Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1928 - Feb 1929)

Three Young Gals Loretta, Polly Ann Young, and Sally Blane are the most unalike sisters you could expect to find, yet all three are becoming well known to the fans. 21 Photo by I By Alma WITH an ambitious movie aspirant in. at least every second household in the country, the Young family, of Los Angeles, is really to be envied. How very proud they must be, with three beautiful daughters in the movies ! All are under contract to different film c o m panies, with promising careers ahead of them. Each of the sisters is considered a beauty, with great screen possibilities, yet each is quite unlike the other two. There's Polly Ann, the eldest, under contract to MetroGoldwyn. Polly Ann is nineteen, very slim, with dark hair and eyes, and a slight resemblance to Norm. a Talmadge. She is the shyest and quietest of the three sisters. Sally Blane, who was christened Betty Jane Young, is seventeen. She is less of a beauty than her sisters — inclined, perhaps, to be almost too plump. But, if she is the least beautiful, she makes up for it by having the most personality. She is roly-poly, jolly, full of fun and pep; the friendliest of the three, the easiest to know. Sally is under contract to Paramount, and her career, so far, has been more extensive than that of her sisters. Then there's Loretta, nicknamed "Gretchen" by her family. Loretta is only fifteen, the youngest full-fledged ingenue on the screen, who still must apply herself to her schoolbooks, between scenes of a picture. Loretta is the coming pride of First National. There's none of the giggly schoolgirl about her, despite her youth. Reserved, soft spoken, she has all the .poise and dignity of a woman twice her age. Blonde, with gray eyes, and a mouth like Dolores Costello's. Loretta and Sally are frequently mistaken for one another, though, seeing them together, you can't imagine how they could be. Loretta is slim, almost to the point of thinness, weighing only ninety-eight pounds. She says scarcely a word, just smiles Talle? Loretta, nicknamed "Gretchen" by her family, is the youngest, full fledged ingenue on the screen. quietly, while Sally talks all the time. ■ Loretta shows the most promise of a really spectacular success in the future. ,; All the girls were practically catapulted into the movies. Their first bit of luck — besides the fact that they were born beautiful — came when their mother and stepfather moved the family to Los Angeles. Apparently they were a migratory household, for each of the girls was born in a different place : Polly Ann, in Denver ; Sally, in Salida, Colorado ; Loretta, in Salt Lake City. Sally was the first to take up a film career and her start constituted one of those lucky accidents which would never happen to any of us — you or me, dear reader. She met Wesley Ruggles, the director. Wesley said, "You've very good screen features. Why not come over to Universal and let me have screen tests taken of you ?" Why not, indeed! What girl would turn down a chance like that? Not Sally, at any rate. So she was given her first film work in one of "The Collegians" series. Scarcely had she finished her engagement with Universal when, at a party, she met an executive of Paramount. He said, "You've got good screen features. Why don't you come to the studio' and' let me have tests taken ?" It might seem more logical, to you or to me, for the studio authorities to have seen what she looked like in "The Collegians." But studios don't work that way. Taking screen tests is the way they have their fun. Actors with years of experience are constantly dashing about having screen tests,, just as if no one had any idea how they looked «before a camera. So Sally — at that time still Betty Jane — had her tests. She was given not only a contract, but a new name as well. "From now on," they told her, "you're Sally Blane."