Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1938)

YOUR HOPES IN Last year 35 women — 17 men crashed Hollywood. Were they blonde or brunette? Did they use pull or go it alone? Could you do it? How? This famous author gives you some enlightening facts BY MARIORIE WILIS A RE you, by any incredibly lucky chance, / \ a young lady twenty years old, blonde, / \ five feet, four inches tall, weighing one hundred and thirteen pounds, living in California, with a background connected with the show business and not too advanced an education? Or are you a young man of twenty-seven, six feet tall, weighing one hundred and seventyeight pounds, also living in California and having a college education? If you are, you'd better go straight out to Hollywood on the next bus, for, according to the law of averages, you're perfect material for the pictures. For years, of course, Hollywood writers have been playing a little game called, "Giving Advice on How to Get into Pictures." The object (or, at any rate, the result) has been to refute what the other writers have said and thus confuse the reader. "Stay out," one writer says. "The odds against you are seven hundred and eighty-two thousand to one and you haven't a chance." "New stars are signed up every day," says the next. "Use initiative and you can't fail." "The shortest road to Hollywood is via the New York stage," says another. The trouble is that these writers are on the spot and know all about it, but they don't know about you and your special qualifications or the opposite. You and I, on the other hand, probably never having been to the glamour city except perhaps as tourists, have none of this firsthand information to confuse us by its glitter; but we do know about ourselves. Which is, after all, what counts, provided that we know how to measure it to picture requirements. The question is, have we got what it takes to make a star? And what does it take? Omitting for the moment that certain something that has no accurate name, but is sometimes called charm, genius, and half a dozen other things, let us look at fifty-two young people who broke into the magic city last year. These are not Gables and Hepburns whose conquests of Hollywood are yesterday's familiar stories, since yesterday's tales, though they may have all the glamour of Cinderella's romance, don't quite fit today's facts. These are more or less current events — thirty-five young women and seventeen young men — and we will regard them as parts of a geometric problem for whicf we should be able to get some kind of an answer I O begin at the beginning, where did they com? from? Eighteen of them, it seems — fourteen oi the gals and four of the men — came from California, and eleven more came from New York. Apparently, you catch the flavor and the feeling of being a star better there on the home ground or in a big sophisticated city. However, eighteen and eleven add to only twenty-nine, which leaves twenty-three exceptions scattered all over the country (to say nothing of one from England, one from Tahiti and one each from Poland, Hungary and Austria). So, if it isn't convenient to establish a residence in the extreme East or West, your case isn't hopeless. Still looking backward, how were these fiftytwo successes educated? This is a pretty significant question and any movie-minded young person had better consider the answer thoughtfully. For it turns out that ten out of the seven : teen young men in the group are college graduates and the other seven all graduated from high school. Apparently, a young man can't be : beautiful but dumb and get to be a star. He needs brains as well as brawn, these days, and training in how to use both. The girls don't rate quite so high scholastically. Only ten of the thirty-five went to college, twenty-two graduated from high school and the other three only got as far as an elementary school education. In spite of all the courses in mathematics, they don't seem to teach the right facts about figures at feminine colleges. What they do teach, however, is undoubtedly one more asset to be acquired if possible, since developing brains has never failed to help anyone from Hollywood to Hungary to Hong Kong. BEFORE telling you what these fabulous fifty-two did next, you might like to know who they are — but if we did list their names (their real ones) you wouldn't be much wiser. For half of them changed their names to something more elegant or musical or easily remembered than \^.><e »*.. to ° 28 These are exceptions that prove a rule. How Arleen Whelan, Lana Turner and Sigrid Gurie broke into the movies reads like the Cinderella stones of yesterday