LUNCH WITH JANE POWELL.

  I should have said, “Keith Andes would have been a better choice over Cliff Robertson in your ’58 RKO Radio musical “The Girl Most Likely” but I kept still.  We dined at the same picnic table — me, Jane and comedian Louis Nye in the summer of ’63 in the alley between the Burbank NBC studios on Buena Visa Blvd.  I was an “editorial assistant” at NBC KNBC News then.

Jane and Louis were apparently at NBC to rehearse a nightclub act and were deep in discussion.  Food service at NBC was meager—a food truck with bad sandwiches and a picnic table, but it was a hot spot for gossip from technicians who would gab about Judy and June being drunk during taping of Judy’s CBS show recently.  Who was Dinah sleeping with now?

In “the girl” movie, Andes was a knockout in a song and dance Tijuana number with Jane, Kay Ballard and dancer Kelly Browne.  He also was the co-star with Lucille Ball in the Broadway musical “Wildcat,” was the romantic interest with Linda Darnell in RKO’s “Blackbeard the Pirate” and was the boyfriend of Marilyn Monroe in RKO’s “Clash by Night” drama.  The man was talented. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050438/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1