We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
89
in Holl^ood?
abandoned, hundreds of girls stay on rather points out some of the reasons.
Rittenhouse
"At present we don't register any girl, unless she's more beautiful and better clothed than the girls we already have on record, or unless she's a type we haven't yet registered, or haven't enough of. So you see how very hard it is. With the exception of the independents, all the studios call for extras through us. A girl may be a good leading woman, or flapper type, and yet be turned away. A cute girl, who couldn't wear clothes distinctively, might get so far as to be registered, but work seldom or never. A girl like Lois Moran, who would be classed here as the plain-beautiful type, would probably not get very much work from us. Neither would Janet Gaynor. Our calls are mostly for dress girls, and as such these stars wouldn't fit in."
Why should a girl feel any qualms about returning home, because she is unable to get into pictures? Aren't there thousands of others in the same predicament? Certainly, yet the fact remains that many girls, and perfectly sensible girls in most ways, do feel qualms. Sometimes her family has expended a considerable sum of money to maintain her in Hollywood, and she feels that before returning home she should in some way repay it.
Let's for a moment glimpse into the life of one of the girls who came to Hollywood and failed to get into pictures. I have in mind a talented young lady who left home at nineteen. She was an accomplished girl ; just the sort who would be popular almost anywhere. She belonged to golf clubs back home, and was always invited to select parties. She went aroundwith the smart set and received various proposals from eligible men in her town. But she yearned for bigger worlds to conquer.
She soon discovered her mistake. Matching herself against the
mf/Stfirfhfu1
mm
mSm
ml ill
ml
0k
m
Janet Gaynor is another whose path as an extra would be difficult, because she is not a "dress" girl.
PuMilll
ft 1 "! 1 ifm ' Hi I
Photo by Autrey
In spite of Lois Moran's pronounced success, there would be little demand for her type as an extra.
girls in the city where beauty is the rule, rather than the exception, she decided that she didn't stand much of a chance. Though she was nice looking, not even her best friend would have called her beautiful. She didn't screen well, either, she found out after expending a considerable amount for a test. She realized that although she might get work doing stunts in pictures eventually — -she was an accomplished diver and horsewoman — she would never realize her ambition to become a leading woman. So she went back to her stenography, but not to the home town. She bought a bungalow and rented out rooms, took up gardening and outdoor sports in her leisure time, made friends and settled down to her \ new life.
"I'll never go back home now," she told me. "I guess I'm too proud. They all hoped for so much from me. Anyway, most of the girls and fellows I used to know have either become married, or left the town. It's seven years since I went away, and I'd feel out of everything — on the shelf. All the youngsters are grown up now, going about doing the things I did so well. Hollywood doesn't give a hoot whether or not I stay, but I've grown to like it here.
Continued on page 106