Hollywood (1942)

Plenty of SMART NEW MAKE-UP MIRROR Fits " 'round-the-neck" . . . Leaves BOTH hands Free . . . Folds for Travel! WELL-GROOMED women are wild about this smart, new " 'round-theneck" Make-Up Mirror. Enables you to see back of head in any light. YOU ALWAYS HAVE BOTH HANDS FREE. Easy to set and keep waves or curls in place . . . shape eyebrows . . . adjust or fit clothing, etc. Light weight, beautifully finished in dainty Ivory enamel. Serves as Stand Mirror. Folds up for traveling. If your favorite store does not have it, order direct. Mirror only $1.29. In Fabric Travel Kit, $1.59. Send check or money order, or we ship prepaid C.O.D. Parcel Post. Money back if not delighted ! §rp.,SeJhdeHT^nth7s CHAMBLESS PRODUCTS. INC. really useful gift: 605 W. Washington St., Chicago 52 By TOM C ASEV | As Hollywood luminaries go, Dona Drake is in a league all by herself: she is probably the only creature in town whose opinion of herself lags miles behind her studio's opinion of her. "Dona Drake is one of the most talented girls in pictures, and I don't see how she can miss stardom," is how her boss, Buddy De Sylva, in charge of operations over at Paramount, carries on over the lady. "I sing a little and I wiggle a little," is how our Dona, the dynamic little package who flashed so brightly in Louisiana Purchase, describes her talents. So what happens? Merely this: while Mr. De Sylva is beating his brains out trying to find the right role in the right Paramount supercolossal for his little volcano, Dona is constantly heckling him with communications beginning, "Dear Boss," and inquiring, "how's about playing, a few nurses, telephone operators, or even gangsters' molls in B-pictures — just for laughs? This hanging around doing nothing is killing me." Mr. De Sylva always replies by inquiring via memo whether the weekly pay checks are arriving regularly, work or no work, and Dona counters by admitting that the checks arrive regularly — and so does boredom. After which Dona goes off on a movie-viewing binge, which lasts a week sometimes and comes to a halt only after Dona has seen every picture in town (at the rate of three double-feature bills a day) including the Western epics on view at the Hitching Post, a cinema palace dedicated to sagebrush movies. Is the Drake girl out of her mind that she should resent leisure, freight prepaid by Paramount? You and I should be out of our mind like the Drake girl is out of fier mind. She's got nothing against leisure as such. In fact, she thinks it's wonderful — for some people. But not for Dona. When she's not kicking one of the lively arts to pieces, she's unhapfiy. She feels she's becoming useless, passe. Dona makes sense at one fell swoop as soon as you're hep to the fact that, barely twenty-one, she has behind her no less than four careers in as many departments At 21, Dona Drake can chalk up four careers under four different names — chorine, ginger, band leader, and at present, actress, in Paramount's Road to Morocco of the entertainment business and under as many names. She was thirteen and answering to the name of Rita Novella when she got bored with the Philadelphia school system, as well as the tranquil life at home, and talked herself and an older sister, Renee, into a job as chorine for N.T.G.'s very smart and sophisticated floor show over at the Paradise Restaurant in Gotham. At fifteen she was signing her checks Una Viion when she burst out on Broadway as a sizzling specialty singer, sizzling enough to be booked, among other places, at the same Paradise Restaurant mentioned as the highest paid act on the bill. Broadway began to pall on her after a few months, whereupon she changed her name to Rita Rio, formed a partnership with an Iowa lady called Orrel Johnson, whipped up a girls' band that was hotter than hot, and took off on a tour of the country. The band, with Dona— or rather Rita — up in front wielding the baton (in tightfitting evening gowns) and doing the crooning, was an instant success. It was inevitable that when the orchestra reached Los Angeles everybody would start discovering Rita for pictures. Eddie Cantor discovered her first, and put her in Strifce Me Pink, but not until she had changed her name to Rita Shaw. Strifce Me Pinfc was pretty much of a fiasco all around, so Rita kissed Hollywood good-bye, rejoined her band, stuck it out for three more years, before she got fed up with the whole works one night in Chicago, and posted a notice telling the musical maidens