REMOTE CHANCES OF STARDOM

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 125, 12 June 1937, Page 8

REMOTE CHANCES OF STARDOM

Your chance of winning is one in 100,000. The prize is riches, adulation, the flattery of millions of persons, a place in the spotlight almost as bright as that of the President of the United States or the King of England — film stardom. Those who try, yet lose, pay heavily. The cost of their adventure is years of disappointment and heartbrealc and, in tho end, oblivion and probably poverty. But the fact that it can be done keeps tho hopefuls pouring into Hollywood. For .. the most.part, they are attractiyo boys and girls, altliough thcrc are many mature persons who believe tlicy havc the quality that made stars of Will Kogers, Lioncl Barryinore, Edward Arnold and Marie Dressler. The 100,000-to-one -odds are not fanciful figuree. They are the authentic statistics revealed by Miss Ethel B. Callis, of the Central Casting Bureau, the organisation from which practically all the major studios recruit/ their extras and bit players. More than 1,300,000 persons have paraded through Hollywood during the past decade; failing to hnd screen careers, most of them went away; 12,000 have remained to make up the ranks of struggling extras; only 13 have remained to prominence as actors. Only one extra has been graduated to stardom since the advent of sound pictures in 1928. That one is Jean Harlow; the others started their caredrs in silent pictures. The "lucky thirteen" are Janet Gaynor, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Adolphe Menjou, Gary Cooper, Frances Dee, Carole Lombard,, Ann Dvorak, Bandolpli Scott, Sally Eilers, Edwina Booth, Raquel Torres, and Adrienne Ames. "In the. new David O. Selznick technicolour picture, "A Star is Born/ the : interior of the Casting Bureau is reproduced accurately," said Miss Callis. "One view shows the line of phone girls taking the incoming calls. Every time one of those red lights flashes it means that one of the more than 12,0Q0 registered with the bureau is calling in, hopeful of pdcking up five dollars for a day's work. The extra knows that there will be but C00 jobs to give out each day, but it takes years to down that hope. If you try to reason with the extras they point to the 'lueky thirteen' and insist that they, too, can make the grade if only they can get the break's." . The picture "A' Star Is Born," which is released through United Artists, shows* Janet Gaynor as a little, girl from the country who comes to Holly wood and eventually achieves etardom, with the aid of Fredric Ma'rch, who portrays a star who has" already xeached the top. Hollywood is worried lest this picture start a new immigration to California. If the pace keeps steadv, 100,000 will go to the land of sunshine and sound tracks during -1937. And 99,999 of them sooner or later wiill find despair and shattered dreams, but one will win. And that one will make up for the 99,999 who fail.