THREE SUCCESSES

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 940, 5 April 1930, Page 28

THREE SUCCESSES

Bessie, Carmel, and Bebe QUICK RISE IN TALKIES Looking back on the year 1929 I think of three girls as outstanding figures surrounded by what threatened to be the penumbra of defeat, writes an American reBessie Love, Carmel Myers and Bebe Daniels promised to pass into total eclipse with the rise of talking

pictures. I was talking to Carmel Myers about it the other day. She had just returned from a vaudeville tour in which she sang the songs she had popularised in her initial talkie appearances. She had completed two radio con-

certs and was learning some new songs for a third. And, in between, a few producers were angling for her and she was signing up these arrangements. Quite a full life for a lady whose professional career seemed j doomed twelve months ago. She confided to me that the hardest experience of her entire career was the job of keeping herself studying singing and diction when there didn’t seem to be anything to do with it once it was acquired. Nobody sought her just at first for a contract. These were the days of her hardest work. And they were unbrightened by a single ray of promise. Bessie Love was out on a vaudeville tour, singing and dancing, and some-

times gritting her teeth hard to keep the tears back. And in the studio where Bebe Daniels was making comedies that weren’t worth a good actress’s time and attention, a coolness that had existed for some months past was solidifying into

the frigidity which characterised the last days of her stay there. She left a lot where scarcely anybody bothered ; to drop in and say goodbye. There were so many worries, so many doubts as to personal security. Nobody had any time for other people’s misfortune. Three ladies who weren’t afraid of hard work and who wouldn’t accept defeat, with bigger and better careers than ever before!