Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1936)

92 PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE FOR SEPTEMBER, 1936 T^GLAZO puts old-type nail polishes in the discard You've never seen a polish so lovely/ so perfect to use GLORIOUS news for lovely hands! A new Glazo, so amazingly enhanced in beauty, so perfected in every manicuring virtue, that you must change your whole idea of what a fine nail polish should be. This new Glazo formula dries to a satiny surface that doesn't chip or peel, that wears for several extra days. Here is a polish that disdains streaking, that flows on with perfect ease and evenness. And so completely has evaporation been eliminated that the polish is usable to the last brushful. For the newest, smartest note in fingertip charm, ask for Glazo Suntan, Russet and Poppy Red. They're exclusive "misty-red" colors, and the latest additions to Glazo's wide range of authentic, fashion-approved shades. Glazo manicure preparations are now only 20 cents each. GLAZO 20 CENTS (25 cents in Canada) They Aren't All Actresses in Hollywood [ CONTINUED FROM PAGE 51 ]i" relative, living in Los Angeles, asked her to come west for a visit. Well, a whole year managed to slip by, during which time Maybelle became thoroughly familiar with the dimensions of every studio information desk in town. When her savings began to run low, she blithely opened a little beauty shop in Culver City because it is near the M-G-M, Pathe and Roach studios. She planned to lure studio secretaries and bit players into her white-curtained booths. Through such customers she hoped to hear, some day, of a studio opening. Well, another two years managed to skip away before Maybelle actually heard of an opening (and, mind you, her shop was one block from M-G-M). Her first job (temporary, of course) found her in charge of two hundred wigs that had to be dressed in fantastic Biblical styles every morning before the great C. B. deMille went to work on his picture "The King of Kings." And some of her fluttering excitement was tempered when she was ordered to report for work every morning at four-thirty because all the wigs had to be shipshape by nine o'clock sharp. But Maybelle had closed her shop and there was nothing left to do but set her alarm clock for three A.M. "The salary for a beginner is forty dollars a week," Maybelle told me, "but beginners only get temporary work WHEN THEY GET THAT. Even the expert outside hairdressers are not worth their salt in a studio. The work has no relation to the usual beauty parlor demands. I had to learn an entire new trade, how to do wigs in every known historical period, how to make transformations undetectable, how to put in a water wave, very loose and natural looking, and re-do it three or four times a day with an almost cold iron." "Yes, things are better now. I get around sixty dollars a week, and my job is permanent, but remember it took almost eight years to get where I am. And there's another fly in the honey — the hours. I never arrive at the studio later than seven o'clock in the morning, and six is the location call. "It is true that I have met some wonderful stars, Mae West and Gloria Swanson and Marlene Dietrich among them, but sometimes, when I am rushing through a cheerless dawn of a winter morning toward the almost deserted studio, I think about Blue Earth." IF YOU ARE A COSTUME DESIGNER: 'Edith Head's impressive job as assistant gown designer for Paramount studios (a position that carries with it a splendid salary and screen credit) is the happy ending to a practical joke. But don't start waving the flag of victory yet. Read on. To this day. Edith chuckles over the trick she turned on Howard Greer (he was head of Paramount's designing in 1924) when she connived with fifteen -.indents in her art class, borrowed two sketches from each of them and presented the hodgepodge collection as an example of her versatility. It seems that the other students had tried to gel studio jobs but all had been turned down bei lUSe, m the opinion of the big shots, their work la< ked the precious ingn dienl of variety. Will. Edith's potpourri of sketi ; acti cally stunned Greer, for he actually hired her (to the dismay of those student pranksters) and she's been on the job for a round dozen years. But, just in case all this encourages you to hop the next westbound train, let's touch lightly on Edith's training for this exalted job of hers. In high school she took up art and kept at it even during four years at the University of California and throughout the year she "boned" for her master's degree at Leland Standord University. Then for three years she taught art, French and Spanish at an exclusive Hollywood girls' school, and it was during this schoolmarm period that the movie virus bit her. The fact that C. B. deMille's daughters, Katherine and Cecilia, were among her pupils probably had something to do with it. Anyway she resigned, returned to art school, and plugged away at all the tiresome fundamentals, as well as the history of costumes. It was during this session of study that the famous joke was perpetrated. But when the showdown came, Edith was prepared for it. There was a morning when Greer told her to whip out some snappy original sketches for a couple of Hittite debutantes (4000 to 3000 B.C.) and she didn't even blink an eye. She actually KNEW what a Hittite hot number wore for a heivy date. Just the other day Edith showed me an enormous new filing cabinet in her office. "We had to get it," she told me, "to take care of the fifty monthly applications that roll in here, every one of them asking for my job." IF YOU ARE A WAITRESS: There isn't 'much about "slinging hash" for the movie stars that Alvina Bryan doesn't know. She's been at her post in the Paramount commissary for eight years, and she can rattle off, by heart, every dish that Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby, Jack Oakie and Fred MacMurrav like for lunch. These stars never so much as glance at a menu. Alvina just brings their victuals in from the kitchen when she sees them coming through the door. But if Alvina had it all to do over again, well, she's not as sure about Hollywood as she used to be when she was back in Bristol, Alabama, where she managed eight waitressi 5 in her mother's restaurant. "You see," Alvina explained, "working in a busy studio restaurant doesn't mean you're going to be serving generous tipping stars every noon. Sometimes weeks go by when there isn't a big star at one of my five tables. Production schedules are like that, you know. But we have to work hard just the same. because from eleven until two every day, it's a madhouse in any studio commissary, with every extra, assistant director, stenographer and clerk raring to get back to work on time. And these employees can't tip big and we girls don't expect it from them. " I'hen there are the mornings we are on the job at three o'clock to pack the box lunches for early location calls." V>,\ Vlvina averages two dollars per day, including tips, for six days a week She's married and uses her money for clothes and permanent waves, but she admits it's tough sledding for some of the girls with kids to support. Most of them pull difficult ends together by taking on outside night jobs. According to Alvina there are approximately