We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
Mr. Foster's gal: Susanna of "This Is The Life''
Meaning Miss Susie Foster who sings — and lives — in a way to beat the band!
BY
LUPTON WILKINSON
The incredibly high sweet voice of the girl on the platform climbed until it seemed to go beyond human reach, then swept down to a full-throated finale. A roar of cheers went up from the boys in khaki as the U.S.O. camp concert came to its close.
In no time flat the girl was borne down from the platform to become the nucleus of attention from enthusiastic listeners, personally headed by a fast-talking Army sergeant. TTie sergeant, bedecked and beribboned in the best tradition of hard-boiled sergeantry, would have seemed to have the situation well in hand if at that very moment the girl’s erstwhile delicate voice had not sailed out over the crowd with some lusty chest tones designed strictly for carrying quahty:
“The sergeant has never been born who can stay on his feet if I hit him!’’
It is no part of this tale to pursue the sergeant’s embarrassment any further or to relate the wave of merciless kidding that swept the camp, but only to point out mildly that Susanna Foster, who has made Hollywood history in the musical version of “Phantom Of The Opera,” is a lass of colorful contradictions.
Today at nineteen, as 1943’s most outstanding singing discovery, she has twice been in a Hollywood failure; once at Metro and a second time at Paramount, where, after a spectacular start in “The Great Victor Herbert,” she did nothing the last eighteen months of her contract but trill a cadenza in “Star-Spangled Rhythm” for twenty-four seconds. And since she received a salary of $24,000 over those months, her ca
denza made her, ironically, the world’s highest paid performer^ — $1,000 a second!
What’s more, despite gorgeous chestnut-blonde hair and a figure designed to be whistled at, she hates night clubs, dancing — and dates!
In support of this startling statement, there is the case of the Two Sailors.
Susie and Betty May Nelson, her close girl friend, were walking along Hollywood’s main stem, having just come out of a music shop, for music is a passion they share, Betty’s ambition being to write music. So it was natural for the two girls to be humming as they walked along with the music they had just bought.
The two sailors are scarcely to be blamed. They hummed a little, first, just to get in key with the girls; then they whistled.
Susie and Betty played woodenface.
Three blocks went by.
Then one of the sailors challenged, “Look! Are you girls going to be friendly or not?”
Susie said, “Boys, our silence ought to be your answer.”
“Hah!” accused one of the boys, unguardedly. “You’re not patriotic!”
“Patriotic!” blazed Susie, in the same voice the sergeant’s troop had heard. “You’re not out on a battlewagon getting shot, at the moment. You’re just a couple of rather nicelooking guys walking down Hollywood Boulevard. When a girl says no for three blocks, death wouldn’t excuse a fellow’s not taking the hint!”
The two sailors will probably become admirals before they forget that crack; (Continued on page 96)
51