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Movie Test
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WOULD it surprise you to know that Paramount Pictures Corporation, or any other big film company, will give you serious consideration if you believe you have a chance for stardom ? It's true. Very true. One hundred to two hundred applicants for a chance in the movies are interviewed carefully each week in Paramount's New York office. It wasn't always thus. Only a few years ago Venus de Milo, with both arms intact, and rave reviews from a two-year run on Broadway, could have worn her arms down to the shoulder again, knocking in vain on Movieland's gate. But today, thanks to Oscar Serlin, Paramount's chief talent scout and director of Paramount's famous dramatic training school, anyone with strength enough to hobble into
1501 Broadway (the Paramount Building) will be given serious consideration for a job in motion pictures.
We can say "thanks to Oscar Serlin," because Paramount is the pioneer in the "open door" policy of talentscouting. Since Paramount established the first dramatic school to coach aspirants for the screen before giving them expensive screen tests, other film companies have followed suit — and are now eager, also, to interview per
sons believing themselves screen material.
"And why shouldn't an applicant for stardom seek out a film company and learn if he or she has what the movies are looking for?" asks this same Oscar Serlin, the man who discovered Fred MacMurray tooting a saxophone in an orchestra pit. Fred, by the way, attended the Paramount dramatic school three months before taking a screen test. You know the rest. He has become a star in one brief year — and is currently the hero of the first outdoor natural-color picture, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, with Sylvia Sidney and Henry Fonda.
• "How," I asked Mr. Serlin, "can anyone not already in the theatrical profession measure his talents and
Gladys Swarthout's screen test cost $1,250. She prepared for it for five months
John Howard (above, left) passed the talent test this article talks about. So did Fred MacMurray (above, right) — and is a star after one year before the cameras
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