We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
21
Paid for Stardom
building a career for his daughter, Patsy Ruth, something to sell. Now, for the first time, ditures is made public.
Moak
inspecting the studios when they reached the film center, for they themselves were somewhat interested in how, where, and why motion pictures wire made. Like so many of their neighbors, they had been semi weekly patrons of the celluloid palaces in the Missouri metropolis.
The old Metro studio was the first to he visited. There some one — he may have been a prop hoy, for all Mr. Miller knows — volunteered the information that Patsy Ruth was an ideal type for the silver sheet.
That settled the matter in the mind of that young lady. 1 [owever, her parents still refused to release their enthusiasm.
But a similar remark was forthcoming in the old Goldwyn studio and, later, for a third time word reached them while they watched the cameras grind on the Paramount lot.
Finally it reached the point where the major portion of the days and evenings of the Miller family were spent in discussion of the possibilities. Dad was firm. They would return to St. Louis at the end of their vacation and forget this nonsense. Mrs. Miller, however, was weakening under the pleas of her children. One dip in the ocean had convinced young Winston that California was next door to heaven.
With the ballots standing three to one, Oscar Miller, business man, conceded defeat.
He returned to St. Louis, sold his manufacturing interests, his home, his automobiles, and returned to California.
Four weeks from the date of their first having set foot in Los Angeles the Miller family was established in a manor in Beverly Hills.
This fair maid is Patsy Ruth at seventeen months.
cute?
Isn't she
Then Dad Miller got down to the task of taking Patsy Ruth, a mere kic with
Patsy Ruth's father spent
more than $20,000 on her
career before she began to
pay her own way.
over the hurdles that pointed to the realization of her
dreams. Remember that Oscar Miller was a business
man. He went about his new job in a
businesslike maimer. In other words,
he used his head.
The matter of selling Patsy Ruth was not entirely unlike selling broom handles and wooden novelties. The latter had been accomplished by making the acquaintance of heads of concerns that purchased such things. Just so in the new field. He met film executives. He entertained them.
Knowing well that any article is more readily salable if wrapped in an attractive package, he had Mrs. Miller triple their daughter's already ample wardrobe.
lie spent money to publicize i Ruth and to exploit her otherwise, just as he had done with the broom handles.
I te ha«l screen tests made.
He spent his working days interviewing studio bosses, from presidents down isistant directors.
Patsy Ruth played her first extra role in a picture two months after her father had assumed her management. She I i mtinui il nn page 1 12