUNNY fen HOT CROSS BUNS BRAND DEPARTMENT STORE Shop Monday thru Friday 10 to 9 Saturday 1 0 to 6 Closed Easter Sunday HWY.

10 AT FORD ST. REDLANDS (7141 793-2158 GHISUIOLDS Brandt Dtpartmtnt Store, lecatod Stattr Bret. Ctnttr, Bae Llne Strt at Wottrman Av. Phone (714)888-1714.