Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1943)

glistens like a copper waterfall at sunset. "Hello, Red." "Hello, Mummy." It would be wonderful to be able to report that our Nancy lived happily ever after. Alas! Far from it. To tell you the truth, a torrent of tears was to spill down her pretty cheeks before she reached journey's end: A Hollywood contract and the wisdom that comes of experience. A good deal of the saga will bear telling. She was a year older when she ran, smack-dab, into another problem. She was walking along the street one day, starboard to her chum, a dainty, petite item named Anne, when a town cut-up passed, glanced at Nancy, grinned, and yelled: "Hi, Stringbean!" Nancy blushed. "Consider the source, Nancy," Anne said, looking up at her. A reflective pause. "How tall are you, Nancy?" She was five feet six but she didn't confide the information to Anne. Instead, she pleaded a headache, excused herself. En route home, she passed girls she knew, avoided their eyes and shuddered. She towered over them. She was as tall as most boys her age! And everyone knows boys are supposed to be taller than girls. She was almost home when she hit upon a way to strike back at that old harpy, Mother Nature. IT was her father, Charles Sumner Coleman, esteemed citizen of Everett and editor of the local daily, the Herald, who made the discovery that in order to compensate for her height his daughter had taken to walking with head bowed, shoulders stooped and torso slumped. He guessed the reason. That night after dinner he summoned his pride and joy to the study. "Look here, Nancy," he said, lighting up. "Aren't you the girl who told me when she was nine that someday she was going to become an actress?" "Uh-huh." "I like to think that someday you will become an actress, but I like even more to think that you will become a good one. Looking back, I can't remember seeing a good actress with a bad posture and a sloppy carriage. Have you ever thought of that?" "But I'm tall, Daddy. I'm much too tall. Why can't I be tiny and pretty like Anne?" Then — tears. You know how girls are at thirteen. Mr. Coleman let her weep a minute or so. "Nancy," Coleman pere said chuckling, "people, thank God, come in all sizes — small, medium and large. And there's nothing they can do about it — except, of course, to make the most of it. You are tall, Nancy. But if you stand up straight and walk gracefully, people won't think of you as tall; they'll be too busy noticing how well you carry yourself. Try looking at the second-story windows as you walk. That way you won't forget to keep your eyes — and your chin — up." Mistress Nancy gave the thing a try. It worked. A month or so and the ™ members of the soda pop set were saying it left and right: "Nancy may not be beautiful, but she certainly is attractive. She walks like a queen, that Nancy." Some people go through life with their eyes on the stars, but the secondstory windows did well enough for Nancy. "Heart high" followed in swift succession "head high." She graduated with honors from Everett High and enrolled at the University of Washington, hell-bent on becoming the finest actress on the campus. There was, however, a slight hitch — her height. Too tall for an ingenue, she was too "spiritual" for a heavy. As a result she found herself building sets and helping with the lighting. HtHKttttKtttKttt A/ext Month FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS' is coming to PhotoplayMovie Mirror readers in a burst of beautiful color. Among others I/ou'll Aee the Year's Most Romantic Lovers . . . IMGRID BERGMAN and GARY COOPER ... as Maria and Robert Jordan in one of the world's great love stories tmm^tti Anything but discouraged and remembering her father's good counsels, she set about to become an actress that the campus masquers couldn't do without. She read plays like frantic, studied them like crazy. If she wasn't a conventional heroine, with the accent on looks, she would become a real actress with the accent on character portrayal. Nights, in front of the mirror, she played a motley assortment of characters for herself: Gun molls, floozies, neurotics, topers and what have you. She was going great guns when her program was suddenly wrecked by the death of her father, an event necessi tating her withdrawal from school. Bravely she gathered up her paraphernalia, said good-by to her fellow mummers and departed. She had hoped to graduate, then streak for New York and Broadway. But all that was out of the question now. The family had moved to San Francisco. Nancy joined them there. Acting opportunities in San Francisco were scarce, indeed. She wasn't trained for anything special, so she took a job running an elevator at the Emporium, one of the city's flossiest department stores. She was a good elevator operator, even if her heart wasn't in it. Lunch hours she would drop by the different radio stations and plead for auditions. She took brush-offs with good grace and kept coming back. A soft-hearted station manager got tired of shooing her away, hired her without an audition. He never regretted it. MANCY toiled hard as a radio actress. '^ playing everything from wailing moppets to femmes fatales on "washboard operas," as the daytime serials are affectionately known. Behind the mike her height didn't matter. She did her parts with a sort of joyous abandon. Slowly she began acquiring confidence in herself. More importantly she began acquiring a bank roll. The very day it hit $1,000, she threw up her job, took fond leave of her mother and boarded the New York express. Those first few months in New York were murder. She would make the rounds of the managers' offices and as inevitably as punishment follows crime she would get the old routine: "Honey, you're too tall for an ingenue and you're too young and dewy-eyed for a heavy." No sooner would she strike up a friendship with a would-be actor or actress before he or she started giving her the same routine. "Baby, why don't you change your type? You're tall. Switch to slinky clothes, hats with dripping veils and high-heeled shoes. Rub a little glamour on your cheeks." Nancy would look at them and smile. "There's a part with my name on it somewhere," she would say. "Meanwhile, I think I'll skip the alterations." It took a lot of nerve and maybe a little insanity to make that pretty little speech, but one day her hunch paid off like the proverbial slot machine. She was churning around town when she ran into an agent who sent her to try out for a part in "Susan And God." It happened. Her red tresses, which she had despised as a child, caught the attention of Gertrude Lawrence. Her queenly walk caught the fancy of John Golden who murmured something about "Winged Victory," the famous Grecian statue of a woman in motion, held quick parley with Miss Lawrence and signed Nancy to play Blossom. She finished out the New York season, spent a year playing Blossom on the road. It is high time for another of Nancy's problems to start besetting her, you are thinking. (Continued on page 72)