Screen Mirror (Jun 1930 - Mar 1931)

6 Screen Mirror • For March A school conquers Hoii Reaching the film pinnacle six weeks after one has arrived in Hollywood without an idea or hope of being an actress and attaining this point of fame without a moment of struggling toward the top, is enough to bewilder the most calloused youth. And when one is only eighteen and already famous in other fields, it leaves little to be hoped for in the realm of ecstasy. The moment Carman Barnes arrived in Hollywood, she began being talked about. ■Not in the connotation of “gossip over the backyard fence.” Serious conversation buzzing among executives and workers about the striking beauty and personality of the girl. Wherever she went, discussion followed in her wake. That talk eventually resulted in a screen test for the school-girl writer. But not before she had completed her contract as a writer. Youth is often as stubborn as it is frank and appealing. Carman Barnes had come to Hollywood on a six weeks trial as a writer and she wanted to prove that she could make good. The day after her contract expired, she learned that her script had been accepted and her writing contract to be renewed in case she did not register well on the screen. But she did register well. So surprised were executives by her youthful charm and appeal, her different type of beauty and her voice that other tests were ordered for fear that her first might have been an “accident.” That it wasn’t is shown in the rapidity with which Jesse L. Lasky signed her as an overnight star and predicted that she would be an immediate sensation of the screen. Getting talked about is a habit of youth and Carman Barnes registered in the public mind early in life. Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, November 20, 1912, she found herself with youth’s ever-present urge to express herself. Words were her outlet and she began to write. First she tried poetry and then child stories which she never tried to publish. As a child, she learned to play the violin, paint, sculpture and dance but gave • ON HER first day as a movie star Carman Barnes undergoes the task of being fitted for some of the lovely gowns she will wear in “Debutante,” her first picture and, incidentally, one that is written by herself. Photo by Dyar • CARMAN BARNES celebrated her eighteenth birthday last November 20th with the conviction that all the thrills of success she could hope to attain already had come to her. What more could she hope for, she reasoned, when already she had experienced the ecstasy of seeing her first novel on the book stands, her first play produced, and finding herself a constant topic of newspaper discussion? Other excitements might come during her career, she argued, but they would be only repetitions of what she had already encountered. Today, Carman Barnes knows she was wrong. This eighteen-year-old blonde knows that all former thrills were mere flights of fancy compared with that of becoming a motion picture star. cwman {javnes . . . popular novelist eind p^Ljwnglrt . . . (3 i n e m a I a n d writer ar\ d find? herself star in her own picture a s a While the rapidity with which she has been skyrocketed to the dizziest heights of modern life has left her dazed. Overnight, she has become the talk of Hollywood. Today, she is trying to reach the ground with her feet so that she may continue the script on her own story, “Debutante,” which will serve as her first starring vehicle.