that has a way of attracting the heart's desire. Mabel craved diamonds.
And so, what do you think?
The careers of Peggy and Mabel ran parallel along the road to wealth,
fashion, luxury and husbands. If Peggy had the slight edge on Mabel
in the number of marriages, Mabel was one up on Peggy in the diamond
department.
Included in her collection was supposed to be a big hunk of the
Romanoff crown jewels, reputedly given her by Señor Emil Pardo,
ridiculously rich Brazilian coffee planter.
Those jewels, sold by the Soviet, had been contrabanded into the United
States by an individual said in hush-hush circles to have been a
prince. The royal baubles had a more fantastic and fabulous background
than the famous late Mrs. Evelyn Walsh McLean's Hope hoodoo rock.
In 1922, the then Prince of Wales, now Duke of Windsor, visited Canada.
Patriotic Canadians thought it would be jolly if he were to take a
Canadian girl as a bride. They tapped Lady May Cambridge for the honor.
The rumor grew so positive, the match was reported a certainty. A smart
Canadian promoter got an inspiration to raise a half-million dollars
by public subscription, buy the Romanoff jewels and have them studded
into a necklace as a wedding gift for the Queen-to-be.
It all came to naught when the Prince announced he was not engaged to
Lady May, had no intention of marrying. But the necklace had been made.
It was a miracle of craftsmanship, consisting of 17 beautiful marquise
diamonds and one huge egg-shaped clear blue-white diamond pendant that
must have weighed 100 carats.
The promoter went broke, couldn't pay off the New York jeweler who
executed the piece. The Maiden Lane merchant's bank took the necklace.
Then came the depression.
Even banks needed money, so this one turned the gems over to a
free-lance broker, who took them to Paris and showed them to La Boll,
then the Queen of the Boulevards.
It was love at first blink. And when Pardo asked her what she wanted
for Christmas, she already had the answer.
They were a swell investment for her, too. A few years later, when she
no longer knew the rich Brazilian and was a little short, she sold the
necklace to Harry Winston, the New York jeweler, who recently bought
the Jonkers diamond. Winston paid her about $350,000, cash.
The guy who knows about such things said her collection was worth
$3,000,000. Peggy's is valued at only $2,500,000. Poor kid!
Today's GPs don't do nearly so well. Taxes being as they are, they
can't expect to.
* * * * *
Back on the migration of sweet pastry to Manhattan, consider another
idiosyncrasy of New York night life.
In other towns--even the largest--the young boys own flivvers or borrow
the family car and there are places in the country to drive to. And you
can neck on the front porch or in the back yard, or at the barn dance
or on a slab in the cemetery.
There's none of those in New York.
Most people live in cramped flats, where even the living room often is
used as sleeping quarters.
The young femme can't entertain the young male at home; he usually
hasn't a car, and if he had, there's nowhere much to drive to.
Most New York kids court in dark movies, kiss in hallways and doorways,
and it's difficult to learn the fine points of love--or even of
smooching--in such an environment.
So, in the wisest burg of all, the newcomer is wiser than the native.
18. MODELS
The highly paid babes who pose for the photographers are prettier but
dumber than their sisters who hoof in the choruses.
Also, they're not as lively.
They may be more photogenic, yet usually they exude about the same
amount of personality as those other models--the wax ones in Macy's
window.
But they aren't as witless as they act. The average 18-year-old who
poses for a living knocks down $100 a week; a good cover (on a mag)
type makes as much as $250, and a $500 week is not unknown to the cream
of the calling.
Hold your hosses, kids. Don't rush into town. It's just about as
difficult to get pacted by one of the three leading agents, John Robert
Powers, Harry Conover or Walter Thornton, as it is to wangle a movie
contract.
Usually, a model earns more than a so-called contract girl in films,
who often signs at $75 a week.
Many models have gone into films as stars. Others have made favorable
marriages. (Definition: FAVORABLE--Moolah.)
Some of the town's top party-girls are models. You see them in all the
best places, like Morocco and the Stork, with wine-buyers and wolves.
But most models are quiet, unobtrusive kids, who come to New York
breathless and bug-eyed.
There are hundreds of them. All day you see them all over the East
Side, scurrying from one advertising agency to another and from one
photographer to another.
