Radio mirror (May-Oct 1937)

that it was worrying about money which kept her father from joining wholeheartedly in the fun when the family rounded up on Sunday for a picnic. The importance of money was brought home to ten-yearold Alice with a jolt one day when she ran downstairs ahead of her mother and motioned a taxi to the door. "Let's ride today," she beamed at Mrs. Leppert as her mother appeared in the doorway. And she stamped her foot with annoyance when her mother blushed, and sent the taxi driver away with an apology. "Why must we always go in the subway?" Alice complained. The chorus girls at the Capitol always rode away in taxis. "Because we're poor," her mother said simply. "Taxis are for rich people." Then and there, her mother believes, Alice decided that Alice, as she made her Hollywood debut. Few friends recognized this glorified blonde version of Rudy Vallee's protege. 2fitk Century-Fox she would be rich people, too. It was a long way from a crowded apartment in the Fifties to the luxurious, taxiinfested life which she imagined for herself, but Alice had her own seven-league boots. She was to cover the distance in a few short years — on dancing feet. From that day, Alice watched the dancers at the Capitol and danced before her bedroom mirror with new purpose. From Big Brother Bill, by this time earning his own way in the world as a bank clerk, she coaxed the money for dancing lessons at a neighborhood dancing studio. She'd go to the studio directly from school. Then, along toward dusk when Alice hadn't returned to the apartment, her mother would put on her hat and go to the dancing school to bring her young daughter home. His little sister's new enthusiasm was hard on Brother Bill who now was devoting his Friday nights to the Collegiate Club's weekly dances. Alice was immune to insults from Bill's friends who laughed when "that long-legged kid" begged to be taken along, and tagged along — invited or not. As it happened, Alice had the last laugh in this case for she turned up at the Collegiate Club herself after a year or so, with a whole string of boy friends, and out-danced the lot. DILL, whom sixteen years in a little-sister-infested family had taught the ways of a diplomat, settled the problem by bribing a friend to give Alice singing lessons on Friday nights. The lessons lasted two weeks, because the teacher wanted Alice to start at the beginning — with scales and exercises — and Alice wanted to sing the newest popular tunes. Like that! She didn't have time for details. She had a long way to go, and she was in a hurry. "1 can't teach her a note, but she's marvelous," her teacher told Bill later. "She doesn't know a thing about music, but she knows everything about rhythm." Rhythm! Another name for Alice's seven-league boots, boots beating out time as Alice danced her way to financial independence before she was fifteen, as later she launched a new kind of singing — could the name be "swing"? — and became the first girl to win success as soloist with a dance band. Alice had done with all lessons when she reached her thirteenth birthday. In that year she put aside her childhood, and schoolbooks with it; overnight she was grown up^ Two personal tragedies — the first real unhappiness she had ever known — played their part in her step from a happy child, playing "pretend" games with her friends to a young woman seriously bent upon making her own way in the big city. Alice's grandmother — and confidant — white haired Jane Moffitt, died in her sleep on her eightieth birthday. It was the first time death had come close to thirteen-year-old Alice and suddenly she was aware of the relentlessness of time. Thirteen years aren't many, but Alice counted them over and told herself again that if she were to do all the living she meant to do in her own eighty years, she'd better hurry, hurry. Her first encounter with the business of making a living also had its heartbreak. With her understanding mother's permission, and her mother's highheeled shoes for confidence, Alice went one afternoon after school to answer a Ziegfeld chorus call. Those hours of practicing before the mirror had had their results, so Alice's time-step compared favorably with the best of them when the dance director looked over the crop of applicants. But when he singled Alice out for questioning, the director asked no questions about dancing, but simply: "How old are you?" "Fifteen," Alice lied. "Better go home and wait {Continued on page 62)