Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1930)

HThis romantic short story of youth in Hollywood is based on a true incident of the studios DEW was trickling down Dick Doran's face as he came out of the telephone booth. He was hot and he was mad. After spending nearly an hour, calling up first Miss Latori's secretary, then the studio, then the secretary again, lie had finally been informed that Supreme's new burn-'em-up star would be unable to keep the appointment for the interview. Young Mr. Doran's racket was writing a lot of palooka for a syndicate of newspapers about the happy home-lives of the moving picture stars, and who was running around with whom, and assuring their devoted public that the lovely ladies who made so much whoopee on the screen were really just nice home bodies. People read it and liked it and he earned a very decent living out of it. In a way, it was soft. He was invited to a lot of parties and all the lovely ladies called him "Dickie." He had learned more about caviar than he had ever known. He had sipped vintage champagne out of real jade glasses. But there were times, like this morning, when he wished that he had taken up plumbing. He had counted a lot on that interview with Latori. She was the latest Hollywood rave. But she had been cagey about talking for publication. Dick had worked on her secretary for two weeks before she finally promised to get him the interview. Still hot under the collar, he turned in at the Boulevard Tonsorial Parlor for a shave. Maybe he would get an idea for another story. THERE were two customers ahead of him. He picked up a crumpled paper, hoping it was the Sport Section. It was only the Want Ads. He was about to put it down when his eye fell on a little five-line insertion at the head of the Los! and Found column. It read: LOST on Hollywood bus. Red pocketbook containing fifty dollars. Will finder please return to "Chickie," 1514 Cherokee. It was money to pay my fare back home. It was no strain on the imagination to construct" Chickie's" scenario. He could see her as plainly as though her picture were alongside the ad. "I'll bet I could write a description of that little doll that would convince her own mother that I know her personally," was his thought . "She's a cute little blonde, with curves and curls and forgetme-not eyes. Somebody told her that if she'd come to Hollywood she'd soon have Mary' Pick ford looking for work." He read the ad 68 Girl again. That last line, "money to pay my fare back home," intrigued him. He knew plenty of "Chickies." But they never went back home. They lingered on, hugging their pathetic little dreams, kidding themselves that someday thev would get a break. Most of them would never be anything but just girl fodder for the Hollywood mill. It was not until he was tilted back in the barber chair that it suddenly struck him that there might be a story in this little doll and her lost pocketbook. When the barber had finished, he tore the ad out. An hour later he was ringing the bell at 1514 Cherokee. A woman answered his ring. I'D like to speak to Chickie," said Dick. "It's about the pocketbook she lost." "Second door to your left." She pointed a scrawny finger toward the end of the hall. It was just as he had expected. Chickie was the answer to what happens to beauty contest winners. There, on the dresser, was a large silver cup which said in Old English engraving, that the Loyal Order of Moose of Talapoosa, Oklahoma, had voted Chickie O'Day winner of their beauty contest and had christened her "Miss Talapoosa." As his eye wandered from the cup to the girl, the thought went through his mind that there must have been a Ziegfeld in that herd of Moose. But Chickie herself did not dovetail with his mental picture. She did not have that dumpling roundness which her name suggested. Nor was she a blonde. Her hair, which she wore shoulder length, seemed to him to be the bright copper shade of a new penny, and as she looked up at him questioningly from under plaintive lashes, he decided that she had the most wistfully appealing pair of eyes he had ever seen. "Won't you sit down?" she asked shyly. He hesitated to take the only chair in the room, a tiny bedroom rocker, much too short for his long legs.