Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1935)

The Glorifying of Eleanor Powell CONTINUED FROM PAGE 71 of hers. She looked about as much like a dancer as any athletically inclined co-ed. She looked clean-cut, intelligently nice. That was the closest she came to prettiness. Fox, looking for a dancer, made a screen test of her in the East. It was her big chance. Makeup and cameramen did their darndest and so did Eleanor. "And it flopped so hard, that test," she told me, "that as far as pictures were concerned I could have gotten no further West than Jersey City." THE trouble was simple and evident. You can't make a raving beauty out of an ugly duckling any more than you can manufacture bricks without straw. This girl, in the eyes of the camera, hadn't even the fundamentals on which an artificial beauty could be built. She was just plain hopeless, and they told her so and it almost broke her heart — at first. Then she got mad — and madder — and furious. And finally, one five A. M., Eleanor Powell exploded! She decided she was going to be beautiful. "I did explode," she told me. "It's something that happens inside me now and then. I've never done it but twice in my life — the first time was when I determined I simply had to come to New York, and the second time was when I'd lain awake all night crying like a big booby because I wasn't good-looking enough for Hollywood. "Looks hadn't really mattered before, you see. On the stage it was my dancing, pure and simple. I wanted to dance in pictures but I found I'd have to be lovely to look at and listen to as well or my dancing wouldn't be worth anything. That's what hurt. So I determined I'd be good-looking if it took ten years and every cent of money I owned." There comes at least one time in the life of every girl when she decides she's got to be beautiful. Usually the reason's a man. With Eleanor it was a career. Maybe careers are more compelling than love. Anyway, Eleanor began from "the inside out, and the top down," as she put it, to deliberately achieve beauty. And this is what she did. First of all she started with her hair, a dull but not unpretty shade of brown. She'd always worn it in a short Dutch bob, casual, straight, severely shingled. It flopped about her head in a pert fashion when she danced, but off-stage — well, it was just coarse enough to give an impression of stringiness even immediately after washing. She visited a famous Fifth Avenue hairdresser, told him her problem and her plans. He moved her part from the side to the middle to give her face length, prescribed a good tar shampoo and advised, "Let your hair grow to shoulder length. Hollywood will do the rest." So Eleanor began letting her hair grow. The next problem was her skin. It was nice skin so far as complete absence of blemishes went but the pores in her nose and chin were enlarged and her cheeks were peppered with vari-sized freckles. A dermatologist took her in hand and through a series of skillful violetray treatments which caused gradual peeling the freckles disappeared. Then he put her on the following skin-care routine for the reduction of pores: After her make-up had been thoroughly removed with cold cream she was to lather her 98 face with a good pure soap and lukewarm water, rub the lather well into the skin and allow it to partially dry. She was to follow that with a rinsing in clear warm water, wrap an ice cube in sterile gauze and gently move it over every portion of her face, into all the crevices, the hairline, underneath the chin and back as far as the ears. Then she could pat her face dry with a towel and apply a good softening lotion to prevent roughness or chapping. In less than a month of those treatments, Eleanor told me, her complexion showed a noticeable improvement. One of her worst defects, as revealed by the camera, was her teeth. Odd, but in real life you never thought of Eleanor's teeth as being unattractive True, they were crooked and they could have been whiter, but she had such an infectious, incessant grin you seldom noticed anything of it but its gaiety. The camera, however, picked that grin all apart and revealed badly crooked, dull and yellow dents And something drastic had to be done about them. Her dentist, for whitening purposes, put her on a sort of triple-threat cleaning regime. Morning and night she was to brush her teeth with soda, then salt, then a dentifrice; that was to be followed by a thorough session with a good long piece of dental floss. Too, he put braces on her — the awful gold and glisteny variety that catch a spotlight and reflect it back to the last row in the house. Eleanor had her choice of those or another type which can be easily removed for stage appearances. She took the former because they worked faster, and Hollywood was to be only a year away. She could stand it for a year — for results. There was the little item of eyelashes, too. Hers were thick and curly but short to the point of stubbiness. An actress friend suggested an upward, outward rub of them each night with plain old Number One Yellow Oxide. If I told you that Eleanor's lashes are almost an inch long now you wouldn't believe me Look at her closely, for proof, in " Broadway Melody of 1936." While the ones she wears as Mile. Arlelte are of course artificial, the ones she displays in the character of Irene Foster are the bona-fide, home-grown product. Concerning eyebrows Eleanor decided, after much thought, that she'd leave hers strictly as was. She liked them that way. They were wide but they had a good natural arch in them, and besides there hadn't been a tweezer in the Powell family for generations. NEXT came her voice. Nobody'd ever criticized her near-Boston accent before, and she hadn't had to sing any solos. Trust the sound-track, though, to amplify three faults that would have to be rectified before she could make a successful screen test: her diction, her voice quality, her singing. So there was a dramatics teacher and a vocal instructor who took an hour apiece out of every single day. At the end of a year Eleanor could read lines with or without feeling, breathe from the diaphragm like an old-timer, and trill a much more melodious scale in G. The problem of her figure really was a problem Lots had to be done about her legs, chest and hips. Until she was sixteen, you see, she had never done any tap dancing. It had been ballet, acrobatic and interpretive, which develop the short muscles in the legs. Have you ever seen a toe dancer's legs off-stage? Eleanor's were like that — knotty, bunched muscles at the calf and thigh. Until, from sixteen on, she concentrated almost solely on tapping, which develops the long muscles. As a result, at twenty-one, her legs were not the roundly-developed, shapely things they might have been had she exercised both sets of muscles equally. Her knees, while not actually large, seemed very much so in their setting "So darn much so," Eleanor confided, "that one of Walter Winchell's pet similes was 'As homely as Eleanor Powell's knees'." The general leg effect, if she wore shorts for dancing was pretty poor showmanship. So she put herself on a strict two-houi schedule of short-muscle exercises every day Bar and toe work, somersaults, twists and splits. It helped. Too, she discovered that very high heels could work wonders. Tapping heels are seldom taller than an inch and a half. But let her put on some four-inch spikes (Note: she wore them in the picture where her legs were prominently black-silk-stockinged) and the up-thrust of the ankle threw a certain fullness forward into the leg. Eleanor donned teetering heels whenever she could. Her chest and hips, by virtue of background for each other, were deadly enemies, since each made the other look more the way it shouldn't be. Aside from a slight tendency to slump when she stood, which affected a thorax cavein, her chest was naturally small anyway. And "dancer's hips," well developed and proportioned, can make a chest like that look practically minute and at the same time make themselves look enormous. ELEANOR went to her favorite costume company, designed and had them execute one of the trickiest little foundation garments I ever saw. It's gossamer-thin of a sort of lastex material, but if it gives one iota when you yank on it I'll eat my hat. Very tightly it molds her hips and tummy and fluffy rosettes of tulle inside the brassiere give a beautifully con toured build-up. To further improve that portion of her figure she began holding her shoulders arrow-straight, using on her clothes and costumes plenty of big frilly collars, liberal Mousing or tucks around the shoulders, flowers at a low neckline and all the other things that can add height to a slight chest. It's clever guimpery and it works. Her hips, which happen to be perfect thirty-sixes, no longer look out of proportion by comparison. For a long time Eleanor Powell worked hard on herself, longer and harder than most girls would have the perseverance to hold out When finally the day came on which she was to go to the Astoria studios for her second screen test she was a different person. Not perfect, not ravishingly beautiful — neither of those. But she had so improved that the cameraman who "shot" her a year before failed to recognize her at all. She was greatly pleased. And the test — well, M-G-M leaned backwards over it. The girl showed great possibilities. "American Girl — Outdoor Type" they hailed her. And that time they paid heis and her mother's transportation to the coast. " I haven't any idea," Eleanor told me, " how many people actually had part in changing me for the screen. There seemed to be everybody from Mr. Mayer on down to my maid,