Modern Screen (Jan-Nov 1951)

After each shampoo or home permanent LOVALON your hair,_ added fresh color makes the lustrous difference! • Leaves hair soft, easy to manage • Blends in yellow, grey streaks • 12 flattering shades • Removes shampoo film • Gives sparkling highlights Onlyl0<tor25<f the modern hajr beauty rinse Be u gift wrapping^ expert. . . Smarter and more distinctive packages, made easy with ' rinlclcf^lie "THE GIFT TIE THAT CURLS" and "Gift Wrapping Fun," the illustrated step by step, easy-tofollow booklet on bow tying, party favors and wrapping for all gift occasions. Write for your copy today. 106 Ask for Crinkle-Tie in 10c and 25c sizes at leading variety stores. CRINKLE-TIE 2314 Logan Blvd., Chicago A7 , III. Enclosed please find 10c in coin. Please send me illustrated booklet on how to tie beautiful bows. Address.. City -Zone Sto/e.. When they arrived at one of the tv^ro stores her father owned in the towrn the next day, Peggy asked, "What are we going to do?" She knew he always pitched in to do with ease and willingness the job of a janitor, a clerk, or a manager who might be on vacation. She was quite unprepared when he said, "Well, the butcher's on vacation. So I'm going to slice up liver." Taking a deep breath, the girl-determined-to-prove-she-hadn't-changed said, "If you can, I can, too, and I'll do it!" So day after day she sliced liver before going fishing with her father. "It was good for me," Peggy says. "Besides getting a good check for the work, I came down to earth enough to find time to go fishing with Dad again. Fortunately, too, because I was at a point where no one had ever really challenged me or my way of life, but I needed to be prepared for the day that came." From Gulf Park, where she won an Associate of Arts Degree, she went to Louisiana State University for awhile. She was chosen to represent her state at the Lions International Convention in Louisiana. She placed fourth in the "Maid of Cotton" contest in Memphis, Tennessee. And she went, finally, up north to study in Evanston, Illinois, at Northwestern University, where she acquired a Bachelor of Science degree. "Northwestern really scared me at first. My Louisiana clothes weren't up to the high-styles the girls wore. And my deep Southern accent, combined with my blonde hair, had some people lifting their eyebrows and saying such things as, 'Ah! The Southern Belle! Real?' in that tone of voice which says you're a phoney. "But through my first fright came Dad's common-sense words, 'The only thing which makes you different from other people is you, yourself. And you're all that went to make up your character. If you ever get anywhere, it'll be because people like you as you are.' "That braced me. Gradually I began to see that those people who make fun of others are the insecure ones, the ones to pity, because they're trying to fit into a mold nothing in their own experience has shaped them for. Of course, I changed some. Exposed to other accents, I gradually lost my definitely southern drawl." After graduation, Carlyn Jones, a friend at Northwestern, invited Peggy to visit her in Hollywood. When she was ready to go, Mr. Varnadow gave her a letter of introduction to a man he'd never met, but through a mutual friend they had started and carried on a fishing correspondence. When the time to return home approached, Peggy used the letter simply to please her father. The man was more aware than Peggy of what might happen through their chance meeting. "Let's see how you look on film. Miss Varnadow," he said. She learned about Hollywood agents when he took her out to Hal Roach Studios, where she got a role on a television picture. But studios otherwise weren't having new people. She discussed the turn of events with writer John Klorer, a native of New Orleans, and a personal friend of her father. He shook his head over her prospects saying, "You're really here at a bad time. Never in my 20 years here have I seen such a slump." Before long the agent was talking the same way. Finally, in the presence of his friend Maury Tanner, he advised Peggy to go home. Tanner spoke up, "If you've really given up, let me try." Through luck he discovered UniversalInternational -was seriously testing two personaUties in a threecharacter scene from a picture which was only half written. He arranged for her to be the other person. "If they don't like you," Tanner warned her, "we won't have gained a thing. Not even a test to take off the lot to show other studios because they won't let that off the lot until the picture's released. And that won't be for a year or two!" They hked her. They told her to go home for Christmas but to hurry back. She went to Athens, Tennessee, where her family had moved. When she came back, she found herself playing the "other woman" in Woman In Hiding, the very role in which she'd tested. "Talk about fisherman's luck!" she laughs. So the small town girl settled down in Hollywood, carefully chaperoned, of course, at the Studio Club* I SAW IT HAPPEN Last year, when one of her pictures was being shown at a press preview in Hollywood, Joan Crawford slipped unrecognized into a chair in the darkened theater in order to get firsthand contact with audience reaction. She was accompanied by her everpresent knitting bag and being nervous, soon began to knit faster and faster, completely oblivious to the fact that she was wearing a bracelet with bells attached. The bells were jingling. Finally an old man sitting in front of her turned around and said, "Look, lady . . . why don't you cut it out and give this girl's picture a break!" " Stanley Pilarski Los Angeles, California "I thought how much like a small town Hollywood was, at first," Peggy says. "All the little houses with gardens. People finding their entertainment at home or at the homes of friends rather than in night-clubs. Trees along the streets. No skyscrapers. But, of course, it isn't. It's the most talked about place in the world, I guess. And if gossip centers around you, there's no way to counteract it because you don't have the protection of having all the listeners knowing you personally." Peggy's change of opinion grew as she •t made one picture after another. In two and a half years, she has appeared in eight pictures at Universal-International. Besides the current Bright Victory in which she co-stars with Arthur Kennedy, there are One Never Knows with Dick Powell, and Reunion In Reno with Mark Stevens. Sam Goldwyn is so impressed he's borrowed her to share star billing with Dana Andrews, Dorothy McGuire, and Farley Granger in I Want You which he is currently producing. It is a story of the impact of the Korean war on a small American town of 30,000 people. "A small town?" Peggy smiles. "To me that's a city!" Settled with Polly Falk in their new spacious apartment with its two-story living room, Peggy's still wondering if she's made a wise move. "I hope we can pay the rent all right,'" Peggy shakes her head. "But it was all we could find in this neighborhood. We wanted to be here because PoUy's mother lives just around the corner and my agent and business manager live close by so they