Tall candles burn, their flames reflected in stained-glass windows, the altar gleams, the scent of flowers garlanded from pew to pew is breathed in each passing usher and bridesmaid, organ music swells as priest and altar boys take their places. The bridegroom and his best man look down the main isle as the bride advances slowly on her father's arm. Her wedding gown trails along the white cloth spread over the crimson carpet, a gloved hand clasps a bouquet of white roses...or are they lilies?...her white veil billows slightly as she comes. The veil is very fine, but Bobby, yearning toward her, cannot see her face... "My father thinks I should wait till I am thirty before I marry," confided Bobby. "I think twenty-six or twenty-seven would be about right. I'm twenty now, so I have at least six years to find my bride. "I was an altar-boy for several years and served at a good many weddings. I'd like my wedding to be held at High Mass, but Low Mass is beautiful, too. It seemed to me that the brides and bridegrooms at both masses looked very happy, so I suppose it doesn't matter, so long as it's the right girl. I haven't found her yet, but I have a vague idea of what she will be like when she puts on her veil. "My wife won't be in the profession and she won't work. She will be smaller than I am, slender and sweet, probably pretty, as most girls all, but beauty is not essential. I'm sure I'll think her beautiful, even if she's plain." We sat in a garden built on a set for Bye, Bye Birdie, Bobby's first picture, watching his co-star, Ann-Margret, leaning gracefully against a railing of the summerhouse, posing for a close-up. Her long hair swung back, the lights shimmering on its bright red-gold. "What color is Ann-Margret's hair?" Bobby inquired. "Gold or red? It's beautiful. It would be fine for my girl...but have you seen that black, black hair, very soft, like a cloud? That would be nice. Or maybe a blonde -- a blonde would go well with me. My hair is brown--" touching his thick crown "--and so are my eyes. Her eyes? I like big, wide-open eyes. I've always thought of hers as blue, but if hey turn out to be brown, I'll probably sing: I never cared for big brown eyes, But YOU'VE got big brown eyes, And that's my weakness now! "What really matters is the spirit within. I want a girl who is lovely of heart, sweet and true. She would take care of the home, and be there when I come home, and when children arrive, she'll be busy taking care of them. I'd like three children, perhaps two boys and a girl, but I'll be happy with whatever we get, just so they are all healthy." The director called Bobby into the scene, and he and Ann-Margret moved along a little bridge leading to the summerouse in slow dance pattern, a play-back of their song echoing throughout the garden. "This is what life is all about!" sang Ann-Margret, tossing her shining hair. "I like Ann-Margret very much," remarked Bobby, on his return to me. "She is wonderful to work with, and we get along fine. She's not interested in me romantically, and since she is an actress, that ends it. Right now I don't have much time for girls because I am always working. I like girls and I take them out, but her eit has usually been for magazine picture layouts where you meet a girl for the first time one morning, and the two of you prance around at supermarkets or the beach or Disneyland, and a photographer goes along, telling you what to do and how to do it. Nothing romantic about that sort of thing." When he was five years old, Bobby's father took him to a concert by a famous band leader. The little boy sat up enthralled, listening. "I was only five, but I knew right then that I belonged in show business," the young singer recalled. "I used to sing and dance and do imitations for my parents and their friends. When I was seven, or maybe I was nine, my father took me to audition for Paul Whiteman's TV Teen Club. He had a program in Philadelphia, where we lived, and amateurs could try out for him. I won that week's audition. They called me back for the finals and I won there, too, so I became a regular on the show. Week after week, I did imitations or sang or danced or took part in skits. My name was Bobby Ridarelli, but Paul Whiteman told me to change it to Bobby Rydell, which I thought was a good idea. As he grew older, Bobby entertained in Philadelphia night clubs, accompanied by his father, imitating Johnny Ray, Sammy Davis, Jr., Red Skelton, Jerry Lewis and others. Later, he joined a rock 'n' roll group known as Rocco and the Saints. Frankie Avalon was also with the group. At fifteen, Frankie Day, Bobby's manager, arranged that he sign a long-term contract with Cameo Records, and since then he has made many hit