Was It Wrong To Marry Her?

Jack Lord’s Bitter-Sweet Love Story

By Paul Denis

TV Radio Mirror - June 1963

Once again, he called the elusive number. Once again, they told him Miss de Narde refused to accept his call. Since they’d never met, his name obviously meant nothing to her. (It was Jack Ryan then, not Jack Lord; there was little TV - and no “Stoney Burke” at all.) But somehow, Jack knew, Marie de Narde was destined to mean a lot in his own life. This he was sure of; it wasn’t until later - after so much happened - that doubt and fear too over and he felt his persistence was to bring her nothing but grief!…Now he felt only this strange compulsion he couldn’t explain. There were so few facts: He’d gone to Woodstock, the artists’ colony, to visit his brother Bill. He’d seen this fascinating L-shaped stone house - so lovely, it must have been built by loving hands. And he knew he had to meet the owner-builder! Following the postman in his rounds, Jack saw that mail for the mysterious house was being forwarded to Marie de Narde, 212 East 48^th Street, New York City. And - as soon as Jack returned to town - he began phone that address…

This was war time and heaven only knew when he could call again! Now he had to go home to say goodbye to his parents before sailing on another perilous voyage across the Atlantic

It was while Jack was at his parents’ home that Miss de Narde finally returned his call. “Mr. Ryan,” she said firmly, “there’s no use in your phoning me daily! I’m just not interested in your offer to buy my house.”

“But I never offered to buy your house,” said Jack.

“Aren’t you John Ryan, the realtor who made a bid for my house?”

“No,” Jack answered. “I didn’t even know the house was for sale! I just fell in love with it, and wanted to talk to you about it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said contritely - and the tone of her voice excited Jack far beyond his anticipation.

“I’ve just spent my  three-week leave trying to get you on the phone,” he said, disappointment making his own voice break. “I’m sailing tomorrow. I’m with the Merchant Marine.”

“If you wish,” she apologized, almost timidly, “come over to my apartment and tell me what you want.”

When her door opened, they looked at each other for a moment in silence. Jack saw a slender brunette with gentle brown eyes. A lovely girl, charming and chic in a rather European way.

What Marie saw was equally attractive: A man in Maritime Service uniform - six-foot-two: rugged, handsome Irish features.

They sat down for coffee and conversation, and he told her how he had fallen in love with her Woodstock house - and how much he wanted to know who designed it.

“I did,” she admitted, explaining, “I’m a fashion designer and know something about art.”

“I’m an artist,” he told her, “and that house is a work of art. I’d like to buy it from you.”

“But you’re sailing,” she protested. “The war is on. What would you do with the house?” Immediately, she thought, Perhaps he wants it for his wife.

But he didn’t have a wife!

They talked about the house, art, travel, poetry, the theater, ‘way into the night. And when he left, five hours later, to hurry to his ship, he felt he had known her all his life.

He wrote to her often, and he began to think of her as “my girl,” even though he’d known her just that one evening.

But there was a war on, and Jack was an officer on cargo and troop ships. One morning, as he was standing wheel-watch, on the bridge, his ship was torpedoed. Though it sank in seven minutes, he managed to get into a lifeboat, made land sixteen hours later.

Somehow, in those dreary, desperate hours in a lifeboat adrift in the East Atlantic, he found himself thinking constantly of Marie de Narde. If he could only see her again…

Whenever he got back to New York, he saw her - and when the war was almost over, he was assigned to Washington, D. C., to help illustrate a manual for the U. S. Maritime Service. Later, Jack was asked to act in a training film, and he did so well, he made fifty more. His service days over, he realized he didn’t really want to go back to the art field, despite his New York University degree.

He had found something new and more exhilarating, more challenging!

“The ham in me really came out,” he confessed to Marie, when he returned to New York. “Art is not for me. I’m going to be an actor - one of the greatest of my generation!”

Marie agreed. “A man should do what makes him happy.”

