Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1936)

PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE FOR SEPTEMBER, 1936 93 fifty experienced girls on Paramount's commissary wailing list. But eighteen of the twenty-five waitresses there have been on the job five years or longer. Figure it out for yourselves, girls. IF YOU ARE A WRITER: Even the old 'timers around Hollywood, who ought to know better, call Virginia Van Upp a "lucky Cinderella," or the girl who had enough "pull" to get her job writing originals and continuities for such stars as Carole Lombard, Claudette Colbert and Sylvia Sidney. Well, it's true, and Virginia for one doesn't deny the fact that she had loads of "pull." To begin with she was a child actress in pictures. Later she was one of the directors in the casting offices of the old Brunton studios. She came to know every important producer and director in town And so, five years ago when she made up her mind that she was going to write for pictures or bust, she tried to make her "pull" pull, if you know what I mean. She was received in the industry's most illustrious offices with smiles of welcome and was told firmly to stick to her casting job and forget it. "You know nothing about the mechanics of writing, my dear child, and it takes years to leam the tricks," was the unanimous advice flung at her. So Virginia set out to correct her ignorance of mechanical tricks. First, she had to forfeit her very remunerative casting job. She went to work as a typist in a scenario department, for practically nothing a week. She was married and her husband objected to her obsession to make good, but Virginia had her plans well laid and nothing could divert her. Finally she worked up to a secretarial spot with a couple of work-crazy writers. After a nerve shattering eighteen months with them, she edged her way into the cutting and editing department of a big studio. Somewhere in this melee of work she toiled as script girl on the set for nine months. She was on the job an average of sixteen hours a day for the full five years, and her marriage dissolved during the ensuing hurricane of labor. But Virginia went on lapping up "mechanics." When, at last, she felt that she was a really skilled maker of plots and scenarios, she made the studio rounds once more, and after a fruitless six months she finally landed a "scribbling" job. "And at a starting salary," she said, "that would make the average stenographer laugh." IF YOU ARE AN INTERIOR DECO'RATOR: "You caught me on a bad day," Eli Benneche informed me when I entered her offices in the M-G-M set dressing building. "I've been at the studio since four o'clock this morning. A set for Joan Crawford's "The Gorgeous Hussy' had to be rushed for nine o'clock shooting. Then I spent hours ransacking twenty-five different shops for a trick desk set, and in a few minutes I'm due at a glass blowing shop to supervise the making of some goblets for a scene in 'Romeo and Juliet.' " And then Eli told me that at the present time there are but three women, including herself, working as set-dressers, in Hollywood's ten studios. The reason? Women simply seem to crack up and go to pieces under the strain of this particular work. Eli, however, equipped with a steady set of nerves and frequent trips to Europe for rest and study, has managed to stave off this danger. But the last time she went gallivanting through the museums of the Conti Scientific Beauty Creams Help Protect the Skin from Germs which may cause Blemishes., Guard against Dryness Sudden temperature changes, dust from the air, the germs which cause blemishes ... all are at work to mar your complexion. Yet you can keep your skin moist and clear with Woodbury's Cold Cream. . Contains Exclusive Germ-destroying Element Why, you may ask, does Woodbury's Cold Cream fulfill its beauty task more quickly, more surely than others? 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