records, one of them selling eight million discs, and he has sung in Australia, Hawaii, Great Britain and on the Continent. "I've traveled around this country and through many other lands, and found that the world is full of beautiful girls," Bobby observed, sagely. "I am of Italian descent and I like Italian girls, because they eat the same foods, like the same bright colors as I do, and are fond of children and music. But everyone likes to sing, and I found there are wonderful girls in Sweden, in France, in England, Australia -- oh, everywhere! "I didn't notice the opposite sex much until I reached high school. Then I would take a girl out once; next time maybe we'd double-date and I'd go home with the other guy's girl, while he went home with mine. We zigged and zagged, different girls, different dates. Then everyone began going steady. It was the thing to do, and I went steady with one girl for a whole year. "What ended that?...Why, I guess we both got tired. One day, she said to me, 'Why did you do that?' And I said, 'I felt like it.' Then she said, "But just tell me why?' and we scrapped a while. I walked out and never went back. I haven't seen her since. I understand she is working somewhere." The director called once more, and the two young players repeated their dance movements, most of the cast and crew joining with them in the play-back song. "This is what life is all about!" caroled Ann-Margret. "Marriage is terrifically important in life," said Bobby, again relaxing beside me. "I want a girl who is in sympathy with me and my work, who would understand what I am trying to do, but not compete with me. I want to be the one who works and earns the money, and she the one who cares for our home and our children, when we have them, and who is always there waiting to welcome me. "You have to be mature before you can undertake anything as serious as marriage. I knew two teenagers who fell in love, or thought they did, and wouldn't give their families any peace until they consented to the marriage. The mothers tried to tell them that they were too young to know their own minds, or to bear the responsibilities they'd have, but the boy said, 'I haven't looked at another girl since I was eleven, and now I am eighteen, and I know what I want!' The girl said, 'I knew he was the boy for me the first time I saw him, and now I am seventeen, and we want to be together always!' They got sick, or pretended to, and made themselves and their families so miserable that finally the mothers gave in, and the marriage took place. Now they are twenty, they have a baby, and a divorce. The poor baby is being shuttled about from one to the other." Up to the hour of his wedding, a well-known star, now middle-aged, worried that he and his bride might have made a mistake. "I hope our marriage will be sweet," he told me, "but there are so many divorces these days, and no one knows until he has tried it, whether or not he can make it go. I realize that I must work at it, if we are to succeed." He must have worked hard, for they are still married. "I can understand him," Bobby said, thoughtfully. "I know that no one is perfect, and I shan't expect perfection. Certainly I have many faults, and why should I imagine that my wife will have none? when you enter into a relationship as close as marriage, you should think it over first. Maybe you will be in a state of bliss, so happy that you feel like you are floating on a cloud, but you must always realize that things won't always be that way." Bobby hopes that his bride will have had the same upbringing as he has had, but he makes no hard and fast rules. She need not necessarily be of his religion, she may not know how to cook Italian foods, or even like to eat them, but he would like her to have a happy disposition and to share his outlook on life. "I knew one Hollywood couple who were married in a small Mexican town by the local consul, or whoever does it," he remembered. "The bridegroom came back raving about that quaint sleepy town, where the sky was so be, the sunshine so bright, the flowers so fragrant, and told us how a ray of sun came in at the window and touched the fine head of the man who read the service. The bride shrugged and said, 'It was a hundred and six in the shade, my dress stuck to my back, the man who married us had dirty fingernails, and those windows hadn't been washed for years. The only good thing about the whole affair was -- my new husband!' "If we are married at High Mass, or at Low Mass, or have a service read by a shabbily-dressed man in a quaint little town, I'm sure that all I will look for, and all I will see, will be the girl behind the veil, my bride."
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