Australian Women's Weekly (1933 - 1982), Wednesday 11 July 1956, page 23
SHIRLEY ANIS RICHARDS, Australian film star, with her two sons, Chris (left) and Mark, in her home in Beverly Hills. She is happy today being just a wife and mother.
Film star happy in
housewife role
Mrs. Edmond Angelo, the housewife of DeMille Drive, Los Feliz District, Hollywood, the mother of two boisterous young sons, the Parent-Teachers' Association member and active Methodist Church member, is the same beautiful blonde who, 14 years ago, crashed Hollywood.
SHE is Shirley Ann
Richards, Australian film star, daughter of a New Zealand mother and an American father.
Shirley Ann, or Ann as she is now called, is happy today playing the real-life role of wife to engineer Edmond Angelo and looking after their two sons, Christopher, six, and Mark, five.
When I visited Ann and her husband, she was not only cordial but "thrilled" that Australia "might still be in-terested in me in my retire-
ment."
She lives in "old Holly-wood," away from today's celebrities, who prefer an area west of her in Brentwood, Bel-Air, Beverly Hills, the
"smart" addresses.
When they moved in, Ann had no idea that farther up the tree-bordered DeMille Drive lived the great directorproducer Cecil B. DeMille. She . was unaware that the greatest comic of them all. W. C. Fields, had lived nearby.
She was amazed when I tole her that Wallace Beery anc Gloria Swanson had a honey moon "cottage" of 20 room: just across the street some 30 odd years ago.
Her home is of the perio< in which it was built -Spanish - American, wit] stucco, porticos, esplanades draperies, and imported til floorings. It is heavy, solic
and comfortable.
The main difference b< tween Ann's two vital youn American sons is their colo ing.
Chris is dark, like his fathe Mark has the light complexic of his mother, but his hair a bright orange-red and the
are freckles all over his pv
nose.
Early in my visit, Chr who is "on stage" .every secoi
of the time, rushed up to ask: "Aren't you going to write something in the paper about us being good?"
This "being good" thing is quite important in the AngeloRichards manse.
The boys eat in the same room as the adults, but at a different table. Their table has the legend running con-stantly around it, "Laugh and be merry."
Not so long ago there was a "Think-it-over chair," on which the boys sat when they had been naughty. However, one day Chris sat down on it
too hard and broke it.
"Now," said Chris, "we
From
PAVLA WALLING,
in Hollywood
haven't any place to think it
over. Isn't that nice?"
Ann Richards Angelo looked very much as she did when I first met her here in Holly-wood 14 years ago. But motherhood has given her a
new loveliness. She is com-pletely happy.
She has no desire to go back into pictures'-at least not while the children are small. And she would dearly love a daughter, preferably with
blond hair.
Ann thinks the major error she made in her professional
life was when she wore the
wrong clothes to Australia on
a visit after her brother was killed in World War II.
"People in Australia had to worry about clothes ration-ing," she explained. "I didn't want to flaunt elegant clothes before them, so I took only the drabbest things I had. I wanted to be part of themnot above and beyond them.
"The strangest thing hap-pened," she said. "They didn't
like it at all. They expected something glamorous, and I should have supplied it. The women of .Australia are ex-tremely smart and extremely style-conscious. They wanted to know what was going on in the style world of Hollywood.
"I failed them by wearing dull and 'practical' tweeds and 'serviceable' flat-heeled shoes.
They'd already had those.
''They'd seen me in clinging, high-fashion gowns and they wanted to know, for instance, 'Where is that low-cut, rosecolored creation we saw you wear in that photograph in
The Australian Women's
Weekly?' "
Husband Edmond Angelo stayed physically in the back-ground during most of our talk, but he was present all the time, because Ann never stopped talking about him.
He is a consulting engineer,
she told me, and has oil in-terests as well. He travels con-siderably through Texas and Oklahoma, and whenever she can she accompanies him.
Angelo is a top engineer and has taught at the Californian Institute of Technology-tops in its field in America.
I would say he is a youthful forty, looking something like film-star Richard Conte.
In his younger years he pro-duced plays on Broadway. But he has no desire to go back to theatricals.
"He's found what he likes," Ann told me confidently. "He thinks that any show-business production would take him away from home for too long. And, besides, he's now doing research on guided missiles."
Right now, in her "old" but substantial and comfort-able Hollywood home, with her two sons, her adoring husband, and a full life of civic - community work, it seems to me that Ann Rich-ard's life is replete.
She has happiness.