The New Movie Magazine (Dec 1929-May 1930)

How many future stars are in this big chorus number from the Metro-Goldwyn revue, "The March of Time?" At least one or two stars of tomorrow are here. The New School for Stars stars, who would not go in largely for revues. Harry Richman in his "Puttin' on the Ritz"~did their largest revue. Universal, too, has not made a feature of revues, though it has produced some important ones. Dance troupes often called for in specialty numbers are the Albertina Rasch Dancers, the Ceballos Dancers, Maurice Kusel's Troupe, the Fanchon and Marco Girls, the Markert Dancers, and others as well. Tiffany Stahl has hired Norma Gould's classic dancers under a year's contract to make twelve short subjects, interpreting classic music, mainly symphonies. Adagio teams and specialty dancers draw from $350 a week down to $150 weekly. Stars like Marilyn Miller draw salaries in the tens of thousands; but we forget, there is but one Marilyn Miller. THE Hollywood chorus girl is something of a contrast to the New York type. For one thing they are as a class much younger, and more beautiful of face. This must be true; for while the stage girl must have a good figure and be passably good-looking, the screen girl has to be more slender and more beautiful, as the camera eye is quite different from the audience eye of the theatre. Make-up puts older girls up 114 (Continued from page 44) to thirty in stage choruses but there is no fooling the camera. Fox has perhaps the youngest girls. One is as young as fourteen and only one is over twenty. Chaperones accompany them at all times about the studio. Pearl Eaton at RKO says: "No hard-boiled Broadway chorines are working for me. They are all California youngsters, unspoiled, protected, with tutors to complete their education on the sets. Their beauty is absolutely fresh and unsophisticated. There are no stage door Johnnies to spoil them and distract them from their work." The extreme youth of all these girls is bound to impress anyone watching them at their daily workouts, dressed in gingham rompers and tumbling about on mats with their acrobatic work or vigorously going through bar routine or new steps. One might easily imagine them to be a group of carefree youngsters in some girls' school gymnasium, not girls drawing salaries that sometimes support their families or younger sisters. Some of the important qualifications at Paramount are: first their ability to dance and sing; their teeth; personality; whether or not they are home girls, with good breeding and adaptable to direction. The matter of being home girls emphasizes the type sought. Flappers do not interest a company seeking talent for contracts, as a jazz hound is apt to be pert and hard to handle, to keep late hours when she needs every ounce of strength for her exacting routine of work. WORK for a studio contract player is much more strenuous than for a Broadway show girl. The stage chorus girl works for four weeks, rehearsing, and then all she has to do is her evening show and matinees. A movie girl has working girls' hours, with daily exercising and drill, rehearsals, finally the actual shooting, while perhaps learning new numbers for the next shots. There is very rarely any let-up. They go from one number into another. Fox officials devised the interesting system of drilling their 120 girls in squads of forty, in identical routines, so that one group may readily substitute for another, thus saving time on costume changes and when the girls are tired from re-shooting too often. Girls are selected according to size for various specialties. The smallest girls are usually selected for tap numbers. Also for hot struts; this means a height around five feet. The taller (Continued on page 116)