You usually can spot them, because they invariably carry their make-up
and accessories in a Cavanagh, Knox or Dobbs' cardboard hat-box instead
of a bag. Those are the insignia of their profession.
They live at the Barbizon for Women, the Shelton, the Beaux Arts, Tudor
City and other similar East Side hotels, and they lunch along the
counter at 247 Park Avenue and 420 Lexington Avenue, buildings in which
models' agents, advertisers and photographers have headquarters.
At cocktail time, you usually find those with dates at Armando's or the
Little Club.
Few models flash expensive furs or clothes, yet they are natty and
neat, clean-cut, with small features, streamlined, slender and sober.
But these luminous lollipops are responsible for a pernicious influence
in dress. Even the most girlish wear girdles, in a mistaken notion it
makes their gowns look more slinky.
How really silly! There is nothing cuter than an undulating form
swaying to a rumba band. And it's unfair to an escort to clasp a
handful of rubber and steel when dancing--instead of something warm and
human.
It's really simple, the way the New York girl-grabbers snag the new
models.
There's a clique composed of guys who throw cocktail parties, and they
manage to keep on excellent terms with the leading models' agents,
photographers and publicity boys.
When they hear about a new subject in town, they throw a party in her
honor and invite all the others in the gang.
Some are wealthy. But others make a very good living at the thing.
One gimmick is to tax all the male guests a "pro rata" share for the
cost of the party, with it generally understood that the host is a
major expense.
More indirectly, these connivers, known in other walks by an ugly
four-letter word, get by through carrying files of desirable phone
numbers.
Some of these characters have "pocket" businesses, such as the sale
of diamonds or furs, and every time they complete an introduction to
a money-man, the patron is expected to buy a hunk of jewelry or a
neck-piece from the go-between, as a gift to the gal.
No classification or occupation is faked as much as that of model.
Many have filed their names with one of the big agents, maybe even done
a couple of jobs. But they soon find other means to make money, less
arduous than standing on their feet eight hours a day under hot Kleig
lights, more steady than awaiting calls for their type.
The term "model" is loosely kicked around in New York and it covers a
multitude of skins.
It's difficult for a stranger to meet a real one--that is, unless he
has friends in one of the allied businesses, such as advertising,
publicity or art.
We are, of course, referring to photographers' models.
There are classifications--much larger--of the ones who model fashions.
They should be called mannequins, but that seems a word used only in
Paris.
Every wholesale house in the huge cloak and suit industry employs at
least one model and all the swank retail stores have whole staffs.
The girls who do this kind of work usually aren't as pretty as the
babes who pose for cameras. Facial beauty is not a requisite, although
a figure is supposed to be perfect in proportions, to fit commercial
dimensions.
Many who work in the wholesale market are friendly and it is considered
a regular part of their paid work to "entertain" the big buyer from
Burlington.
Many models--photographers' models, that is--go into show business as
chorus girls and, conversely, many chorines double as models.
Many of these have the most amazing experiences, and whenever tales
like the one about redheaded Joanne Marshall are told, another thousand
half-baked pigeons run away from their homes and hotfoot it to New York:
Joanne Marshall, whose real name was Joan Lacock, was born in Wheeling,
W. Va., in the summer of 1922.
Her father ran a drugstore. She grew up, the average small-town girl,
but shapely, lovely and with the most luminous eyes.
After her father's death, which left the family--her mother and her
young brother--about destitute, she and Mrs. Lacock came to New York.
Joanne was so entrancingly beautiful, she had little trouble catching
on as a model, and quickly earned $75 to $100 a week. She was then
about 18.
Some of the other Powers exhibits told her about the offer they had to
become show girls in the new revue being prepared to star Al Jolson.
It would be loads of fun. Joanne joined the show, too.
It opened in Chicago in the summer of 1940, then made its Gotham debut
that fall. Joanne was crazy about it.
Until then, she knew no serious romances.
Her male companions were young men without serious intentions; youths
like Gar Wood, Jr., and George Church, a young dancer in the show, and
George Miller, an equally young chorus boy.
One day the great man who starred in the show, the fabulous Jolson,
tiffed with Jinx Falkenberg, then a featured show gal in the
production, since then a film starlet and "breakfast broadcaster."
Jinx had often gone out with Al after his break-up with Ruby Keeler.
