Screenland (May-Oct 1942)

Lucky Jinx Continued from page 34 Hesse, the photographer, saw The Jinx on the courts of the West Side Tennis Club, Los Angeles, four years ago, took a color picture of her and peddled it to a national magazine for a cover, she's been the most photographed, and most dated girl in America. The movie studios even took to making pictures of her to see how their clothes should look on their actresses, she was that photogenic. For four years, now, she has held the record of being the most beaued and the least kissed gal in the public eye. Not only in Hollywood did The Jinx become a ball of thermite, but in New York, too. She went there to appear in Al Jolson's "Hang On To Your Hats" and she kept the town's wolf pack doing exactly that all the time she was there. They had to hold on to them to keep from having them knocked off by the other howling quadrupeds converging on the stage door of her theater. For a time it looked as if it might become necessary to organize a government bureau to ration Jinx Falkenburg. Obviously there wasn't enough of her to go around. She and the show's press agents finally solved the problem by working her dates in three shifts, changing every two hours until the better night spots, where it ■ was good business to be seen, put up the matutinal shutters." Returning to Hollywood, she was more in demand than ever. The town's top squires burned out a set of telephone wires daily calling for dates. It was swell with The Jinx. She liked them all. She likes everybody, in fact. That's one of her charms, but just one, mind you. She liked them all, but didn't love them. She went through that susceptible stage from seventeen to twenty-two fawned upon, courted, rushed and besieged by the pick of the country's killer dillers, from Park Avenue to Beverly Hills, and never once stubbed her cute little emotional toe. All good, clean fun, lots of laughs, that sort of thing, but always her appetite remained steadfast and she played the field. Last spring she went on a personal appearance tour. She reached New York and there, just as her mind was full of her budding movie career, it happened. HE bobbed up, unheralded and unsung. If those who'd wailed and waited had their way, this would read "unheralded and unhung," but they aren't having their way and never did. She met him at a cocktail party. It wasn't a movie sort of meeting in which they stood around and insulted each other. She liked him because he was nice to everybody without knocking himself out about it and he probably liked her, too, because she was also being nice to everybody without looking around for photographers or somebody with a notebook before doing so. He followed her to Philadelphia (it's only ninety miles) and when she went to Boston, he popped up there. Later, as she changed planes at New York at five o'clock in the morning with the cold wind blowing in off Long Island Sound, there he was with the darndest bracelet for her. It had a little disc dangling from a chain and on one side was the device "JINXET," only the "E" was backwards and the "T" was upside down. The idea was that it combined the names "Jinx" and "Tex" when held a certain way and that's how it came out that HIS name was "Tex." She wouldn't tell us any more, but there are other ways of finding things out. He is Tex McCreary, newspaper man and newsreel commentator. And she didn't laugh (nor did anybody else, besides us) when we said, 66 gaily, "Ah, ha, so you're deep in the heart of — ■" Well, let it go, then. Miss Gifford suddenly discovered that on the device, among a lot of other daft'y words that might mean something to a gal in love for the first time at twenty-three, but sounded silly to us, was the tiny word, "Tiffany." "Tiffany!" The Jinx looked startled. "So it came from Tiffany's?" "Certainly," said Miss Gifford. "Don't tell me you didn't know." "Of course not," The Jinx said. "I hadn't even noticed that." This, of course, proved it. When a girl doesn't notice that a piece of jewelry from HIM is from Tiffany's, it proves that she's either in love or unconscious and The Jinx wasn't unconscious. We could see her moving, just as plain. The story of The Jinx and the rest of the Fabulous Falkenburgs is one of Hollywood's toppers. The Jinx isn't the only stand-out in the clan. They're all standouts. They never live by the calendar, only by the clock. 'We're all deliriously goofy," admits Mickey, who isn't on'e of the brothers, or even the father. She's Mrs. Falkenburg to ■ — to — well, by gosh, who IS she Mrs. Falkenburg to, except possibly the parish curate ? So far as anyone knows, no one. Just Mickey. The Falkenburgs were living in Barcelona, Spain, when The Jinx entered the lives of Eugene (Gene) and Mickey. Gene (that's her old man) is an engineer and during those years he was always either in Spain, Portugal or South America with Mickey. An addition to the family (the first) impended and they took to referring to same as The Jinx. Mickey wanted a boy and Gene wanted a girl. They had their first arguments over which it should be and that's why it, if you'll pardon the necessary neuter, was called The Jinx. When The Jinx arrived Gene took the parental bows and they named her Eugenia, but she scarcely remembers the name. Call her Eugenia, right to her face, and she'll probably look right past you. Jinx is the only name she's ever known. Once an agent tried to put her into pictures as Eugenia Falken (a disagreeable old bird, the falken), but it didn't jell and she returned to, and remained with, J inx. Dropping the article, Jinx began astounding the world when she was eighteen months old. She could only toddle, but she managed to fall into a swimming-pool. Fortunately, she was attired only in a delicate pink pelt and, seeing no sense in remaining under water at ten o'clock in the morning with no one around to take a picture of the feat, she began to swim. She's been swimming ever since and the Falkenburg menage glistens with cups she's won in that line. When Jinx was three, Gene was transferred to South America. They stopped briefly in Brazil and Mickey engraved the Falkenburg name in Brazilian social history by winning the women's tennis championship of the nation. They moved on to Chile and Jinx, a few years later, won the Chilean women's free style swimming title. Jinx was six when Tom was born and seven when Bob arrived. Not liking to do things in the conventional way, even though it's swanky, the Falkenburgs arranged for their sons to be born with tennis racquets in their hands instead of silver spoons in their visages. They've lived on tennis courts since and both have held national boys' and junior championships, doubles and singles. A year ago Tom, who, at seventeen, is six feet, three inches, played through a national tournament with his left arm in a sling, not for a gag, but because it was broken, and darned near won the tournament, too. When Jinx was fifteen a revolution blew up and the Falkenburgs grabbed their ten^ nis racquets and swimming trunks and made for Los Angeles. They found a house around the corner from the "West Side Tennis club and have lived there since. It was while attending a tennis match that Jinx got her first tumble from pic tures. Sam Goldwyn saw her sitting in the grandstand and promptly included himself out of everything else to look at her. He told her to report at his studio for a test and then gave her a starlet contract. It ran a year and all she did was report at the studio. She always says, when anyone asks her how she'd like to be in the newspaper business, that she was a reporter for a year, once, and didn't like it. Cute, by garsh ! It was not until Hesse saw her that she really began to roll. Hesse was standing on the sidelines watching her in a match and alternately swallowing and regurgitating his Adam's apple. She finished the match and. walked past him just in time to hear him exclaim, "Beautiful!" "You mean my . forehand?" said Jinx, pleased. "Hector, no, I mean your back — I mean all of you," said Hesse. "How about posing for some color shots?" That meeting started her career as a model. She has appeared on two hundred magazine covers since, has been more photographed than any known sports clothes model, and she is the only type model in the business who is in demand for legs, face, and figure. They even model her hands and her arms show no muscular bulges from her tennis playing. "I always try to take a swim after a match," she says. "If there is a tendency to bunching muscles, the swimming irons them out." The merchandise she has sold, through her face smiling from advertisements, her trim figure swinging across a magazine page, or her fine, long legs crossed on a color layout can only be computed in tons of soap, trainloads of cigarettes, leagues of silks and satins, tank cans of root beer and soup, warehouses of chocolate and great, waxy billows of shampoos. It was after her return from her "Hold On To Your Hats" venture in New York that she got her first movie part. The Goldwyn contract had run out and such had her publicity been that even studios which had previously shied off because of her statuesque proportions (five feet, seven; one hundred and twenty-nine) made a concerted rush for her. Columbia, in the words of General Forrest, got there fustest with the mostest men (iron) and she signed. She made "Two Latins From Manhattan" as a sort of trial balloon and then went to Dennis, Massachusetts, for four weeks of straw hat theater work. She thought this was a sort of repudiation of her hopes of going on in pictures, but just I when things were bluest, she got a wire , to hurry back to Columbia. The brass hats had gotten a look at her picture and were so delighted that, they wanted to expand her part and put in a song, which they did. After that she made "Sing For Your Supper" with Buddy Rogers and now she's finishing "Lucky Legs." Naturally, she has the title role and if you never saw a pair of lucky legs, arrange to get a look at the Falkenburg stems when the picture hits I your community. You'll be able to see them, all right. There won't be any textile priorities in your way. Columbia saw to THAT. It would be impossible for a family so full of bounce as the Falkenburgs to go Hollywood. They still live in the modest bungalow they rented near the West Side Tennis Club and the entire family still plays tennis. Either Bob, or Tom, or both is certain as taxes to win the national tennis championship some day and Jinx still