Going My Own Way [antikvár]

A couple of years before my father died I found out he really did love me. I was rehearsing a television show at NBC in Hollywood with Nanette Fabray. It was the first time we met, but like practically everyone else in show business she was an old pal of Dad's. During the break we strolled over to the restaurant on the lot to have lunch together. We gave the waitress our order and were relaxing into small talk about nothing in particular when she said she had a story about the old man I might like to hear. From the time I was a small child I never met anyone, in show business or out, who didn't have some kind of story about him, and long ago I had picked up the habit of only half listening. But this one was different. "Back around 1957," she began, "Bing was working on a picture called Man on Fire. The script had been written by my husband, Randy MacDougall. He was also directing it and was one of the producers. Randy was a good fishing buddy of your father's—the first one to take him down to Las Cruces—so they had more than the usual movie-business friendship. I don't know, but maybe that influenced Bing's decision to take on the project. Man on Fire was a big departure from his earlier work. It was a straight dramatic film without any comedy or songs. The only singing was the title song behind the credits, and that was done by the Ames Brothers. If you remember, the story was about a divorced father's bitter struggle for the custody of his son and the strained relationship he had with the boy. "Anyhow, one afternoon Bing came over to the house to meet with Randy about some revisions in the script. I sat in the living room with them, listening to them work. As the afternoon moved on, the conversation drifted away from the specific situation in the movie to more general talk about parents and children. The