Chapter VII: Part TWO: The People (1)

(_Confidential!_)

15. THE MINX IN MINKS

(_For Gals Only_)

This is the Enchanted City where fables and sables come true and dreams have substance, sometimes. This is the magic spot where gentlemen pay the rent for terraced apartments hanging high over the river and jalopies turn into Rolls-Royces.

Every year they come here: the little gals from farms and villages, inland whistle-stops and, now again, foreign lands. They come here, breathlessly and hopefully, in search of fame and fortune.

The men they left behind were grease-station monkeys, cow manicurists, soda jerks and coal miners. Here they seek men whose pants match their coats, who stand when a lady comes to the table, who know the difference between a filet mignon and filet de sole, and can even pronounce same.

But they don't always find them.

You, reading this, may be one of the dolls bound for New York to take it over. Or you may be a perfectly prissy schoolteacher on a two-week vacation, but with a secret and ineffable hankering to know more about the things the movies mustn't show. Or maybe you are a lady buyer, coming to the fall showings; or a wife, who, left alone by her husband, doesn't want to be by others.

The same tips go for all:

Do not come to Gotham unless you have round-trip fare. If you intend to seek coin or a career here (or just a job) do not come at all unless you have enough to keep you for four months and are insulated against a city that can say no in any language.

Do not come to New York in answer to a solicitation, personal or by mail, for a job. If anyone comes to your home town with offers of good positions in Manhattan, turn him over to the police. Odds are he's an advance man for a call house.

Do not come unless you have friends here already, for it can be a mighty lonesome place. If you are an easy mixer and don't care, you can eliminate the requirement for friends.

Do not come to New York for a visit ALONE. There is practically nothing a girl can do here without an escort, or at least without the company of another girl, except ride the dirty subways and stare at the obelisk.

If you can't dragoon a man of your own you are just out of luck. Even the escort services have been banned by law.

But remember, New Yorkers seldom try for pick-ups on the streets, in buses or lobbies. Any girl who responds to a raw come-on may be smiling back at a handsome dick on the vice squad.

However, it is considered o.k. (at your own risk, of course, not ours) to respond to "It's a nice evening, isn't it?" at dance halls, at free dances, bathing beaches, swimming pools, cocktail bars, church and YMCA socials.

Also, on the street (but only if you or he may be walking a dog and one or the other stops to admire it).

* * * * *

Most night clubs and cocktail bars do not admit or permit unescorted women after 10 P.M.

(At this writing the City Council and State Legislature are considering bills to ban unescorted women at bars at any time.)

Never talk to strangers in theatres, on subways or in other public places.

You may nod to him in a hotel if you both live there and have seen each other before.

DO NOT walk in Central Park, or other parks AFTER DARK, even if escorted.

* * * * *

CONFESSIONS OF A CAUTIOUS CUTIE:

Smart Gotham gals don't keep diaries. If what goes into 'em is unimportant, why bother? If it's secret stuff, never put it in writing.

Gals who pass out after five (or 55) drinks should wear identification bracelets with name and address--especially when on a first date with a gent who may not know where to deliver the body. In no event should dolls who can't handle their liquor step out with men who can't carry theirs. Who takes whom home?

When entering a night club, a smart gal doesn't stop at the bar to greet every drunk, just to show her escort she's a doll-about-town.

Do not use cheap perfume when night clubbing (or at any time).

Don't invite gents who call for you into your apartment. Have them meet you below. If they once get in, they may decide they'll stay a while, smoke your cigarettes, drink all your liquor, raid your ice box, and then if you won't give in, they won't buy you dinner.

* * * * *

Few Gotham glamor gals are home-grown. Our gals don't go in much for show business and modeling. Those professionals you see on the street and in the night clubs almost all come from out of town.

The deep South--Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia and Florida--towns like Scranton, Pa., and West Coast points, contribute most of our flashy frails.

For a long time, during the war, our source of supply was cut off, when the gals made more money at home in defense work or as waitresses than they could expect to begin with in the expensive-to-live-in metropolis.

But in days before that, there was no horizon at home for a good-looker with ambitions.

They hitchhiked, rumbled in by bus, train and plane. The more fortunate became models or show girls. One of a thousand went on to fame and fortune in Hollywood or acquired a millionaire, in or out of wedlock.

But the reward for the lucky ones is so great that for every failure a dozen new, young, starry-eyed twists come to town.

The case of Mary Stuart, of Tulsa, Okla., is typical.

It is one of the stories that could only happen on Broadway.

The chief characters:

Joe Pasternak, famed movie producer and discoverer of Deanna Durbin; his wife, the former Dorothy Darrell, who was a chorus girl Cinderella, and Mary Stuart, the 19-year-old beaut from out West.

But let us start from the beginning. Destiny stopped in Tulsa and pointed his long, bony finger straight at New York. Mary took the hint.

That day she shoved off. Lacking the fare, she thumbed her way. She had no difficulty flagging rides. For Mary, as we've told you, is a beaut. She has soft brown hair and a figure curved in the right places to accentuate all her loveliness--all 118 pounds and five-feet-five of it.

So she had no difficulty finding work here, as a model by day and as a photo girl in the Grill Room of the Hotel Roosevelt at night.

Into the Grill one night came Pasternak and his own lovely wife, accepting an invitation extended by Guy Lombardo, maestro at the spot.

Miss Stuart, hotly hoping she'd be seen by a Hollywood mogul, had been fired from the photo concession the day before.

But Destiny hadn't been; it was still working.

Through the voice of one of the musicians in Lombardo's band, whom she knew well, Destiny whispered to her that Pasternak had a reservation for that evening.

For a few bucks, Mary fixed it up with another photo girl and paraded past the Pasternaks with the camera.

Mrs. Pasternak saw Mary first, remarked about her beauty to Joe.

Mary, near their table, began to hum in tune to the music.

Pasternak addressed her. "Do you sing?" he asked.

Mary modestly admitted she did--a little.

Pasternak asked to hear her. Mary was unprepared. He said he might leave town next day. So he asked Lombardo to let her try a number with the orchestra.

When Mary got there, she didn't even bother to talk the song over with the piano player. Confidentially, she had rehearsed it with him earlier in the day, framing up the whole thing for Pasternak's visit.

She sang two songs.

Pasternak later admitted she was no world-beater as a thrush. And he had caught on to the game.

"I decided that any girl with that much gall had a hell of a chance in pictures," he told Lombardo.

So he signed her to a contract--that night--without a screen test.

Pasternak, who also discovered the charming and talented Kathryn Grayson, has flirted successfully with Fate more than once. His own stunning wife was, before meeting him, a chorus girl who, in her teens, had been around Broadway so long she was considered "an old face" and practically washed up.

So she joined a touring line of rumba dancers. Far from New York, Pasternak saw her in a night club, asked to meet her, whipped out his fountain pen and a contract and shipped her to Universal, at which studio he then labored.

Dorothy appeared in minor roles in several pictures.

Then she interrupted her promising career to marry her discoverer--a dear friend of her ex-sweetie, Harry Richman, whom she had once followed to London only to be deported by the British authorities because she had neither passport nor money.

But, if any guy says to you, "Honey, you oughtta be in pichures. Let's go up to my room and talk it over," _DON'T_. That is _not_ the way to get in pictures. That's the way to get in trouble!

16. GUYS AND PEARLS

(For Men Only)

Don't be a cluck!

Sure, New York is the home of Tiffany and Cartier, Bonwit and Saks, Milgrim and Bergdorf-Goodman.

But Gotham gals don't flop for saps, simps or retail buyers.

They'll take everything you've got to give 'em--and take you for what you haven't got.

But the more you shower on them, the more they'll laugh at you--while cheating with another.

Of course, if you're only in town for a few days or a few weeks, and you have a penchant for orchidaceous glamor dolls, you've got to kick in and hand out--handsomely.

But don't overdo it. Be careful how you do it.

None but hustlers are for sale. So, whatever you give, make it look like a gift of appreciation for the pleasure, instead of a bribe or fee.

* * * * *

O.K. You are a lonesome gent in New York, looking for company, and where are you going to find _her_? Of course, we don't know what your taste is--whether you like them little or tall, blonde or brunette, breezily hep or delightfully dumb.

But, let us warn you, Manhattan is mined for a lonely guy.

Best policed city in the world, despite an occasional scandal, there's little opportunity for street pick-ups here, and the quality of what you could pick up is so inferior, you'd be cheated.

New York's cafés and clubs are forbidden by law to employ hostesses or "B" girls, and a police regulation bans mixing between female entertainers and guests.

This rule is so strictly enforced in the big, first-class night clubs, that the members of the casts are required to enter and leave the premises by the stage door.

A friend of ours, a newspaperman, was married to a redheaded hoofer in a Broadway night club. Because of the variance in their hours, the only opportunity they had to visit socially with one another was between shows at her club.

One night, while she was sitting with her husband, the cops raided the place and took up its license. The offense: A female entertainer "mixing" with a guest.

When it was explained to the police that the couple--if not respectable--were at least respectably married, the flat-feet scratched their heads. After prolonged and profound thought, they refused to drop the charges.

"The law says no gals can sit with guys," they stated. "It don't say nothing here about no husbands."

The club was suspended for 10 days.

Some of the taxi dance halls on Broadway employ broads who will dance with you for a dime a dance (and up) plus tip. They are not supposed to make dates with you, and you won't want to anyway, unless you are desperate or dizzy.

If they do date you, you've got to wait until the place closes, at one, or later, then meet them elsewhere than at the dance hall.

(But where are you going with them, during the hotel shortage?)

Turn to Chapter 33 for how to meet friends.

INSIDE STUFF: Many smaller night clubs, especially those on side streets and in Greenwich Village, cheat. Some headwaiters have been known to introduce strangers for a stiff tip. But if you sit out with the tramps in these places, count your drinks, watch your check--and better check your watch.

* * * * *

BEWARE of steerers. If a stranger in the street or hotel lobby or a cab driver asks you if you want to meet a gal, shake your head hard. Odds are he is a runner for a clip joint.

* * * * *

WISDOM OF A WHITE WAY WOLF:

Don't date a late-dater unless you are her late date. (Late-dater: a doll who ducks out on her dinner date at midnight to meet another guy--usually a musician.)

Three funny gags that make 'em laugh are worth more than three hours of romantic salesmanship.

Get yourself a big, fierce-looking hound and walk him around the block. Not only is there a free-masonry between all pooch-lovers, male and female ... but plenty of soft little cuties will stop to admire the brute. Then....

Most girls are now too smart for the "ya oughta be in pichures" hokum, but no doll can stand off a guy who "breaks her down." Insults far oftener than flattery bust barriers on Broadway.

Never trust a gal any farther than you can throw a trap-drummer.

Common courtesy demands that if your doll airs you, she rates one day to return. (Unless you have to catch a train home that day--then give her two hours.) If she doesn't show up, find a stand-in. Census bureau says there will be 750,000 more does than stags in this postwar world.

When you take a likely candidate to the Stork or El Morocco, don't try to impress her with your friendship with big shots by introducing her to a movie star or millionaire playboy. She'll probably end up with him--instead of you.

But if she rhapsodizes about a good-looking guy or celeb at another table, go and bring him over and tell him in front of her that your little friend goes for him. She'll be terribly embarrassed.

(_Confessions of a Cautious Cutie_: Yes, but she'll slip him her phone number, too.)

If you get your dates mixed up and end up with two Little Red Riding Hoods on the same party, don't explain. Smile in a superior way and let the pigeons fight over you--not you over them.

Never enthuse to a fellow wolf about your latest conquest--unless you're trying to lose her.

If you are with a new pretty, tip the headwaiter NOT to give you a ringside table in full view of the other wolves.

Do not let her dance with your pals. Let them dig their own. Be a good fellow, but not that good.

Don't introduce her at all if you can get out of it.

Never pan your pal to your doll and surely don't tell her he's a bad egg with women or a quick-change lover. If you do, you'll find your femme so interested, she'll turn flipflops for him.

When a date stands you up, never give her another tumble, though her alibi about rushing her sick mamma to the hospital or getting an emergency call from the casting office sounded bullet-proof. What undoubtedly happened was that her secret heart throb got back in town unexpectedly.

When you book a babe, have her meet you wherever you'll be. Only chumps wait for dames at stage doors or pick them up at their hotels. Don't be one.

* * * * *

WARNING:

Do not start fights in night clubs. If you think you have a legitimate beef, take your complaint to the manager. If he won't listen to you, the cops or your lawyer will. But don't start swinging. You can't win even if you are a football player, a pug, or pack a rod. You can't whip a bartender who swings a bung-starter. If you can, there's a heavy-handed bouncer, a couple of captains and a wedge of waiters waiting to show you who's boss. If they keep hands off, they'll slip you a mickey finn--and you'll wish you had never been born.

17. GLAMOR PUSSES

New York has the most beautiful bimbos on earth, and it will amuse you to learn few of them come from New York.

The authors know the buying power of their territory, and one of their ways of paying their rent is selling books.

Yet, slaves to the verities, they must say--sadly, it is true--that if you want a rollicking time with a tootsie, avoid the Bronx and Brooklyn entries.

That is, of course, a generalization. There MAY be some pretty home-grown ones. But we can't find any. Don't say we haven't tried. In the interests of science, natch, we have pursued research. But when we find one worth intensive study, we find she's from Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Georgia, California or Quebec. Canadian chicks can be fun. But the gals who do best, and by "best" we mean what gals do best, usually come from below the Mason and Dixon line.

The proportion of pretty out-of-towners is higher than the home-bred, because New York gets the pick of the crop from everywhere else.

The homely ones stay home, marry the neighbor's son and raise pigs, chickens and brats.

The pretty pigeons get fed up on louts in lumber-jackets and hit out for Life.

So the imports are pretty, whereas the home output is pretty merely in the normal proportion, which is low.

It is worth noting that, once a doll gets the title of Glamor Puss, it adheres to her for life, a-la a British order of knighthood. Some of our more famous GPs are long past the age of consent, yet they continue to make front pages, collect husbands or boy friends and costly gifts.

An example is Peggy Hopkins Joyce, born Margaret Upton, daughter of a Virginia barber, who recently acquired a seventh spouse and who is working on her eighth. She long carried on a highly publicized feud with Mabel Boll, so-called "Queen of Diamonds," daughter of a Rochester pub-keeper, on the dimensions of their gem collections.

The feud between Peggy and Mabel dated back to when they were both in the sizzling set that made headquarters at old Bustanoby's. Others in that crowd included Lillian Loraine and the Dolly Sisters.

Peggy's sweetheart then gave her a diamond ring. It was a shabby little stone, scarcely over a carat, but it was Peggy's first diamond and it gave her far more of a thrill than many of the brooches and bracelets she was to amass later. Its effect on her friend Mabel was remarkable.

Scientists will tell you that the passion for possessing precious stones is as old as recorded history. It is like a potent drug that fires the blood and flames a desire that knows no rest. So it was with Mabel. Years later she said:

"I thought it was the most beautiful stone in the world. I used to admire it by the hour and beg Peggy to let me wear it sometimes. I never hoped to own anything so grand."

But if Mabel had no diamonds, she had beauty--and beauty is a magnet 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:

It seems Ben Marden demanded all "new faces" for his chorus that year. When he interviewed Marianne in the line-up, he said, "Wait a minute, dear, haven't you worked for me before?"

Marianne demurely replied, "No, sir, you mistake me for my mamma, Mae O'Brien, who danced in your chorus at the Silver Slipper a few years ago."

Mae O'Brien, still beautiful and redheaded, was then selling programs and cigarettes at Jimmy Kelly's Greenwich Village bistro.

Marianne missed out on her millionaire, but soon the public prints linked her with many other men. She was pursued like the rabbit in a greyhound race. She was in demand as a photographers' model and finally won a speaking role in a road show of a Broadway hit.

A talent scout from Warners saw her, signed her to a $750 a week contract. She sat in Hollywood a year, on the payroll but not on a work-sheet. She was credited with romances in dizzy dozens, yet none with millionaires.

Then her film "career" faded and Marianne returned to New York. They said she was "through," though she was 22.

In the meantime, her mother, Mae, a widow, had wed. Her husband was no millionaire, but he got by. His name is Abe Attell, and three decades ago he was the world's featherweight champion, called by many the greatest boxer ever.

He had achieved fame of another sort by being named as the go-between in the Black Sox baseball scandal.

One night at El Morocco, Marianne was introduced to a good-looking, youngish fellow, who wanted to dance with her. He asked for a date. It grew into a romance.

The man, Richard Reynolds, Jr., heir to the $30,000,000 tobacco fortune, settled with his wife for $3,000,000--to be free to marry Marianne.

So the little redhead, no longer 15 or so unsophisticated, got her millionaire. No wonder O. Henry, who wrote so much so well about a town he knew so little, called it Bagdad on the Subway. It's a wonderworld--to its chosen few.

20. PARTY GIRLS

Just what and who is the party girl? Where does she come from? How does she live? What does she make?

There is a great deal of popular misinformation about the "party girl" and her function. The common error is to confuse her with a "call girl" and let it go at that. But there is a great and definite distinction between the two, though, of course, there are borderline cases.

But which is the "party girl"? You'll find her in many East Side hotels and apartment houses. Originally, she came to New York or Hollywood from Texas, Oklahoma, Florida or a small Pennsylvania town, with ambitions to become a model or an actress.

More often than not, her name is registered at one or more of the large model agencies.

All new girls in town quickly find themselves invited to cocktail parties given in swank apartments, where the local wolves get an opportunity to look them over.

These parties usually are thrown by hosts who make their living that way. They are smooth, suave characters with an unlimited acquaintance among show people, artists and models, and have access to every fresh young thing in town.

In return, the "guests" pay liberally for the privilege of being invited to the parties and also reward their hosts liberally otherwise, such as buying fur coats or jewelry through them, giving them tips on the market or commissions on deals consummated through contacts made at these parties.

The new girl in town soon finds she can make a good living merely by gracing these parties, and at the same time have a lot of fun with practically no labor or exertion. The usual fee these days is from $50 up, and the "party girl" is, unlike the "call girl," under no obligation whatever to give more than her presence.

What she does on her own, of course, is her own business. But many are good businesswomen. Quite often a "party girl" ends up with a wealthy protector and a luxurious apartment, if not marriage.

Many "party girls" have no means of support other than their fees for being on call to go out dancing. Some, however, continue to work as chorines or models, thus enhancing their desirability as guests and taking down the wages of toil. The girl with ambition to go places in show business often finds being a "party girl" a stepping stone toward a contract.

Many of the clients are visiting film executives who are lonesome and want to go out with a pretty girl, a semi-professional preferred, jailbait and film personnel avoided with horror.

The chief qualifications of a successful "party girl" are good looks, a range of smart clothes with the know-how to wear them, some wit, a fund of the day's small talk, superior dancing ability and a sense of humor--and, above almost all, she must be a good listener. She probably hears more bragging than she does "propositioning."

Clients fall into a variety of classifications. There are big businessmen with heavy deals to close, who find pretty girls help break down a customer's resistance. There are wealthy men who occasionally want to go out for a night on the town with a charming companion and no complications. And there are, of course, plain wolves.

"Party girls," unlike "call girls," are welcomed in all the best places in town and travel in the top strata of society--or, at least, café society. As steerers to some clubs they get commissions. All headwaiters know them, but none recognizes them.

21. IT COULD ONLY HAPPEN ON BROADWAY

The characters O. Henry, Damon Runyon, and Mark Hellinger wrote about were fictitious. None like them ever existed in New York or elsewhere. They were broad inventions that lived only in their gifted creators' imaginations.

Here are some Broadway beauts who actually lived and did make history. These stories are not fiction:

a.--_The Carrot Top and the Opal_

Iris Adrian, an oomphy redhead, who now plays tough girl parts in films, was a central character in one of the strangest love stories ever told on Broadway.

She had come to New York a young greenhorn, in 1932, from her California home.

She had no ambitions toward show business, but was visiting a girl friend, who one day answered a call posted by the late great Flo Ziegfeld. Iris went along to watch.

Ziegfeld didn't hire the friend, but he asked Iris if she would like to be a glorified clothes-horse. Iris thought it might be a lark and took the job.

At that time N.T.G., who was running the old Hollywood Restaurant on Broadway, had an agreement with Ziegfeld that the ten choicest Ziegfeld girls could double in both shows. Iris was one of the ten, easy.

Every night, after the final curtain of the Ziegfeld show--it was _Hot-Cha_, in which the late tempestuous Lupe Velez starred--Iris would scamper to the Hollywood and go into the chorus there for the midnight and two o'clock performances.

One of the owners of the Hollywood Restaurant was a very wealthy New York real estate man. His son, Herman Amron, was manager of the club. He fell in love with Iris and for a year or more it was one of the torrid romances of the Street.

When Iris took a summer off to go to Europe, Herman grabbed the next boat and followed her. When she returned, he bought her a mink coat, a diamond ring, a diamond bracelet--and kept buying.

He loved her so much, he did what so many other unwise, over-eager men on Broadway do. He tried to help her career. He begged talent scouts to go to see Iris. He spoke to friends--in the movie studios. Finally Iris came up with a contract--a year, with options each six months. She went out to Hollywood about ten years ago and appeared first in a George Raft picture. Herman was thrilled that he had done so much for his beloved. But, of course, he was very lonesome, since his job kept him here. He managed to fly out a couple of times to see her, but, as so many other men have learned, he found fame and adulation help a girl forget the man who isn't there.

Herman felt he was losing her. He grew desperate. He was back in New York. Christmas was coming. He had bought her diamonds and furs and didn't know what to send her now. He chose a beautiful, costly opal bracelet, packed it carefully, put in an affectionate card and sent it on to Hollywood, to Iris.

What Herman didn't know was, that among the superstitions in show business--like not whistling in a dressing-room or wearing yellow on opening night--opals are hoodoo 1-A.