Fate Has Smiled Upon Vera Francis — Deciding Career Is Big Question by Nora Holt April 17, 1954 How long does it take a young girl living in this mad and commedium [sic] for a career? Especially if the medium is show business, the most demanding, risky and heartbreaking, and yet fascinating and rewarding profession […]
“While I didn’t realize it back then, the day I got my first job at Fox it was just about all over. The studios were about to dissolve, and the kind of singing-and-dancing movies that I had been made to make weren’t going to be made anymore.” — Mitzi Gaynor Source: Larry Kart (1987)
Ruth “Dusty” Anderson was a popular fashion model in the 1940s. Born in Toledo, Ohio, she moved to New York City to embark on a showbusiness career. According to Walter Winchell, while she was in Toledo, she had won a $400 Bank Night prize, which paid for her move to the Big Apple. Other press […]
Joan Burgess got her start as a chorus girl with Earl Carroll in one his Vanity shows on Broadway in 1928. She then met Flo Ziegfeld, who cast her in a minor role in his production of “Show Boat” in 1930. While in “Show Boat” she started dating Nicky Blair, part owner of a popular […]
LOLA SALVI STARTS NEAR TOP May 22, 1928 Lola Salvi [real name: Marcella Battelini] , winner of the Fox contest to establish the most beautiful girl in Italy, has been launched on her motion picture career as a featured player in “Plastered in Paris,” a big comedy drama. She is a native of Trieste, and […]
Tom Tyler, real name Vincent Markowski, was born August 9, 1903 in Port Henry, New York. He became a weightlifter who began his movie career in 1924 as an extra. Because of his tall, strong build, he easily fit in with the Western genre and he debuted as a leading man in Let’s Go, Gallagher (1925). By 1927, […]
Sign Spanish Dancing Star For Talkies Luana Alcañiz, Meller’s Protege, to Perform in Movietone May 25, 1930 A new charmer in the ranks of movietone is announced by Fox Films with the signing of Luana Alcañiz, a beautiful 21-year-old dancer and singer whose art is ranked by critics with that of Raquel Meller. Miss Alcañiz […]
Steffi Duna Goes Wild For Picture Purposes She Even Changed Her Name By Eleanor Barnes December 7, 1935 The Hollywood savage is not Lupe Velez, but Steffi Duna, Hungarian actress. Miss Duna has not always been a savage. For years she was civilized – Then came the Warner Bros., who wrought the change in Miss […]
“I am of the firm opinion that actors’ early hardships are but the caviare that whets their professional appetites, and that without them the game and its results for most of us would be ‘flat, stale and unprofitable.’” — Ben F. Wilson “Broke and despondent, I was offered work as substitute for a night […]
Wilma Wyatt, Knoxville, Is Dixie Lee Of Follies She Shocked Her Family But Made a Hit in the Movies. By Margaret A. Write The Knoxville Journal, Aug. 3, 1929 Hear how a Knoxville girl landed in Hollywood! She shocked her mother until that lady was in despair. In the language of her father, “She tried […]