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When god meets god. Over the ideal figure of Apollo Belvedere is sketched, in dotted line, the nearly perfect form of the composite male star
statistics. From every studio we got the measurements of all the men and women under contract to them, their height, weight, chest measurement, hip measurement, calf, ankle, shoe size and glove size. We expected some of the men to meet the Apollo standard but I fancied the girls would be too small and slim for Venus' proportions.
But this is what we really discovered.
Estimated on seventy-two girls in pictures — stars and leading women — their standard of physical beauty is less than two inches at variance with that of Venus!
Compare for yourself the two sets of measurements in the box beside the exquisite portrait of Joan Crawford. There are the so-slightly different measurements of the ancient goddess of Athens as compared with the composite modern goddess of Hollywood.
From the 72 girls there are twenty-three taller than Venus, forty-one smaller and nine her exact height. The tallest girl in pictures is Gertrude Astor, five feet seven and a half inches. Next come Anna Q. Nilsson, Gwen Lee and Eleanor Boardman, five feet seven, and Constance Talmadge, Natalie Kingston, Greta Garbo and Doris Kenyon, all five feet six. A half inch too tall are Lillian Gish, Sally Blaine and Florence Vidor, while Jacqueline Logan, Clara Bow, Bebe Daniels and Ivy Harris are half an inch too short. The shortest girl is Barbara Kent, a mere four feet eleven, with 36
Maiy Pickford, Janet GaynOr, May McAvoy and Helen Foster nearly as brief as Barbara — they being each just five feet.
Incidentally, while this has nothing to do with Venus, the average girl star wears a four C shoe and a size 6 glove.
The nine who are exactly Venus' height are Billie Dove, Yola D'Avril, Colleen Moore, Pola Negri, Thelma Todd, Leatrice Joy, Elinor Fair, Aileen Pringle and the aforementioned Joan Crawford.
Venus' chest measured thirty-four inches. That's one of the points where the film girls vary most. Renee Adoree, Aileen Pringle, Molly O'Day, Doris Kenyon and Phyllis Haver are 36 bust, while Janet Gaynor, Fay Wray, Ruth Taylor, Doris Hill, Marceline Day, Virginia Lee Corbin are only 31. The biggest feet of all — shades of Helen of Troy — are Maria Corda's size eights. The smallest are Helen Foster's one and a half B's. But the chief difference from the goddess is that every actress is proportionately under weight.
The heaviest of all is Gwen Lee, who weighs only 135 pounds. Greta Garbo and Natalie Kingston — remember their five feet six — show 125 pounds, but outside of these three every girl [ continued ON page 92 ]
The Venus di Milo herself. The dotted line shows
the composite movie Venus, a difference so slight it
can scarcely be seen