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IF YOU listen to bankers, capitalizing on liabilities is fantastic economics, but if you lend an ear to Miss Nancy Coleman of Warners' "Devotion" capitalizing on liabilities is good sense, above all when the liabilities are personal — a part of you. Miss Coleman certainly ought to know. Do you mind a flashback?
The long-legged, slim, twelve-yearold with the merry eyes and the freckle-splashed, tip-tilted nose is sitting there reading her American history book in an Everett, Washington, schoolroom. Her flame-colored hair is arranged in twin braids. You can tell at a glance (from the way it is pulled down flat) that the little maiden despises her coiffure. She is perusing an account of the battle of the Monitor and the Merrimac, perusing it grimly.
A restless urchin who has just been scribbling furiously slips a note to her. She turns toward him with a look of teen-age adoration — puppy love, the novelists call it. Eagerly she unfolds the foolscap. It is a poem — more or less. It reads:
photoplay combined with movie mirbor. july, 1943
"Ashes to ashes,
Cheese to cheese.
A redheaded woman
Makes me sneeze."
For a second or two the maiden looks bewildered. Then her face is lit up with a brave half-smile. She sits there looking like Katharine Hepburn (stiff upper lip, nostrils a-quiver and all) right up until the bell rings and classes are over. Then she sprints out of the classroom, daubing at her cheeks. She runs all the way home, dashes up the stairs to her room, rummages around, finds a pair of shears, takes one last look at the offending titian tresses and is about to abbreviate the port lock when her mother bursts into the room to stay her furious hand.
Mrs. Coleman, no mean psychologist, listens patiently while her daughter inveighs tearfully against her "horrible red hair." Then she puts a comforting arm around her. She smiles.
"Do you know what I'd do if I had red hair, especially if I had the only red hair in my class?"
Nancy shakes her head.
"I'd be awfully proud of it — perhaps I'd even strut just a little — that's how proud I'd be."
"Even if someone you liked wrote a nasty poem about your red hair?"
"Yes, Nancy. In fact, I'd pass the word around that my favorite nickname was 'Red' and in that way I'd take the wind out of the sails of people who wanted to make me mad by calling me 'Brick Top' or whatever else they call redheads these days."
Silence.
"I'd go further than that. I'd play up my red hair, especially if it was as pretty as yours. You know, Nancy, some awfully pretty women have had red hair, according to the history books. There was Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Catherine the Great and lots more. As I remember, they were all proud of their red hair, every one of them. It made them stand out in a crowd."
"Are you sure, Mummy?"
"You could try it and see."
An hour later our Nancy walks into the kitchen where her mother is whipping up a charlotte russe. She is a new article entirely. The braids are gone. Her hair hangs down loosely. It
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