NEW STORY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 February 1939, Page 10

NEW STORY

GIRL IN THE SHADOWS Efficient secretaries often play a vital part in the fortunes of distinguished people. On the extent to which the private secretary can relieve the great man of minor worries and distractions his success may depend. Theresa (Terry) Grey was one of those “handmaids to fame.” She had been for some time the bearer of lesser burdens to a middle-aged M.P., and was well content with her part.

In family life, too, she played second fiddle to her brothers and her widowed father.

That is how it came about that, at 27, she was a hum-drum sort of person. “A‘“shy, colourless uninteresting dear” was how her only male friend described her.

But one day Terry’s safe world crashed. Her M.P. died, her father embarked on a second marriage, and the family home was broken up. These jolts changed the course of Terry’s life. After a spell of work with an impossible scientist she becomes private secretary to Valentine Lavery, idol of the films. Valentine is engaged to a glamorous, exacting and very jealous actress, Flower Armitage. On and off the screen these two are playing out a dramatic love story. Unquestionably Flower was a beautiful, fascinating woman, and Terry was a “mousey" person but — To tell more would be to spoil the wholly delightful story by Berta Ruck, entitIed—“HANDMAID TO FAME,”

which is to begin in these columns tomorrow.