Dale Tells Erskine Caldwell the Truth

I can’t help myself and will add comments about this story from time to time — they will be in italics.  In “Cowboy Princess Rides Again” I told about the interview Mom gave to Photoplay’s Erskine Caldwell and why she did it. Following is the whole interview.

During the 1930’s and ’40s, Hollywood was ruled by two queens and a prince. The queens were Luella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, the prince was Erskine Caldwell. Luella and Hedda had been making and breaking the careers of actors for many years. Their feud was very public and everyone in town understood that if you were the good friend of one of them, you could expect no support (good publicity) from the other.  As luck would have it, Luella had been very supportive of Dad from almost his first screen appearance as Roy Rogers, and Hedda was always very kind to Mom (Dale). When Mom and Dad married on New Year’s Eve of 1946, Mom gave the story to Hedda.  Luella took her revenge a couple of months later. The following is an exclusive interview that Mom gave Erskine Caldwell (feeling he would be impartial) for “Photoplay” magazine.

Mom and her son (my brother), Tom Fox

It’s rough on a girl to live a lie for seven years in Hollywood.  I know.  I did it.  For the seven years I’ve been a picture star, gone to Hollywood parties and invited friends to parties at my home, I have ached to say that the nice little guy at my home was my own son. But I couldn’t.

One night at a Christmas party, other picture stars brought their sons and daughters.  I took my son, but I had to say he was my little brother.  I hated it–and was sad for weeks afterwards at the memory.  At a USC football game, the band was playing and my friends said, “Hey, that’s a terrific band!”  I wanted to shout, “My son plays the flute in that band, he’s a fine musician.”  But I couldn’t. My son went into the service.  I wanted to wave the flag. . . I wanted to say that my son was in uniform. . . I couldn’t.

Then one night I was listening to the radio. The voice of a Hollywood columnist was talking about the screen and its personalities. Suddenly, the voice mentioned my name. Then the blow fell. That impersonal tone went on to say that I had lived a lie. . . that the boy who lived at my house was not my brother but my son.  I sat there benumbed while across the room, the expression on my son’s face showed the sympathy he felt for me. But, now I am glad the ice is over.  And I want to explain it.

Back in 1926, when I was fourteen year old Frances Smith of Osceola, Arkansas, I met Thomas Fox, a high school senior of eighteen.  Six months later we eloped to Blytheville, Arkansas and were married. That was in January of 1927.  My son, Tom Fox, Jr., was born on the 28th of the following November. When Tom was two years old, his father died (actually Tom Sr. deserted them and Mom divorced him) and I, at seventeen, had to go to work.

Hollywood is always talking about “discovering somebody. The first time anybody “discovered’ me, it scared me to death.  I was doing some filing one morning in the insurance company where I was employed, unconsciously singing as I worked.  The boss called me in to his private office.  I thought he was going to fire me.  I almost fainted with relief when he said that, if I could sing, he would put me on the company’s radio program.  I sang on two stations. . . for free, still keeping my job as secretary.  I missed Tom, who was with my parents.  But I knew he was better off with my folks.  However, when my family moved down on a farm near Italy, Texas, I couldn’t take it any more and joined them.

Before long, however, a radio opportunity opened up in Louisville, Kentucky.  The program director there, Joe Eaton, thought I should have a better air name than Frances Smith, so he suggested “Dale Evans.”  I’ve had it ever since.

Finally, unwilling to be so far away from Tom any more, I went back to Dallas, where I sang on the air each morning, Monday through Friday, and on Saturdays I went home to the farm.  Those were wonderful weekends. Tom was eight years old and a lot of fun.  He had a birddog named Kate and a bicycle. My father bought him a pony, a lively paint, but the first time Tom tried to ride him, that paint threw him. Tom would never ride again until after I was in Westerns here in Hollywood. Tom was getting to be a husky little farm boy with light brown hair, serious dark brown eyes and a slightly crooked front tooth.  He always had a sort of “prove it to me” look about him.  And he still does.

On Sunday mornings, we’d be up early for Sunday school. With some effort and grease, we’d conquer his cowlick and get the knickers that wouldn’t stay up at the knee. He pleaded with me to get him long trousers. But I held out as long as I could.  I didn’t want to see him grow up. It was while I was working in Dallas that I met Dale Butts, a fine musician and a very nice guy who did my arrangements and helped me a lot with my singing.  In a few months we were married and we moved to Chicago, leaving Tom with my parents.

I saw Hollywood for the first time as the singer with Anson Weeks’ band. That seven months’ tour was an education, but it kept me away from my husband, then in Chicago, and my son in Texas. Finally, I realized that it was no good that way, so I went back to Chicago, and Dale and I sent for Tom. I kept on working. Everybody knew I had a son and it didn’t make any difference. Tom was enrolled in Lane Tech School in Chicago, studying flute.  He was a natural.  When he was a baby in his playpen, he wiggled his fat little feet in time to music long before he could talk.

