Hollywood (Jan - Mar 1943)

B Julie Bishop, the startling redhead who has the lead opposite Humphrey Bogart in Action in the North Atlantic, is actually only a few months old! This sounds incredible. But Julie Bishop was born in a rather incredible fashion. A girl named Jacqueline Wells had been r ruggling along in films for quite a time, r ~d getting nowhere. When suddenly she <_:r.n~ed her name and her personality — anJ presto — her luck changed, too. As Julie Bishop she carried off the choice feminine lead in one of Warners' important action epics. "I feel re-born," beams Julie. "The girl I used to be is dead and buried. Until I shed Jacqueline Wells, I was the girl Hollywood overlooked." As Jacqueline Wells (left) she didn't rate a tumble; but as Julie Bishop (above) she snagged the lead in Warners' Action in the North Atlantic Girl By LAURA POMEROY Julie was brought to Hollywood from Dallas, Texas, at the age of five, by her mother. She was immediately installed in a dancing school, mostly to be kept out of harm's way while her mother was busy, but it served as the first step to a violent case of movie-madness. A studio asked the school for some talented children for a background scene and Julie was one of the dancing moppets. From then on she badgered her mother until the good lady finally threw up her hands and let her take dramatic lessons. That was only one step removed from the Pasadena Playhouse where Julie was subsequently discovered by B. P. Schulberg who signed her up and then let her languish. Her movie work consisted of nothing more exciting than make-up tests for six months. "I learned how to put on false eyelashes eight different ways," she recalls grimly. This was followed by a Western. Julie rode the horse in a manner that would have drawn sneers from her Texas cousins. At this point she married Walter Brooks, a local society lad, and quit pictures for the social whirl. But after a year, her marriage started to wilt as quickly as her picture career. "We were two crazy kids," she ddmits, "who had no right to get married in the first place." After the divorce, she was back where she had started — at the bottom of the cinematic ladder. This time Columbia signed her up. She was Jacqueline Wells then, a timid, Milquetoast type of girl with as much dash and verve as a bowl of breakfast food. While another newcomer on the lot at that time. Rita Hayworth, was getting lots of attention because of her dark electric beauty and bizarre clothes, Julie, the unspectacular, just stood around not even drawing a whistle from an office boy. When the studio did get around to noticing her, they put her into a series of little lulus destined never to attract an Academy Award. Julie's parts consist mostly of looking sweet and getting kissed by the hero. She did a whole flock of these paloozas, finishing one picture at noon and starting another after lunch, but as far as her career was concerned she might as well have stayed home. Innately shy and reserved, all this contrived to make her more retiring than ever and she was rapidly being engulfed in an enormous inferiority complex. She never opened her mouth to ask for a role, never battled for worth-while parts, never made a splash. When her name came up, producers tried to recall her, then said vaguely, "Oh, she's that sweet girl;" and dropped the subject. Julie was brooding about her immobile status one day, when she realized that the only way she could get ahead would be to change her type and her tactics. She disappeared from town, joined a stock company in Wisconsin and in three months the meek little violet had turned into an exciting tiger lily. "It was getting away from people who knew me that did it," Julie explains. "In the little stock company, I was a big shot because I hailed from Hollywood, and for the first time I was fussed over. My inferiority complex began to vanish and when I returned to Hollywood I had blood in my eye and fight in my heart." It was goodbye to Jacqueline Wells from then on. She picked her new name, Julie Bishop, for practical reasons. "Walter had given me some stunning luggage when we were married and it was monogrammed J.B., so I decided to fit my new name around the initials. Julie sounds colorful and warm, like the girl I wanted to be. Bishop sounds like a hiccup, but it was the best I could dream up." She went calling on the casting director at Warners with her new name, a startling new haircomb and a chassis-revealing dress that made her former clothes blush. She announced that she was an actress from New York. Her bluff worked and she was given a test. "They asked me to do a scene from Skylark and that was proof that my plan was working. As Jacqueline Wells I would 34