Jolson turned away, suddenly noticed the 18-year-old child who had been
dancing, unseen by him, in his own chorus.
He took the gal to dinner, flattered her beyond anything she had heard
in West Virginia or from youthful New Yorkers.
He swept her practically off her feet.
We say "practically," advisedly.
For, though she gave the air to all the boys, much to their anguish
and unflattering cracks about the age of her new friend, she resisted
Jolson's importuning to marry her.
Yet she was seen with him nightly, shared his favorite corner table at
the Stork Club after every show, took him home to meet her family, did
not deny published reports that this was the real thing.
The wise Willies said, "See what happens when an old guy with fame and
dough comes along? He gets the rail post." So they thought.
They didn't even know about a good-looking young fellow who sang with a
band.
Joanne met him in a night club, dated him one night when Jolson was
busy elsewhere. He began to take up more and more of her time. Then she
married him. It was at about the time he began to click on the radio.
He did okay. He is now a top Hollywood star. His name is Dick Haymes.
And Joanne is now Joan Dru, married to her second husband, actor John
Ireland.
Earlier in this chapter, we implied that models are dumb. Most of them
are. But one who was no dope was a blue-eyed rusty-mop who graduated
from the local high school in Canton, N.C., at 13. Dumb, did we say?
High school is correct. She finished it at 13.
Her name was Marianne Grey.
The next year, she matriculated at the University of Wisconsin, its
youngest student. She majored in archeology--bone-dry digging up of
things long dead. She got her degree in three years, at 17.
Luckily, all her spadework couldn't retard her physical development.
She had curves and dimples wherever bewitching beauts at 17 can grow
curves and dimples.
Carefully packing her sheepskin in mothballs, Marianne, the
tomb-expert, set out to rummage around in the living world. She found
it strangely clammy to specialists on mummies.
It might, though, find itself short of curves and dimples, red hair and
blue eyes.
So Marianne Grey changed her diploma-distinguished name to Marianne
Simms and headed for Broadway, where she registered it on the rolls of
Powers' models.
All students of the Sunday supplements know these dolls get around and
everybody looks at them.
In her peregrinations, she met Sinclair Lewis, who, captivated more
by her ravishments than by her knowledge of King Tut, brought her to
the attention of Edna and Red Skelton. They signed her to a personal
contract pronto, brought her to Hollywood for a projected radio
show--Skeltons instead of skeletons.
The show didn't materialize. But David O. Selznick did.
The great producer offered a screen test. Literate as well as gorgeous,
the youngster wrote the script of the test, and in it she challenged
the camera.
When she signed the contract, her name was changed again--to Cristofa
Sims and she became a Hollywood favorite.
WISDOM OF A WHITE WAY WOLF:
Smart guys seldom escort Powers, Thornton or Conover models. The cover
gals arise so early to keep working appointments that, along about
midnight, as the party gets in high, they suggest you take them home.
Chorines and show gals are indicated for night owls. Models are for
chumps who crave to show off with orchidaceous bric-a-brac.
19. SECOND FROM THE END
So many millions of inspirational and incoherent words are annually
written in raves over New York's chorus gals that the time has come to
do a little debunking.
1. Our chorines are not the prettiest girls in the world.
2. Nor are they the most immoral--
3. Or the most stupid.
4. They are usually poor dressers.
5. Few have passable gowns.
6. A small number live in penthouses.
7. Fewer win rich patrons or sweeties.
The New York rolls of Chorus Equity and the American Guild of Variety
Artists list several thousand girls who work in the ensembles of
musical shows, vaudeville houses and night clubs, or road-show in
traveling theatrical troupes, tabloid units, circuses and carnivals
originating in New York.
Of these, not more than ten tyros in any year come forth as glamor
gals, and the proportion of those with outstanding beauty is just about
the same as in non-professional life.
New York's chorines, like her models, are drawn to the magnet from
every state in the Union and all corners of the earth. Few hit the
jackpot.
Many Hollywood femme stars once hoofed in Broadway lines and other
cuties snared rich husbands or near-husbands.
But for every Paulette Goddard, Barbara Stanwyck, Alice Faye, Joan
Crawford and Lucille Bremer, there are thousands of kids who pound out
the soles of their aching feet for five or six years, then discover
that at 21 or 22 they've been around the Stem so long the managers call
them "old faces" and they no longer can get work.
If they have no particular talent to develop into individual
specialties, or if they haven't the faculty to snare a man to take care
of them, they've got to get jobs in inferior outlying night clubs or in
out-of-town cafés or road-shows, and, typed as a "road louse," there is
only one direction for them--down.
Yet nothing deters recruits. For every one who gets a Broadway job,
there are 100 applicants.
Perhaps, because we're getting older, we mumble that "those days" were
the best.
But the records prove the current chorus gal is not half so gay,
glamorous or interesting as the ensemble entry of a decade and more ago.
The world has changed, and with it changed the choryphee.
In the old days, a chorus salary of 50 or 60 bucks a week seemed like
a million to hicks in the sticks, and parental opposition was not too
oppressive.
The playboys were still around; the mobsters rustled $1,000 bills and
the Wall Street Blue Sky subdividers had gold mines up there.
Now, a survey will turn up the startling fact that most lilies of the
line are using the chorus as a temporary makeshift while completing
their education. They double between the cabaret floor or stage, and
college. If they're seeking a theatrical career, they spend their days
studying voice, ballet, dramatics.
The result is, few playgirls at that source. More and more duck home
immediately after the show, so they can get up early and go to school
or to the coach.
This is very bad on love-life, and the few still around with loose
shekels don't look too longingly at Broadway.
It's getting extremely difficult to meet a chorus charmer.
Those in legit musicals aren't usually approachable unless you know
someone to perform the introductions, which makes this puzzle something
like the one about which came first, the egg or the chicken.
Night club quail is as hard to make up to, because of the law which
forbids entertainers to sit with patrons in the dining room. All big
cafés, with the choicest, enforce this rule rigorously. You'd hardly
want to meet the girls in the kind of dumps that cheat.
Thus, the new babe has little opportunity to get in with the playboy
set. There are, of course, exceptions. People still break out of
Leavenworth, too.
The glamorous ten who crack through each year, to be quoted and itemed
in the columns, wined and steaked at El Morocco and screen-tested by
20th Century-Fox are the phenoms.
The others go home every night and study--or end up with a musician.
That's orthodox.
Every night club and theatre with choruses must employ musicians. They
work the same bastard hours as the girls. They duck out for smokes at
the same time, have their crullers and java in the same lunchroom or
greasy spoon. They talk the same language about the same interests.
Propinquity, plus opportunity, are Cupid's nets.
The young, strange gals are lonesome, their cheap rooms are
depressing--and musicians are at their elbows.
So you can easily figure out the answer to this one: To meet a chorine,
learn to slide a trombone.
Most of the kids live in midtown hotels between Sixth and Eighth
Avenues, from 42nd Street to 55th.
Their favorites are the Piccadilly, Forrest, President, Plymouth,
Belvedere, Victoria, Taft, Abbey, Century, Knickerbocker, Wellington,
with those who can afford it staying at the Edison, Lincoln, Astor and
Park Sheraton and dreaming of the Savoy Plaza.
A day in the life of the average chorine--without school
obligations--would find her arising about 5 p.m., and getting out just
in time to grab a cup of coffee before reporting for work. They look
like hell at this time of day, minus make-up and with tousled hair in
a net. The transformation that comes after they apply their stage war
paint remains with them for the rest of the day. When a chorine has
a date after or between shows, she never removes the pancake or the
drugstore eyelashes.
When they are eating alone or with a musician boy friend (with whom
they usually go "Dutch") you'll find them at the soda fountains of
Hanson's pharmacy, 51st and Seventh Avenue, or the Paramount druggist,
on Seventh near 52nd Street. Their favorite lunch counters are Rudley's
and Rikers, and the greasy vest in the 49th Street side of the Brill
Building.
Those who aren't cabaret hoppers frequently bowl at the Roxy alley
after the show. Others prefer jam sessions in the small and smoky 52nd
Street jitterbug joints.
* * * * *
The ambition of every cookie in every chorus is to be tapped by a
Hollywood talent scout.
Each year several dozen "new faces" are approached by the local
representatives of the major film studios and signed to "option
contracts," with the company not obligated to hire the girl after she
is tested.
A tiny percentage of those so signed arrive in Hollywood, and of these
one in a thousand makes good.