But when Jack told his friends, they warned him. “You’re twenty-three, and it’s too late. Most actors start earlier.”

Only Marie encouraged him.

He decided to change his name. John Joseph Patrick Ryan was ‘too Irish.” Jack assumed an old family name, Lord, and started making the rounds of Broadway theatrical agencies.

I’m Jack Lord,” he announced - but the receptionists only yawned.

His family had money - his father owned a small fleet of boats in the China Sea - but Jack was too proud to accept help. So he rented the cheapest room he could find in the theatrical area: $50-a-month, furnished, on West 47^th Street

Jack counted his pennies. He scrimped on food, put all his money into photographs and clothes. Weeks, and then months, went by, but he couldn’t get a single job in acting. Worse, he was madly in love with Marie…and he didn’t dare propose. He had to get his career moving before he could ask her to be his wife.

At the end of a heart-breaking year, he landed one scant week’s work in summer stock. He earned fifty dollars.

By now, Jack had lost thirty pounds. Lean and muscular, he had never looked handsomer. But agents kept saying, “Sorry; come back when you’ve had more experience.” Over and over,

Only Marie kept his courage up. “Don’t worry, darling, you’ll make it.”

Yet visiting Marie in her lovely all-white apartment - and knowing she was so successful - he felt guilty and self-conscious. Fifty dollar for one year’s work! He had so little to offer her…

By June of 1948, he was down to his last three dollars.

“Marie,” he told her that night, “I’m licked.”

“Darling,” she said, “you mustn’t give up. I would think less of you, if you did. Perhaps the answer is to retreat, just for a while.”

“I’ll take a job in something,” he promised, “and get a bankroll before I try acting again.”

In the morning, he walked into the Ford sales agency on Broadway and announced: “I want to sell Fords.”

And he got the job!

So Jack sold cars by day and studied acting at night. He read every theatrical book he could borrow, sat in the top balconies to see the new plays. Sometimes he took Marie along, eternally grateful that she didn’t demand choice seats and fancy restaurants.

Becoming an actor was now an obsession. He had to become an actor - a great actor.

But he dared not confide in anybody except Marie. Only she understood.

He had to make more money. So he quit his Ford job and went over to the Cadillac sales agency.

“I think we could manage”

Soon he was average $200 a week, and he knew the time had come for a Very Important Decision.

“Marie,” he said diffidently, stifling the doubts that still troubled him. “I’ve never been in a position to support a wife, since trying to be an actor…but now I think we could manage…”

And so they got married on January 17^th, 1949

“Let’s be sensible,” she told him. “You move into my apartment, so we can save money.”

He moved his clothes into her two-room apartment, and married life began.

He found in Marie something rare: The completely dedicated wife. She judged everything from the angle of how it affected Jack. He could ask for nothing better.

Except the break that hadn’t come.

He went to the Neighborhood Playhouse and applied to its director, Sanford Meisner.

“It takes twenty years to be a good actor,” Meisner told him. “Are you serious enough to really work day and night to accomplish this?”

Twenty years meant 1969. But at least it gave him a time goal.

Two nights a week, Jack attended classes at Neighborhood Playhouse. The other nights, he studied. And, daytimes, he sold Cadillacs. The first year, he earned $10,000. The second, $13,000.

For the first time he felt confident about the future. “Darling, I’m making enough to support us,” he told Marie jubilantly, “and you don’t have to work anymore.”

Marie didn’t hesitate a minute though it meant quitting an established career.

She remade her life to suit his. “You’re holding a full-time job and studying all night,” she told him. “You rarely get more than four or five hours’ sleep. You must watch your health.”

She planned their food accordingly. Lost of fresh groceries and meat, no fat. She encouraged Jack to exercise with weights and barbells. He fenced at the gym, and they went for long walks together.

Jack’s income had risen to $16,000. But, as the third year ended, he wasn’t happy. He wanted to give full time to acting - and Meisner offered him a second-year scholarship at the Playhouse.

