Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1936)

94 PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE FOR SEPTEMBER. 1936 WHY DON'T YOU SEAL THE BARGAIN KEEPSAKE DIAMOND RING The beauty of a Keepsake Diamond Ring will delight the fairest lady and inspire the faintest heart! The name Keepsake on a ring is your assurance of quality, style, and value. Leading jewelers everywhere display the famous Keepsake Diamond Rings. If you would like the name of the nearest Keepsake dealer, write us. KEEPSAKE DIAMOND RINGS 214-216 So. Warren St. Syracuse, N. Y. nent, she found her job nicely filled when she returned (she was working at Paramount then). And with most of her money left in Europe, she faced eight workless months before she managed to edge herself into a job at Fox. Now Eli's background contains much more than a pretty knack for arranging chintz curtains. It includes four years at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, where she specialized in the history of furniture and the sketching of all her ideas (whole roomsful of them) in color. Then she worked for two years with Hollywood's leading interior decorator, Harold Grieve. All this, added to her early experience at Paramount and Fox, resulted in her finally obtaining her enviable current position with M-G-M. About twenty monthly letters come to Eli's department from women asking the same old questions: "Is there a job for me in your studio?" "And most of them," Eli observed, "are from women with fine records in important decorating shops throughout the east and middle west." IF YOU ARE A DRESSMAKER: You'd 'think Sally Paige would have been satisfied with her fifty steady customers in San Francisco. But, no, she yearned to turn her tucks, seams and gussets for the worthier and lovely figures of her favorite movie stars, Colleen Moore and Pola Negri (they were the topnotchers in 1926). So Sully came to Hollywood and discovered that the studios didn't give a tinker's dam about her reputation for clever little frocks. She was turned down, without ceremony, wherever she applied and she couldn't figure out why. When she finally got inside of a wardrobe workroom she found out why during the first twenty-four hours. "Beginners in this work are too costly to the studios," Sally declared. "Why when I was working in one of the small studios, I saw hundreds of dollars of materials ruined by a seamstress, inexperienced in studio work, when she cut a pattern just one fourth of an inch off. "I've seen a newcomer get a thirty-eight gored skirt caught in her machine while the star, who was to wear it, waited and waited and waited, and the company with one hundred extras waited with her. "I have seen gold lame scorched and beaded gowns twisted beyond repair in the hands of excellent dressmakers, but ones new to studio technique. " Why, with all my years of experience, I had to learn how to sew hems with split threads, press seams and hems so that not the faintest line showed through, work by hand with tiny spangles and practically invisible beads. Then there were the chorus girl shorts and fringe work, specialized art in themselves. "I was lucky, I guess. After a year without work, I got into one of the small independent studios, one day, when five girls were down with the tlu. But I had plenty to learn and even more to unlearn. "I've worked steadily now for five years here at M G-M, but that mean- there are from two to three months of layoff periods every year to be reckoned with. A good dressmaker makes from twenty two to twenty-nine dollars a week, and then there is overtime pay too. "A girl in this work has to be willing to sacrifice a social life, and believe me it's hard to keep a boy friend when you must break three out of every five dates you make during the rush season." Like Sally, the other twenty women in the M G-M workroom have averaged five years of steady work in that studio. Just one girl a year drops out to make way for the two hundred applicants whose names are kept in alphabetical order in the wardrobe files. IF YOU ARE A SINGER: The music departments of Hollywood's four major studios carry a list of one thousand women singers all carefully selected by auditions and all on call for orchestration recordings any hour of the day or night. Near the very top of that list is the name of Sally Pierce. And that's exactly where her name belongs. Not so long ago she was studying in Paris with grand opera in view. Before that there were years of work at the University of Washington in harmony, piano and more voice lessons with the best instructors the west coast had to offer. In 1933, when the depression got in its most painful licks, Sally's independent income vanished and she was faced with the problem of supporting two young children. She decided to face reality in Hollywood, the land of "milk and honey," sometimes. She arrived here armed with a single letter addressed to a minor studio executive, who was a friend of a friend's friend. It took her exactly six months to contact him. In the meantime she tried to get auditions at the studios, but there were so many approved singers already waiting for calls that her frantic attempts were sterile. Finally, through the illusive minor executive, she received the coveted audition and it was a tremendous success. She was immediately put on the list of singers "to be called" when and if there is any work for them. There was no full time contract as she had dreamed, merely the opportunity to compete with one thousand other women with well trained voices. Well, all this happened three years ago, and because Sally's voice is really beautiful, she has worked in every big musical picture both operatic and jazz, as well as all the important cartoons and shorts. She averages about ten days of work every month (a high average because she's tops) and she receives ten dollars a day when rehearsing and fifteen dollars a day for actual recording. Out of these earnings she supports herself and two children and pays for weekly singing lessons. "When you do recording you must preserve your voice from ruin with constant lessons." Sally revealed. "We singers are required to vocalize very low with absolutely no volume, and then there are the days of fatigue and overstrain, when a picture is behind releasing date and we must sing for eighteen hours straight. "The overtime is good for our purse, but deadly for our voices. •And you see, when our vocal cords are not up to standard there are always a dozen willing newcomers ready to step into our place." This. then, is the answer from eight Hollywood working girls, to the fifty thousand women who yearly mail their letters to the studio-, asking: "What are my chances in Hollywood?"