Silver Screen (May-Oct 1939)

64 Silver Screen for June 1939 lightly — stays on smoothly There's no invitation to romance in a heavily over-powdered face. So chooseLuxor "Feather-Cling," the face powder with a light touch. Luxor is a delicately balanced, medium weight powder that sits lightly, stays on smoothly. In five smart shades, 55c. For generous size FREE trial package, send this coupon. "Blondie"— Our Cutest Star [Continued from page 29] the studio calls, an efficient woman comes in and takes over the reins, managing Diji, Dr. Singleton, the marketing and the dusting. When Penny is between pictures the efficient woman receives a retaining fee so that she won't feel tempted to take a job with someone else. After all, not many housekeepers, even in Hollywood, are paid for not working for someone! But that is the way the breathless Singleton figures things out. She likes doing her own housework and she proposes to do it when time will allow, even if it costs her money. You may wonder just why it seems so much fun to her — and how long it will continue to do so. Her work in pictures entails a deal of real housework. She is enchanted because the set they have built for her is a real, workable house. "There is real plumbing!" she marvels. "With real hot and cold water, even in +he bath ! When I peel potatoes, they give me actual potatoes and I put the peelings into a real garbage chute which takes 'em off the set and clear of the sound stage! When I have to polish furniture I have a bottle of polish which smells like polish — and a nice, woolly rag. It's such fun. And when we finish a picture, they fold the whole thing up and put it away so they can get it out again for the next one — just like those all-ready-to-put-up houses that you read about in the ads." She paused and said, reflectively, "It's funny, you know. I studied for years and years and worked hard, learning to sing and to dance and to talk correctly. I knew a lot about acrobatic dancing and spent long hours keeping in practice. And now that I really have a chance to act, I act by polishing furniture and washing dishes. And I love it!" The answer is that Penny has been on the stage since she was a tot. She was on the road, living in trunks, living in theatrical hotels in New York from the time that she was almost as young as Diji. She has never had a taste of domesticity until recently — and now she finds herself fascinated by activities of which she had heard of rather vaguely but which she had never tried. She loves being a wife and mother and she is more than willing to be both on the screen (which is work) and at home (which is play.) When she married Dr. Singleton, she took his name, although the name of Dorothy McNulty had been pretty well known on the stage for years. While she was at it, she changed her first name, too. She liked the name of Penny and she was a trifle superstitious about it because she had an idea that pennies brought her luck. She still collects them. On the day when Columbia called to tell her that she had been cast for the first "Blondie" picture, she was cleaning the bedroom. She was knee deep in mops and pails and dusters and had a towel tied Wide World Joan Crawford and Pupschen visit New York. We can't say that Pupschen looks particularly impressed. round her still-brunette head. She dropped the mop, abandoned the pail where it stood, dressed the baby and herself and scurried to Columbia. When she came home she had signed a contract and she had become, by swift studio magic, a blonde. "I didn't know whether Scroggs would let me in," she said. "I didn't know whether he'd even recognize me! But, d'y'know, I believe I'd had a blonde personality all the time and hadn't realized it. Scroggs decided that he thought so too. Wasn't it wonderful?" You begin to see, as you get acquainted with Penny, what qualities in her made executives think that she would be the ideal "Blondie," even when she had dark hair and when she had been exploited as an exotic type. Scroggs, it seems, pined for a piano. So Penny bought him one for Christmas. Because the house was tiny and the living room daintily tinted, she selected a wee, fragile instrument of the "spinet" type. It is a lovely piece of furniture. I've no doubt that it makes pleasant sounds if you tinkle on it gently. But I should like very much to see Dr. Singleton — all six feet four of him — sitting at that instrument, pounding out a ditty! Something tells me that if he ever decided to play the opening chords of Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C# minor, the entire thing would be reduced to splinters. A NN SHERIDAN, voted Hollywood's "oomph" girl by the jOL eligible males of the picture colony, says that strapless evening gowns are more risky than risque.