Morning Avalanche (Lubbock, Texas)
Friday, September 22, 1950
by Harman W. Nichols

WRITER FINDS GALE STORM AND DAN DURYEA,
UNLIKE MOST MOVIE STARS, ARE REAL PEOPLE

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21. --- Ordinarily, I don't mess with Hollywood's business, but this time Hollywood came to me.

It seems that Hollywood would like to have the world know that the folks in filmtown are real people and have a lot more to do than run around getting divorces and poking each other in the nose.

That's the impression I got after interviewing a couple of swell people from the coast --- Dan Duryea, a handsome blond character, and his lovely leading lady, named Gale Storm. The two are featured in a newspaper picture called "The Underworld Story."

Dan plays the part of the fearless reporter. I went in to see him with the idea of teaching him a thing or two about the city room, like I once did with James Stewart. Jim never saw a city room before. Dan, although he was always in advertising, practically was brought up in a newspaper plant. Dan stopped me cold. He knew the typewriter from a copyreader and a teletype from an office boy.

But to get back to the human side of the news. These two young people are like you would find in Phoenix, Farmer City, Beloit or anywhere else in the country.

While we were talking, Gale Storm interrupted the interview to pick up the phone and call her husband. She wanted to know if her three boys had made it to school on time that day. Did they have their breakfast? Scrub behind the ears, etc.? Actually, only two of her boys, Phillip, aged 7, and Peter, 4, got to school. Paul, only three plays like he's going to school, at home.

"When I'm home and not working in a studio," Gale said, brushing back a pretty curl. "I do most of the work around home myself."

Dan Duryea, he claims, is as much a homebody as is Gale.

"Gosh," he said, "I even do the dishes."

Not only that, but Dan claims to be a combination plumber, carpenter and electrician.

"I'm supposed to be a plumber, really," he said.

But upon careful questioning, he admitted that one time he fouled one up.

That was when he cut out pipes for the wrong bathroom in the Duryea home in Westchester, N.Y., and got the pipes all mixed up. The wrong tub gave water in the wrong room.

"We had guests when we tried it out," Dan said. "It was a little embarrassing, but the next day a union plumber straightened the whole thing out. Mostly now, I'm a carpenter and an electrician."

Dan and Gale claim they are typical Hollywood people who don't populate the nightclubs every night and don't have big parties around kidney-shaped swimming pools.

They both spank their own kids instead of turning that parental chore over to nurses or governesses. They say they have the usual trouble rounding up their broods for supper and shooing them away from the television sets in time to do the home work --- and to bed. That's what they say.