Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1929)

O^e Littlest Rebel tn Hollywood The Story of Irish Nancy Carroll, Who Battled Her Way to Film Glory By Elinor Corhin w Y life didn't begin until I married," says Nancy Carroll. "Before that it was just nothing. I was but half a person. Now we are together. We hold "the fort for each other." But it was that life before her marriage that gave Nancy that wonderful courage of hers. It was when she was a little two-fisted Irish girl on Tenth Avenue, New York, that she began to wonder. What did she want? What did she want of life? She didn't really know. She didn't actually realize what she was seeking. But she had taken the first step. She knew what life wasn't. It wasn't bending over a typewriter in a big factory under a dead blue light in a room wilh a hundred other girls trying to answer a letter from a ladv in South America who seemed to want a pair of pink slippers. It wasn't going from one firm to another, getting fired as quickly as she got a job because she was only thirteen and didn't have her working papers. And, although she liked her employers, Urchs and Hegemer, it wasn't being private secretary in their lace company. Life was something more gallant; Life had more spirit. She was, like every other red-headed Irish girl her age, stage struck. Her family were all talented. There were, in all, fourteen children. Nancy was the seventh child of a seventh child. Only eight are now living, Martin, Elizabeth, Sarah, Teresa, Tommy, Nancy, Johnnie, Elsie. It was a bright, laughing, Irish Catholic family, with big Thomas Lahifif, their father, at the head of it. Tom Lahiff played the concertina. Their mother told the children that's why she married him. All the kids inherited laughter from him and played the piano and sang and danced. But Nancy's hopes of entertainment went beyond family gatherings. It all began in an amateur way. N.^NCY and Teresa worked up a little sister act. They crooned and harmonized popular melodies and, unknown to their mother, tried out at one of the vaudeville houses. They heard of a theater on the East Side, sufliciently far away from the disapproving parental roof. They were from the West Side and had no right to be there, but a friend. Buddy Carroll, told them to say they were his sisters and to give his address as theirs. And so they became Nancy and Terrv Carroll. They became sort of professional amateurs, and went from one local theater to another until various musical comedy impresarios began to call them. George White asked for an That wise little redhead, Nancy Carroll, has learned how to get all the joy out of life — and put more in in'erview. And J. J. Shubert. It was the latter who offered them a specialty number in his "Passing Show of 192,5." The two sisters huddled in a family conference. Would their mother ever be reconciled to their going on the stage"^ Would their father allow them another night's rest under his roof if he knew? But Nancy was willing to take a chance. As she always is. Because both girls had jobs as secretaries, Shubert was good enough to let them rehearse at night and they didn't tell their mother until after dress rehearsal. WHEN they got to the house on Tenth .Avenue their mother was in tears and a fury. She had called the police. She had searched every hospital. They had to tell her that the.\' were on the stage. Dark looks accompanied them to bed. But publicity won Irish Ann Lahiff. The next day was Sunday and there — right in the rotogravure section of the paper, was a large and beautiful photograph of Nancy. It was several weeks before she would go to see the show and when she did she sat high in the balcony to watch her daughters. Her only comment was, "Oh, you were very good, very good, but I thought you tossed your limbs a bit too high." Still she groped for life. The stage was better than the factory. It was better than being a private secretary, but it was a full, important life she wanted. She found what was important when she met a young reporter on the New York News named Jack Kirkland. And, when she married him a few months later, she knew that her life had just begun. She gave up the stage for a while, but went back to it in "The Passing Show of 1924." She danced until four months before her baby was born! The enforced inactivity bored her. Nancy, who had never been idle in her life, could not be idle, so she talked to Jack's managing editor, Phil Payne, who went down with "Old Glory." He let her interview all the actors she knew because she could get past the imposing ogres who guard stage doors. [ ple.\se turn to page 114]