Photoplay (Jan-Sep 1937)

Born to Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Billopp Wyatt (the former Miss Euphemia van Rensselaer Waddington), a daughter . . . THUS read the New York and Newport papers of August 10, 1913. And that was the beginning of it all. For the daughter grew up to be the present Jane Wyatt, and Jane is Hollywood's current Blessed Event. In case you haven't heard much about her, Jane is Ronald Colman's leading lady in "Lost Horizon." How she stepped out and got herself that part, with every actress in Hollywood from Shirley Temple to May Robson crazy to play in Frank Capra's films, is something in itself. Meanwhile, Jane is the first and only honest-to-gosh high society jane ever to make good in the movies. Sure, there have previously been a few fair-to-middlin' society janes, the daughters of senators and such, who have come to Cinema City and created a ripple or two in the picture puddle, but this Jane — Well, that Euphemia van Rensselaer stuff gave it away, even though Jane herself wouldn't. It's a real name, too, which has been in the New York Social Register ever since there was one, and not something out of O. Henry. You mustn't hold it against Jane either, because what she's done she has done without shaking the family tree to watch the plums fall in her lap. Nevertheless it remains a fact that whereas most of America's aristocratic families merely came over here on the Mayflower, Jane's folks met the old tub when she docked. When the Indians swapped Manhattan Island for a case of gin or whatever it was, the van Rensselaers had their picture on the labels. And, if the picture then was anything like Jane looks now, that's undoubtedly what cinched the deal. Anyhow, came the dawn, Rip Van Winkle, the Revolution, Paul Revere. Came Dan'l Boone and covered wagons, Casey Jones and horseless carriages. Came the Depression and the New Deal — and all those things are in Jane's heritage to make what's what instead of Who's Who in Hollywood right now. So listen closely and you shall hear. Some time after being born and getting her name in all the society papers, Jane was sent each day in the gold-leafed limousine to Miss Chapin's Exclusive School for Young Ladies. EVEbhBLUE BLOOD C/Dl/LDNT STOP Plenty of chin and plenty of charm went into the success story of this offspring of the Four Hundred wlio cliose the hall-bedroom route up By REGINALD TAVINER Then, when she had learned all that Miss Chapin could teach her, to Barnard College. You have to come into the world with just the proper spoon in your mouth and just the proper fork in your hand, but once you get here Miss Chapin and Barnard show you how to use 'em. All of which, thought Miss Jane Wyatt even then, was just a lot of soup-and-fish. For blue-blooded Jane craved red meat to chew on. At the age of nineteen, and without graduating from dear old Barnard, she startled the family by announcing that she intended to do something. She startled them still further by saying that the something she intended to do was to go on the stage. That announcement, she recollects, was made when all the Astorbilts and Vanderveres were gathered together for a caviar-bake or a terrapin-bust or whatever it is they wash down with a bucket o' suds in high society< True to their inherent traditions, nobody present choked or even burped. Centuries of culture had disciplined them to face any kind of a crisis calmlj — remember Saratoga! — and even Jane's family didn't blow up. No, the former Miss Euphemia and the present Mr. Billopp were both mighty good sports. They didn't so much as forbid Jane to besmirch the Wyatt name in the theatrical gutter They simply wished her luck. "So I didn't have to run away from home or anything, you see," smiled Jane. "All I had to do was get myself a part at the depth of the depression when the best plays lasted scarcely a week on Broadway and the biggest stars, as well as everybody else, were out of jobs." That, Jane thinks now, may have been the catch. Her family didn't believe she could do it. Anyhow, you now have the spectacle of a young and very charming society girl leaving the old Fifth Avenue mansion at ten each morning to tramp the unsympathetic sidewalks of New York in search of a stage career. Jane did that for weeks on end, dragging herself back to the bluff brownstone homestead every afternoon just in time for a teaball, then to flounder on to the Buff-Orpingtons for a fifteen-course dinner and a few rounds of skeet. But don't think for a moment that Jane was any the less serious because she was sure of her breakfast in bed every morning instead of having to make toast on an inverted flatiron. Every turndown was just as heartbreaking to her pride as to any chorine's pocketbook. And, at that, she did make toast on flatirons and indulge in all the usual hall-bedroom tricks when she was with stock companies, afterward. She did it because she wanted to live like the rest of the company — and because, by then, she had to. For the depression caught up with even the Billopp Wyatts, and Jane had to get along on what she earned just as the Smiths and the Joneses. She loved it. Jane is a very unaffected young lady and she never had been able to see the sense in having the second footman hand her another spoonful of egg. "It was fun living in those theatrical boarding houses," she recalled, "after being waited upon all my life. Not only was it fun, but it taught me more in a few months than Miss Chapin's and Barnard together had been able to do in years." Hut before she went with the stock companies Jane had to find that first job in New York and, eventually, she did. She found it through a unique institution known as Self Agency, which, she says, is exactly what it was. You paid two-bits a week membership fee and they gave you all the latest theatrical rumors. You chased 'cm down [please turn to page 109] 36