Modern Screen (Dec 1931 - Nov 1932 (assorted issues))

(From left to right, across the two pages): Mary Kinny dieted on honey and tomato juice to the point where she fainted while watching a banquet scene. Pretty Marie Gagnier poured poison in her drink at a gay party to end her unhappy life. Ruth Hudson is in San Quentin prison for passing bad checks. Mary J. Roberts spent six months in jail for forgery. Both these girls splurged on the chance of a movie break. Kitty Coleman, after a weary struggle for work, turned on the gas. She was rescued just in time. All pictures by International HAVE you ever wanted to go to Hollywood and try your luck in the movies? Have you ever thought how easy it might be to become a big star? Well, if you have — or ever get a feeling to go — read and remember this story. Maybe it will make you change your mind. On page 54, a story titled "The Lure of Hollywood" tells you a glamorous tale of a girl whose dreams did come true in Hollywood. But remember two things : that story is fiction — and its heroine, even if it were a true story, would be "one girl in a million." A REPORTER stood by the side of a table in Hollywood Receiving Hospital watching the surgeons work. Not that he was particularly interested, but there would be a brief story for him to write as a part of his work. "Pretty, isn't she!" he remarked. "Wonder why she wanted to die? What'd she take?" "Gas," briefly replied one of the doctors. Deft hands worked over the chest and stomach of the girl. An injection of something was administered with a hypodermic needle. Then the surgeons bent to their task of restoring respiration. Same old formula. Same old manipulations. Same old routine. The Receiving Hospital had handled dozens of such cases. Before long, the girl on the table showed the first signs of returning consciousness. "She'll make it," remarked a surgeon. "Got her just in time, though." The glaze left the eyes of the terribly sick victim. Slowly — very slowly, her lungs began gasping for oxygen. Breathing, in time, became more normal. The reporter made a few notes on some folded copy paper, then went to his typewriter and wrote : No job, no moneys no friends. Nobody to care whether she lived or died — and a dreary, wet day. And so pretty Kitty Coleman, New York actress, turned on the gas. When she didn't answer the telephone in her apartment, an unidentified caller notified the apartment manager. He found the room full of gas. Kitty's head rested on the table. But Kitty will live. At the Hollywood Receiving Hospital she was revived. IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN YOU That was the whole story, briefly and tersely told. There was nothing to add. In time, Kitty Coleman came out of her stupor, got on her feet, squared her shoulders and went away. The Receiving Hospital recorded the case only as an incident. The reporter couldn't recall the name of the girl now to save his neck. It was just a bit in a day. The dividing line between successes and failures in Hollywood is but dimly drawn. Beautiful girls arrive with the plaudits of their local communities ringing in their ears. "Starting on the Road to Fame," their friends have glibly said. The girls step into the colorful town, slightly bewil'dered. They see Ann Harding in her low-hung, brown roadster driving along the boulevards toward her home high in the hills. They see Norma Shearer in her Rolls-Royce directing her chauffeur where to go. They see the fashionable restaurants and operas and kennel shows patronized by those who are "on top." It all looks so prosaic and easy until they, themselves, endeavor f to break into that mystic circle. To their dismay they usually find the way completely blocked. And then, discouragement follows. Some choose to die rather than let the folks back home know they face failure. Some try to efface themselves by plunging into the cantinas below the Mexican border. Some walk out into the Pacific Ocean to let the beneficent waters close the final chapters of their" lives. Some just disappear. No one knows the numbers in this Lost Battalion. SOMETIMES beauty is a tragic mask, hiding hurt," this same Hollywood reporter wrote. "A cruel magnet summoning disillusionment. Marie Gagnier, nineteenyear-old dancer is such a girl — a girl whose beauty betrayed her to suffering ; a girl who wanted to die. "So, she attempted suicide last night — poured poison into her liquor glass at a party in her home at 548 North Heliotrope Drive and drank a reckless toast to death. " 'There,' she cried, 'I've done it!' "In an instant she was a pitiful, writhing victim of agony. But those who were with her summoned an ambulance and she was rushed to the Hollywood Receiving Hospital in time to save her life. Today, white and spent, against the pillows in her hospital room, she told a 26