Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1938)

n PICTURES ;he ones with which they started life. Betty laynes was Betty Jane Schultz, once upon a ime; Alan Curtis was Harry Ueberroth; Sheila Darcy was Rebecca Wassem; Dennis O'Keefe vas Bud Flanagan. You might think that one >ver, too, if you're looking longingly towards iollywood. As to training during the interval between ichool and triumph, it turns out that thirty-six >f them (all but sixteen) had laboratory ex>erience — small parts on the stage, dramatic chool training, radio work, professional modelng and what-have-you. To be specific, eight lad been on the stage, six on the radio, six had vorked as models, seven were foreign players >f one kind or another, two had won contests, ix had attended dramatic schools, and one had lanced in vaudeville. Half of the remaining sixteen had a sister or i cousin or an aunt or, at any rate, a friend in a >retty influential job in the movie world. Those vho had relatives probably absorbed a lot of [eneral motion-picture data as they grew up, ind had a semiprofessional outlook as foreign o you and me as that of a Fiji Islander. A few, like Stella Ardler (whose real name is tdler) and William De Wolfe Hopper, were born nto theatrical families and no doubt learned >arts with their first prunes. Sisters lent a lelping hand or two — Joan Blondell to her sister jloria Blondell and Olivia de Havilland to her ister Joan Fontaine. Even the few foreigners n the group, for all their fascinating accents, eem to have found it necessary to puA. ;n some iprenticeship work on home ground either n foreign films or on the stage. One of these, o be sure, was an ice skater, which sounds like i very different field, but, as a matter of fact, equires a good many of the qualities of a movie tar — things like co-ordination, stage presence, [race, and the ability to look well in action. % N other words, it's a pretty special case that valks cold from ordinary life onto the screen, fhe truth is that the show business, with all its ranches, is another world, like Mars. And mt for the rare exceptions, the naturals, you lave to learn how to get along in it. Even in the records of the so-called excepions, you are apt to find something that served is preparation, though it may have been sketchy. \nthony Averill, for instance, graduated from :ollege, where he majored in academics and ournalism, and then became a newspaper man n St. Louis. A movie talent scout discovered lim at a party, and he was signed by both Earner Brothers and Selznick simultaneously, tfot quite just like that, however, for he did 4>S <v 'di ^'■^v. t loi. */< Hi -°lif. H ^ ^l>. °r, '**>$ Vr c/J °o/ spend three months at Paramount's training school in New York between the party and the contracts. John Patterson, another example, skipped the training school, but he had starred in college plays at Williams College. He worked on the New York Daily News till a Paramount executive gave him a screen test that resulted in a contract. Sheila Darcy got herself a job in the Hollywood Vendome Cafe in the hope of being noticed by a producer or talent scout. When she was noticed, however, she was told she needed stage experience. It took several years of coaching, playing with Little Theater Groups and playing bits in studios, to get her a real chance. There are, in fact, among the whole fifty-two, only three exceptions to the rule that you'd better have at least a little experience before you try to be a star. These are Sigrid Gurie, Lana Turner and Arleen Whelan. The first is a New York girl who met Samuel Goldwyn while she was studying art in London and, just for a lark, pretended to be a Norwegian star. He offered her a job, but she didn't accept until a year later, when she came to Hollywood and got a contract and the role of an Oriental princess in "Marco Polo," with the hoax still undiscovered. Lana Turner was taken by a newspaper acquaintance to an agent who introduced her to Mervyn LeRoy, through whom she got a job, after a screen test and the usual preliminaries. And Arleen Whelan was discovered by a Twentieth Century-Fox producer while she was working as a manicurist in a Hollywood barber shop. But these Cinderella cases are few and far between, in spite of all one hears about pull, and it's scarcely safe to bank on them. There is still the matter of looks and how they photograph. For, as you undoubtedly know, there are beauties in real life whose photographs would scare a hardy child, and fairly plain (Continued on page 84-) REPORT (Condensed) On 52 young stars who crashed Hollywood last year, these are the facts we discovered: I— Twice as many girls as men 2—34% came from California 3—2 I % came from New York City 4—45% came from all other localities 5—100% of the men starlets were high school graduates 60% of the men starlets were college graduates 8% of the girl starlets attended grammar school only 62% of the girl starlets were high school graduates 28% of the girl starlets were college graduates 6—50% of group changed their names 7—69% of group had definite dramatic experience—such as bit parts in the theater, radio work and the like 8—16% had influential friends who helped them crash 9— 6% came in "cold" >/. -j&n /> It was a "relatively" easy job for these three. Family had a finger in the movie pie that helped Gloria Blondell, William De Wolfe Hopper and Joan Fontaine get their breaks **£«* <* 29