Even as the old doubts rose to plague him, Jack told Marie; “Sweetie, I can’t take this any longer. I don’t want to go on selling all my life.”

“You’re too creative to sell cars and be happy,” she agreed. “It’s either back to art, or trying acting again.”

The next day, he started looking for acting jobs. He had money in the bank, the woman he loved…suddenly, for the first time, he felt secure.

Five days later, he landed a role on TV’s “Man Against Crime.” He got $300 for three days’ work and was elated.

Then - months of waiting and only occasional jobs on TV. Depressed and feeling more guilty than ever about the way he’d uprooted Marie’s life, he brooded about getting a selling job. He blamed himself for asking Marie to give up her own successful career. “When I was a little girl,” she told him comfortingly, “I was taken to France to live. I absorbed some of the French way of life, where a woman lives for her husband. She doesn’t compete with him; she doesn’t complain.”

Jack’s sense of guilt

Her words lifted a heavy weight from Jack’s heart, but he still protested. “You’re so creative, and have so much to offer.”

“Sure, I made money,” she soothed him. “But fashion designing is basically a business. Believe me, housework makes me happier!”

And it was true. With Marie, homemaking was a creative thing. She invented recipes - and when Jack had TV rehearsals, she got up at five to bake biscuits and make breakfast.

To friends who marveled at their devotion to each other, Jack explained, “We’ve molded our lives around our marriage. We have all we need - in just having each other.”

And he thankfully gave credit where it was due: “Marie is like the ideal of an old-fashioned wife. Her home and her husband are her life.”

During the next three years, he went to and from Hollywood, for TV and movies. By 1957, he and Marie knew their future lay out West. So they flew back to New York and spent the “most emotional” Christmas closing up the small apartment where they first discovered their love.

They moved into a Hollywood apartment. Months later, in a brash display of confidence, they bought their first new car - a beige Cadillac.

Jack kept turning down plum roles. He turned down twenty-two TV series in all. Suddenly, “Stoney Burke” came along, and Jack grabbed it.

“This is right for me,” he told Marie excitedly. “It has the quality I most admire - integrity!”

So now Jack has given Marie his most treasured gift: Success - and the attendant security which Jack himself, perhaps, needed most of all.

If Marie herself had any doubts or misgivings, throughout those thirteen years of struggle, she never gave them voice.

“She is,” Jack vows, “the most fascinating, most interesting woman I have ever met. Every day, something new and good is revealed to me.

“She goes with me for fittings. She types my letters, edits scripts I write, selects my shirts and ties, cues me and works with me on characters.

“And she runs our home with economy and love.”

They rarely entertain. “We don’t have the time now. The few hours I have, I want to save for Marie.” To relax on weekends, they slip off to an art exhibit, or a picnic lunch, or to the beach. Sometimes they go horseback riding. Usually, Jack takes his camera along - and winds up with a stack of photos of Marie.

“She is a wonderful model,” he says happily. “She is different looking…very, very beautiful!”

Now they have moved into the former apartment of movie magnate Charles Skouras - an elegant layout including three bedrooms, three baths, three magnificent exposures overlooking Los Angles.

Now, when they’re reminiscing, he likes to remember Sanford Meisner’s warning “Twenty years to become a good actor.” And critics tell him he’s seven years ahead of the game!

Marie like to recall the stone house she built in Woodstock… the house that started it all.

“Remember it, darling?” she smiles. “I had thought of it as a hideaway for myself, away from the city, during the war years. But I never actually lived in it.  I was so busy, I never had time to go there. That’s why I sold it.

“It might have been a waste. Yet I believe there is a higher purpose to everything one does. And that house served its purpose…because it brought me love.”

In moments such as this, Jack Lord can’t even recall those hours of agony he suffered when he wondered if he’d been fair to Marie to allow all those sacrifices on her part, if he’d been wrong to marry her…because what they’ve build together is more lovely and enduring than any stone house in the world!