Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1938)

j^u^^a^ajjg* TIME, which is another name for the Fairy Godmother, waved a magic wand over the oddest Lane — and, lo and behold, the ugly duckling emerged a glorious Cinderella. If you accuse me of confusing my fables, I protest there has been naught but confusion in the career of the Mullican girl now know as Priscilla Lane. "I'm the girl," said Priscilla, "who looks as if she'd stepped out of a shower and was in a hurry afterward." Certainly, neither fans, directors, producers nor Priscilla, herself, ever dreamed that the day would come when the gangly funny-face of the Mullicans would become screendom's current Golden Girl. When she and sister Rosemary accompanied Fred Waring's band to Hollywood for "Varsity Show," it was Rosemary, the beautiful, who lured the fanfare of publicity trumpets and who was cast in the feminine lead opposite Dick Powell. Priscilla was merely the "other sister," thrown into the cast as a nice gesture. This fourteen-year-old ugly duckling could hardly have anticipated the applause which followed her portrayal in "Four Daughters'' Someone — and, strangely enough, nobody has come forward to take full credit — saw something in Priscilla and, somehow, she was promoted to a co-starring role with Wayne Morris in "Love, Honor and Behave." They — the vague They by which we mean studio heads and critics and fans and all else concerned — saw something in Priscilla then, and even more when she played the female lead in "Cowboy from Brooklyn." Then along came "Four Daughters" and Priscilla, the funny -face, wrapped the picture around her shapely slimness and evoked the A famous Broadway columnist introduces to Photoplay readers a shiny new Cinderella — the young est of the Lane sisters — Priscilla BY LOUIS SOBOL huzzas of press and public. "The girl," chorused the vague They, "has something!" I talked with Priscilla both in Hollywood and in New York and I rush to join the swelling They for, unsusceptible as I am, I, too, have become impressed with her fresh-blown wholesomeness, her apparent sincerity and straightforwardness, the depth of emotion in her eyes and her ebulliency. These qualities, which seem so true of herself in personal contact, make themselves evident in her pictures, with or without benefit of directorial guidance. I HE tabloids have reminded us that there is a Chinese saying that one picture is better than a thousand words; but there are four words which, to me, give a better description of Priscilla than a thousand pictures. She still climbs trees. "I was climbing them," she confessed, "when Rosemary and Lola and Leota and Martha were playing with dolls and if that Lady Mendl you mentioned once can still stand on her head in her seventies, I can still climb trees if it amuses me — and it amuses me." The youngest of the Lanes was born to Dr. and Mrs. L. A. Mullican, June 12, 1917, in Indianola, Iowa. Dentist Mullican passed away last year but Ma Mullican is still very much alive and is manager and counsel to her talented brood. It was Gus Edwards who canceled the Mullican tag when he renamed his discovery, Dorothy, Lola Lane. Thereafter, the other sisters, proud of sister Lola's modest fame, took unto themselves the Lane handle when they stepped into the professional fold. Rosemary, a year and two months older than Priscilla, has always been closest to her, wheeling her in a brown soapbox wagon when the baby was a toddler. Today, she and Priscilla and their mother occupy a ranch in San Fernando Valley with the two sisters sharing the same bedroom — as well as confidences. Rosemary it was who nicknamed Priscilla "Pat" and who refers to her affectionately as "my dumb chum." Priscilla, in her softer moods, calls Rosemary "Razzy" and "Rosey Glow." The girls occupy twin beds. Priscilla sleeps without pillows and — "flat on my stomach," she insisted. "You have such beautiful dreams that way. When I sleep on my back, I have nightmares. I haven't slept on my back since the night my (Continued on page 88) *>*" 22