'AND HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU, KID'.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

The new kids on the block celebrated their 74th wedding anniversary last week with banana cake and champagne at the Motion Picture & Television Fund home in Woodland Hills.

``We got married in 1931 on April 15 - tax day - before there even was a tax day,'' 96-year-old Jim Bailey said, helping his wife, Helen, 94, cut the cake while a roomful of their new friends broke out in applause.

It takes a lot to impress the 300 residents at this retirement home, most of whom spent most of their careers in front of or behind the cameras during the golden age of Hollywood.

They've rubbed shoulders with some of the biggest stars and moguls of the last century - lived through some of this country's most incredible times. They've seen it all.

But when the Baileys arrived only a couple of months ago, they brought something so rare it's made them instant celebrities - a Hollywood marriage that's lasted nearly three quarters of a century.

``It's by far the longest-lasting marriage I've ever seen here,'' said David Grant, the fund's chaplain. ``They deserve to be honored.''

So what's the secret? How does a young couple who met at a beach party in 1929 wind up eating banana cake and sipping champagne 74 years later?

Respect for each other, Helen says - and one other thing.

``We lived in Burbank for 54 years, not Hollywood. That probably helped.''

Yeah, it probably did. You get the feeling that Johnny Carson would have loved to have traded stories with the Baileys.

The kid was making $1 a night showing silent films in the projection room of the Red Lantern Theater in Brea. It was 1927, and talkies were on the way.

Jim Bailey, fresh out of high school, saw his future. And it was in a dark projection room.

``One night, I ran into an old neighbor who had connections with the studios,'' Bailey says. ``He said the Warner brothers were looking for a projectionist over at their place, Sunset Labs in Hollywood.

``I interviewed and got hired on Labor Day 1929 to run movies in the private screening rooms for all the executives, including Darryl Zanuck and the Warner brothers.

``All the biggest stars of the era came in. The day before Christmas one year, I walked outside and there was Al Jolson standing on the running board of his car, directing traffic on the lot.

``He wasn't feeling any pain,'' Bailey said, laughing. ``Neither was John Barrymore when I saw him.''

Every night, Helen would wait for her husband to come home to Burbank, always with great Hollywood stories from the private projection room of Jack Warner, head of Warner Bros. Studios.

Like the night at Warner's Hollywood mansion, where Jim walked by a smoked-filled poker room and saw actress Constance Bennett cleaning out a table filled with studio execs and actors.

``She was one tough poker player,'' he says.

Watching the movies in that projection room, Bailey knew - even before the stars and Hollywood press - which movies stood a chance and which didn't.

Of the thousands of movies he ran during his 46-year career - which ended in 1976 with his retirement as chief of the projection department at Burbank Studios - one picture stands head and shoulders over all the rest: ``Casablanca,'' which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1943. It was Jim's job to run the dailies for Harry Warner from his private screening room.

``You could see this was something special,'' he said. ``There was this magic between (Humphrey Bogart) and Ingrid Bergman on that screen, and a great story.''

Before Jim left in 1942 to serve three years in the Navy, the last film he screened for Hal Wallis, then head producer at Warner Bros., was the finished version of ``Casablanca.''

``All these years, it's still the movie I love the best,'' Jim says.

Helen agrees. It's just a shame, though, Ilsa got on that plane, leaving Rick standing in the fog on that airport tarmac.

They probably would have had a great marriage, she thinks. Not as great as she and Jim have had the last 74 years, but still pretty great.

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Jim and Helen Bailey cuddle as they celebrate their 74th wedding anniversary last week at the Motion Picture & Television Fund home in Woodland Hills.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer