Add Row 
Add 
Job Hunting in Hollywood
Subbing For Baby Peggy BY LOUISE GALLAGHER
WHEN I left Birmingham to bring talent of the better sort to Hollywood, I must confess I expected to quickly set up as a rival to Norma and Gloria. I longed to shine in all sorts of appropriate atmosphere as a sheikess of the screen. Graceful waving palms, camels and sandstorms, the wild music of tom-toms were to be a fitting background for my screen self. I had pleasant dreams of great directors seeing in me a younger and snappier Pola with all her fire and charm and shooing her aside to give place to a home product. If I never succeed in making a vicious villainess or a modern siren of the fast and frivolous sort, I shall attribute it entirely to the western cowboys. They are responsible for the comedy squint in my eyes. It has been there ever since my first rescue by these daring men. of the plains when I learned that they rouged their lips. I find also that I was not at all original in my plan of sky-rocketing a place for myself in the celluloid heaven. Many minds centering around Hollywood have had the same idea in mind. I have met and talked with hundreds of girls who have journeyed here to get exactly the same pace. Some of them better equipped than I am, some of them not so well.
“If in 10 years,” one wise young thing told me, “you even find yourself speaking one title on the name set with a star, you can consider yourself lucky. As for ever being called in competition with any of the well known ones, it is just as likely to happen as getting a free ride to a studio from any man without his asking for your telephone number. It just ‘aint done in Hollywood.” Her skeptical vision of the bumpy and difficult road in no way impressed me and in my case the unexpected has happened. I have been called on the same work as a big star. It is true they couldn’t get her at the time they wanted the young lady, but I am not going to let that spoil it for me. Now who do you think it was? No, dearie, not Nita Naidl nor any of the other interpreters of classical roles. Baby Peggy! Now fall over dead. The best commercial photographer in screenland says I could easily portray any of Peggy’s roles and look the part, too. Is it or isn’t it an insult?
Distance Lends.
From your distant viewpoint it may sound ridiculous but if you had seen as many women of 40 as I have playing the part of sweet 17, it wouldn’t seen so improbable for me to be six or seven. The American Toy Manufacturing Company called me to come down to see them about some commercial posing. They told me they had expected to use Baby Peggy to illustrate their book of advertising and for a short screen fairy story but that her manager had just informed them she would not be available yet for some weeks and they were anxious to put out all their advertising before Christmas and had, therefore, decided to call on some other young artist of the screen.
The flattery didn’t go very well with me for the idea of skating backward so many years was not very exciting. The cameraman who had suggested that they get me, I had worked with before and he was convinced that I would look the part. They made a test of me in a Mother Goose dress with socks and sandals that the manager though was just what he wanted.
For two days now I have been busy sliding down runways, dressing dolls, putting my school desk together and making the newest of mechanical toys mechanic properly. A picture of me is to be painted on some of the larger toys and a large painting hung in their factory. The advertising I will get from it will help me a lot and think how many years I can positively deny when it becomes necessary.
You might ask why they do not get a real little girl to do such work. Few children can be their natural selves when they know they are being photographed. It might sound easy to tell a child to express joy when she found herself on a hobby horse that sang a song while he circled around the nursery floor but the joy must be shown. at just the right distance from the camera and with the eyes at the proper angle to photograph well. That is why for all advertising purposes here they get screen folks who will be properly made up to insure the best photographic results. There are many screen children who do commercial posing but all cameramen seem to prefer to work with those whom they know and have gotten a great deal of work through their recommendation.
While Checks Roll In.
I didn’t come to the film colony to try to outshine Baby Peggy but just the same I know you will like me as a little girl and ladies must live and make all the money they can if they expect to have the proper clothes to get by on the up-to-date sets. All the work I do out of pictures and along commercial lines is for the checks it brings in and not for art’s sake. It takes money to keep your Rolls Royce supplied with gasoline. and a harmonious marcel in your hair that you ‘insist is natural. I also hope at some later date to be able to give a more interesting account of myself.
Screen lovers are sure to come and I would also like to have you know, by way of offsetting the above, that the Police Gazette has written me a personal letter requesting my picture to adorn the front page of their well known magazine. To put it screenily, the high lights seems to be getting me at quite different angles. The girls who went with the Peter Pan Company to Santa Cruz Island to take the mermaid scenes seem to be having a hard time of it. To begin-with only good swimmers were taken and when they arrived on the island the water so so cold and the sea so choppy that even the best swimmers found it impossible to stay in the water any length of time. At the end of the first week many of them were forced to return unable to stand the cold. Others found great difficulty in swimming with their feet incased in fish tails, I have not tried to get in on any of the sets for this picture as most of it is to be filmed away from the studio and I avoid, whenever possible, all location work.
I saw the girls through when they tried out for swimming parts and most of them were excellent. A 20-foot dive was one of the requirements and no girl was considered who could not go off the board at that height. A number of life guards were taken to Santa Cruz with the company to see that no accidents occurred. Everyone seems to think it will be a lovely picture and that Betty Bronson is an ideal Peter Pan. But speaking of being ideally suited to a part. Have you seen Lois Wilson in Monsieur Beaucaire? I have never seen her look so lovely or so well suited to a part.
