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Genius and her Girl Friend; Famous Female and her Foil; Star and Stooge — label them what you will — but these are the women with whom the stars and starlets take down their back hair
A GIRLS BEST FRIEND IS
BY GRETTA PALMER I
THE sight-seer in most cities can take his time: the Empire State Building or the Tower of London isn't going to budge. The sight-seer in Hollywood has to keep moving to a constant chorus of, "They're here," "They've gone," "They passed that way." Chasing the picture stars takes him, at a fast clip, to the studios, the Brown Derby, the race track, the night plane for New York.
When the sight-seer catches up with the star, autograph book in hand, he usually sees two figures emerge from the sleek limousine into the flashlights. An actress and her boy friend? Not at all.
The twosome is far more frequently one the press photographers will label Genius and her Girl Friend. Or Famous Female and her Foil. Or Star and Stooge. . . .
The glamorous ladies of Hollywood have close women friends, contrary to the general belief that any girl with sex appeal must spend her life being a Man's Woman. Oldfashioned dramatists knew better; their favorite stage direction was "Enter Confidante." At this point in the play a mildly unattractive girl entered from the left and gave the heroine a chance to relax. Confi* dantes abound in Hollywood today.
Someone has said that famous women don't need husbands — they need wives. In many cases the Hollywood stars' best friends run their households, save them from interruptions, coo and cluck them into a cheerful mood when things have gone wrong, in the best approved wifely manner. In other cases the girl friend is around less constantly, but she serves her purpose as a repository of secrets and a builder-up of self-esteem.
MOVING-PICTURE stars have their carpet-slipper moods. They know moments when they are tired of being too darned glamorous on the lot and in the drawing room. They want to loll around in an old flannel dressing gown with cold cream on their faces. The men they know would be scandalized if they could see them then; the women friends curl up with their knitting and let them talk.
Consider, for instance, the cult of the hairdresser as confidante among the glamorous girls out West. No woman is a heroine to the person who sees her with her head stuck in a soapy bowl, or with the Topsy-like contrivance of the permanent wave attached. But Joan Blondell's best friend is her hairdresser, Ruth Pursley, who attended her when she married Dick Powell.
Marlene Dietrich's closest intimate is Nellie Manley, another curl-and-cuticle girl in