Often they seek out your authors and breathlessly spill the info that
it has come--the chance for a screen test!
What to do?
We ask whether the test is to be shot here or on the Coast. Mostly
likely, it's in the New York studios.
We caution, "Don't take it; hold out for a Coast test."
Few movie contracts have resulted from tests in local offices here. The
facilities and abilities available are undergrade. The best points are
not brought out. There are no directors here, so any talent that does
lurk is often kicked around.
But when a studio has enough faith to ship one to the Coast for the
test, chances of a film break-through are considerably higher.
First, the studio must pay a salary during the testing period, on top
of round-trip, first-class fare. With that invested, efforts will be
made to bring out assets. And, should the first test fizzle, others
will be given.
Another factor against Eastern tests is that the try-out is viewed by a
tough jury, 3,000 miles away--hard strangers predisposed to turn thick
thumbs down.
In addition to meaning little, these Eastern screen tests are a
walkaway for wise wolves, most of whom manage to get close to casting
agents of studios.
The procedure is to introduce the subject to the scout and get his
promise to consider her for a test. Even if he eventually turns her
down, the squab is on a string for weeks and has to be nice to her
"benefactor." If she ever gets the test, she's hooked for at least
three months, while the film is shipped to the Coast to await the
verdict of producers and directors.
Actually, it's not necessary to know anyone to get consideration from
the talent scouts. They're always looking for new faces. That's their
business. Just barge in. (See page 301 for list of casting agents.)
But, suppose the candidate is lucky enough to run the gauntlet and find
herself signed to the usual standard contract, which calls for $125
per week the first six months and options for seven years thereafter,
at a slowly rising scale.
Should she take it?
We say, unless she wants the trip and a six-month paid vacation--no.
She wants to be a dramatic actress. The odds against her making any
talking screen role are about one in 500. If her heart breaks easily,
movies will do it.
We tell her when she steps off the Super-Chief, with high hopes and
enthusiasm, she will be plugged, for publicity, as a new star. A
battery of photogs will greet her at Union Station. That afternoon she
will get phone calls from every chaser in town, who will have learned
everything about her by the grapevine from their opposite numbers in
New York, who kissed her good-bye.
The first week will be a merry-go-round. She will dance till she's
dippy at the Sunset Strip cabarets, meeting the biggies and the host of
peculiar paranoiacs who infest the colony. She will go to swimming pool
parties at mansions that look like De Mille film sets.
But the cabarets are fewer and not so glamorous as those she left
behind. The people are duller, less intriguing. After a week, she'll
realize Hollywood is pretty much Petoskey with palms.
Then will come the waiting--waiting for calls from the studio,
waiting for appointments with the costumers, hairdressers, publicity
department, still photogs.
She'll be snapped in every pose. If she's ultra-photogenic, she's sunk.
For the rest of her career in Hollywood, while her gams are still
straight and her figure otherwise, she'll pose cheese-cake for fan-mags
and Sunday sheets--and find herself with a one-way ticket back to New
York six months later.
The girl, of the hundreds under contract at every lot, who gets the
attention of the producer or director, so he throws her a line in a
picture, is the lucky one who is hit by a modern miracle.
She is the one each year at each studio who may possibly have a future.
The others, perhaps equally qualified, return to New York and sarcastic
jibes, go back to the farm and marry the hired hand, or remain a part
of the Hollywood flotsam, drifting from one extra call to another, back
to a job in a chorus, possibly end up as a car-hop or checkroom-worker,
as many have and will.
But, as we hinted, in New York dreams sometimes do come alive, though
not always according to time-table or preconceived plan.
In the spring of 1937, Mortimer received a phone call from a
15-year-old redhead named Marianne O'Brien, who that day had joined the
kid chorus of Ben Marden's Riviera, a glittering roadhouse on the New
Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge.
Said Miss O'Brien to Mortimer: "I'm 15, sweet, unspoiled and innocent.
Rich men like to marry girls like me, the others tell me. Will you take
me to the Stork Club and introduce me to one?"
Mortimer is an obliging soul, especially when he smells a story,
so he escorted the youngster to Chez Billingsley, but ran into no
millionaires.
Marianne got no proposals of marriage that season, but did achieve some
attention due to publication of the following story: