Screenland (Nov 1945-Oct 1946)

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NOT JUST A REDUCING COURSE With over 200 how-to-do-it photos you'll learn simply and quickly . . . How to Make up Properly; the correct Hair-Do for you; How to Dress Better and save money; How to Move Gracefully; and many more valuable beauty hints. SEND NO MONEY Mr. Bonomo makes you this offer. "Send for this Course today— try it for ten days. If you don't see a marked improvement in yourself ... If you don't agree it's worth more than courses costing 10 times as much— then return it and your money will be promptly refunded. Remember, I only ask you to try." Complete Home Course 95 MAIL COUPON TODAY JOE BONOMO world famous beauty authority and publisher of "Beautify Tour Figure", your guide to Grace, Beauty and Charm . . . at all newsstands. Please Print Joe Bonomo, Personal BONOMO CULTURE INSTITUTE, Dept. 141 1841 Broadway, New York 23. N. Y. Send me in plain wrapper complete, Bonomo Institute Home Course in Success through Beauty of Face and Form. I'll deposit with postman $2.95 plus postage. If not delighted, I may return Course in 10 days and my money will be refunded. Name Address City □ Zone. State . Check here if you enclose $2.95 for delivery postpaid. (Canada and Foreign $3.50 with order.) impressions and imitations, he began a rigorous night club schedule. Toronto and Montreal, Boston, Philadelphia, and finally Miami Beach, which led directly to an engagement in Greenwich Village in New York City where his fame avalanched. Billy's impersonation of a tired chorus girl doing a 2 a.m. floor show brought an orchid from Winchell and mention by every other columnist in town. This publicity brought fashionable New York downtown to see him, and it wasn't long before Billy had moved uptown, to the Raleigh Room of the Hotel Warwick, and then, almost before he could come out of the fog of wondering what hit him, the Rainbow Room, Radio City, absolute tops for any night club entertainer. Here all the theatrical and social celebrities in town flocked to see Billy do his routine, an impression of a complete third-rate night club floor show with Billy playing everything from m.c. to chorus. Here Gertrude Lawrence had a ringside seat night after night to see Billy's take-off of a Noel Coward play. And all of this, naturally, meant DeWolfe would eventually arrive in Hollywood. This is exactly where Billy did arrive, but more "eventually" than he'd expected, due to a slight detour involving the aforementioned hitch in the Navy. This happened in an unusual way. Billy, with a Paramount contract in his pocket, was playing a final night club engagement at the Empire Room of Chicago's Palmer House. Each night he'd walk out on the floor, clad in white tie and tails, to be faced with, an almost solid block of men in uniform. His draft number hadn't come up yet. He wasn't sure he'd be taken when it did, due to an arthritic condition he'd had for many years. But still it was getting so he burned with shame every time he entertained in tails for all those service guys, and his conscience got all twisted up with his act and gave him the Navy blues. So it happened one day he was standing in a stamp line at the post office waiting to mail some letters. Next to him was another line leading to a Navy recruiting office. Billy looked at the recruiting line, blinked, and got in it instead. The next thing he knew he was in the Navy with the arthritis kept well under his hat. He was actually sworn into the service on the stage of the Chicago Theater, a performance designed to stimulate recruiting. That was September, 1942, and out in Hollywood Paramount was holding up n picture, waiting for Billy's arrival. Due to the unusual nature of Billy's enlistment the Navy allowed him to make one picture before calling him for active duty. That picture, you may remember, was "Dixie" with Bing Crosby, in which Billy DeWolfe played Mr. Bones, Bing's rival in the Technicolor musical. The picture finished, Billy reported at Great Lakes Naval Training Station, where he reached the grade of Musician 2/c, organized entertainments and entertained himself. He toured in the Treasury Department's "Four Freedoms Bond Show," in which Victor Mature represented the Coast Guard, and they played in department stores all across the countrv. "I used to boast," Billy says, "that I'd played the New York Hippodrome and the London Palladium. I never thought I'd be able to claim I'd played Bullock's in Los Angeles and Marshall Field's in Chicago." And much to his amazement, his Navy address was printed in a movie magazine. Fan mail on "Dixie" began rolling in, which, in his spare time, he answered. This activity resulted in his commanding officer, one Eddie Peabody, groaning and tearing his hair, "You can't sit here and answer fan mail! This is the Navy!" Billy was sure it was something. He'd never gotten that much mail in civilian life. About this time, after twenty months, Billy's arthritis began ganging up. He spent five months in a Navy hospital, terrorizing nurses from time to time with his realistic imitation of the Frankenstein monster. When the five months passed, a Navy doctor bawled him out for lying about the arthritis when he enlisted. "You didn't only lie to the Navy," the doctor said, "you lied to the government of the United States of America." Billy shuddered. Twenty years in the brig floated before his mind. "But," continued the doctor, "I'm sorry we have to discharge you. We can use men with your spirit." He shook Billy's hand, with the parting words, "And my advice to you, young man, considering your condition, is go to a milder climate. To California, for instance!" "That's where I'm going," replied Billy weakly. And that's where he went, straight to Paramount, where, reports on "Miss Susie Slagle" and "Our Hearts Were Growing Up" being what they are, the fan mail in the DeWolfe post-Navy civilian life is in for a change. Billy is not married, and on the clamlike side when the subject is pursued. He lives alone in a Hollywood apartment and at this writing, still does not boast a phone. If this 168-pound "black Welshman" needs to make a call, it involves a trip down to the subterranean garage, where the roar of cars coming and going makes conversation somewhat confusing. "What is going on in your apartment?" is the usual question from uninitiated friends. As for someone on the outside calling Billy! A carrier pigeon is more efficient. Billy has to watch his diet to keep from putting on weight and feels that pictures have constantly conspired against him. He had to eat dozens of chicken legs in "Dixie" artd stacks of spaghetti for a scene in "Our Hearts Were Growing Up." which meant all he got were tomatoes and a lettuce leaf for meals in between. His main diversion is going to the movies where he sits in the third row, "just like a kid." He figures that so far in his life he's gotten just about everything he wanted and is duly grateful. He's settled down considerably from the "crazy kid" he was. But he remains suspicious — suspicious that he might, at any time, go off on a tangent. To guard against this happening, (he insists), he carries two unmailed letters in his pocket. With a twinkle in his eyes, he explains, "You see, I've ne/er mailed them! Since I joined the Navy I've been afraid to go into a post office. Can't tell where it would land me!" 68 ScREENLAND