Hollywood (Jan - Oct 1934)

Muriel Kirkland was not blessed with beauty and she had an inferiority complex, but that did not stop her from climbing the golden stairs to screen fame by ALYCE CURTIS Without Beautyi If She Had been more beautiful, Muriel Kirkland might be going to the movies in New Rochelle today, instead of acting in them out Hollywood way. You see, Muriel, the youngster who attracts real attention in the role of Mimi, one of Anna Sten's friends in Nana, was the ugly duckling of the Kirkland clan. Which doesn't mean that Muriel wasn't pretty. It just means that the Kirkland women had the sort of faces that made her an ugly duckling by comparison! Such beauties as Mother and Virginia and the aunts and girl cousins, had given Muriel, with her strange little heartshaped sort of face, with her great brown eyes and crooked smile, an inferority complex of horrible proportions. And her voice! It wasn't like any of their voices! Muriel, at sixteen, just out of the convent, worked herself into such a state of shyness and self-consciousness about this beauty business, that Mother and Father decided against waiting for her to get over it. Muriel in fright and dismay, heard their decision. And protested tearfully. "But, Mother," she sobbed, "I don't want to go to the American Academy of Dramatic Art. I don't want to be an actress. I couldn't be an actress — I'm not beautiful — " "Of course not," said mother placidly, "but you're going there to overcome all this self-consciousness, darling." "How can I stop being self-conscious there? That's the worst place in the world for me, Mother! Dad, please, I'll — I'll be worse! All the pretty girls — their pretty voices — oh, please, Mother, don't make me go." The firm tone which the Kirkland children knew was final, was in Mother's voice now. "You've lovely eyes and a lovely disposition and Father and I think your voice 46 is very sweet. You're going to stop all this fretting about such things. You don't have to be an actress, darling, but you're going to avoid becoming a recluse because of your shyness!" • And so it was that Muriel Kirkland was enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Art. And there it was that after six months of agonized study she was called into the office and told that they were dropping her from their student list. "You will never," they told her, "be an actress. We are sorry." Muriel stood before them, a strange new emotion tugging at her heart. An emotion stronger than her shyness. How dared they pronounce her at sixteen, a failure? Suddenly she was angry. Gloriously, furiously angry! And her first ambition to be an actress was born of her defiance of the pronouncement they were making. Her voice was strange, was it? She lacked beauty, did she? Quite calmly she looked at the head of the school. "Thank you," she said, "you have made me an actress!" And closed the door very quietly as she left the room. • With scant opportunity for the formulating of any plan of attack, and without discussing the matter further with the family, she started at once, the dreary, usually discouraging round of the theatrical agencies. Their dreariness, their pessimism about her could not discourage such determination as she had summoned to serve her. And her first small triumph was proof that a prophet does, occasion I'lease turn to page »lxty-flve HOLLYWOOD