I was doing shows on CBS when an agent from Hollywood heard me one day.  He called me to say that Paramount was looking for a girl to play opposite Bing Crosby in “Holiday Inn” and asked me to send pictures and a record of my singing. Dale and Tom were happy about the chance it might give me to get into motion pictures but as the days went by, I told them they were looking for a ship that wasn’t due to dock.

Then, one morning in 1941, the agent called and said come ahead, Paramount was going to test me for the part. He met me at the airport to take me to the studio. On the way in, I told him that I had a son who was almost thirteen years old.  He looked at me as though he’d suddenly swallowed a green persimmon.  “Don’t say anything about it,” he told me, very seriously.  He then told me that it would ruin my career before it started if I said anything about Tom. I was shocked and bewildered.

“Couldn’t you send him away to school or back to your folks?” he asked. I blew up at that. I told him that, because of necessity, Tom and I had already been separated a great deal.  That from now on he was going to be with me and that was that. He then suggested that I introduce Tom as my brother. I let that suggestion hang in the air, agreed to say nothing to the studio about having a son until after the test, and would settle the whole thing later–if and when I was forced to.

The part in “Holiday Inn” was not for me because it called for a dancer.  But Paramount went ahead with the screen test anyway.  After it was over, I went back to Chicago, writing the Hollywood junket off as experience.  However, my Paramount screen test was shown at Twentieth Century-Fox, and I was signed to a contract.  This time it called for a decision.  A career in motion pictures, to a struggling band singer, is the “ultimate goal.”  It would mean not only the career I’d dreamed about, but an income which would make it possible for me to give my son all the things I wanted for him.

I knew nothing of Hollywood except what I had been told. . . and I was told that the movie audience would never accept me if it was known that I had a strapping thirteen year old son.  I was definite about one thing, I wasn’t going to give Tom up.  Better, by far, to keep him with me and have him pose as my brother, in this way I could have the career I wanted and give Tom the education I wanted for him.  I put it up to Tom, squarely.

It was, I think, during those few short hours as we discussed the situation, that I saw my son grow up.  He wasn’t the average thirteen year old considering the problem.  He knew what Hollywood had always meant to me.  He had heard the talk of the entertainment world.  And, he couldn’t see that it would make any difference whether he went as my brother or as my son.  All he wanted, he said seriously, was to be with me and to continue his education and music.  So we came to Hollywood.

The statement has been made that I have denied my son.  That is not true.  All my Chicago friends knew Tom was my son.  So did the studio.  I entered him in high school as my son.  When we joined the Westwood Baptist Church, it was as mother and son.  In those cases, I would not lie.  my friends and the studio kept my secret, but a near crisis occurred when Tom was eighteen.  When he was inducted at Fort MacArthur, he naturally gave his parent’s name and occupation.  We had to talk the Army newsmen out of breaking the story, still living in fear that it would ruin my career.

For a year, I was under contract at Twentieth Century-Fox and it was about this time that Dale Butts and I were divorced.  Separation in marriage is no good.  He was a wonderful guy.  (Mom and Dale Butts actually divorced a few years later, after she had already been working in Dad’s pictures for some time.  Dale Butts was, and continued to be after their divorce, the musical arranger on Dad’s films.)

Armand Schaefer, a producer at Republic Pictures, heard me on the Edgar Bergen show and signed me to a one picture contract.  I’ve been at Republic ever since.  Through all this, my son, Tom lived with me in Hollywood as my brother, not as my son.  He has gone to school, become an accomplished musician and grown into a might fine young man.  He’s getting along great and I’m proud as punch of him.

The night the Hollywood columnist (Luella) announced that Tom was my son and not my brother, she also said that Tom would be married after my marriage to Roy Rogers.  That is incorrect.  Tom was engaged to a lovely girl at UCLA, but they decided to call off their engagement because they were so young.  It was their own decision. (Tom and Barbara did get married a year or so later and were married until he died just a few years ago.)

 I have no apologies to make.  I’ve kept my son with me for the past seven years in Hollywood. He’s a good, normal, healthy young man and is headed for his own career.  He is happy, too, about my marriage to Roy Rogers and loves Roy’s three children.  If fact, Roy and I are looking for a home in Hollywood large enough for all of us.  I’m glad my secret is out.  The lie is over and I have the opportunity to tell the whole story.  I’m grateful, too,  to the thousands of people who have written me saying that they like me better now that they know I have a son.  I know now that the people in the motion picture audience have a lot more understanding than Hollywood sometimes give them credit for.  Seven years ago I did not know that.  Following the advice given me, I lived a lie.