GLAMOUR GIRL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 148, 26 June 1939, Page 5

GLAMOUR GIRL.

i — —»- ——- ! NOT ALL GLITTER. | DEBS. FREEBOOTING IN MODELS. SOME INSIDE INFORMATION. I (By CHARLES ESTCOURT.) XEW YORK. Those great big beautiful glamorous, glittering girlies who make their £3 or £40 a week being models have a mad on just now. They're stamping their great big beautiful feet at the debut! antes and the chorus girl*—their fellow' workers in the glamour racket —for not; sticking to their end of the business.' Models, they point out, never double; as debutantes, not having the price of' enough liquor, and never double as chorus girls for other reasons. But the 1 debutantes and the chorus girls jj-et up early every afternoon and run aroundtown doing odd jobs of taking bread outj of the great bin; beautiful mouths of; girlie* who need it. And the Federal; Trade Commission or somebody like thatj; in Washington is going to hear of it. !• This sad condition was revealed to; this department by Val Lester, who! runs a combination school and employ-J' ment agency for models in town. Ifj I Miss Lester ever goes to work on the;' I Federal Trade Commission, she'll have' Uncle Sam putting his hair up in curls.' , She used to be queen bee anion": the)' |Zie;rfeld honeys, and then she quit the;' theatre for a career as a model. Shej, was the original "satisfy" cigarette girl, and, for about two years, every time you looked at a picture of a nifty pos-j ing demurely alongside pine reading!, matter, it was a olie-to-three bet that|you were looking at her. Now she's got this school and job agency and she say.-,' , "I don't know what those debutaniesi . need with the bread out of our month*.!They've got everything thev want] l except a husband." ' t

What Models Earn. There are about 2000 professional glamour girls in town, Miss Lester said, and most of them never get their pictures in the papers or magazines, and never knock down more than £5 a week. Some scratch along on £.'5 a week and some have a brief whirl at the big dough — £10, £12, £20 and, the very top £40 a week —before the public tires of looking at them and wants to see a new type face. They model this and that—dresses hats, coats and unmentionables—from nine to live and ten to six every dav, and, of the 2000 approximately 1998 of them will spend a lifetime in'the business without ever going to Miami or , Bermuda and missing the aeroplane back , because somebody is busy buying them champagne. Kven if nobody buys them champagne, ithey are very slick-looking Innmlxus. many of them with long st-cms and flower faces. Miss Lester sa\> ilong stems and a flower face are deniable items, but not strictly necessary, 'because there are employers who prefer ■ short stems on their dolls and a face that will keep the buyer* mind on what Ithe doll is modelling. As a matter of ifact, she said, going into details about 'the girls who come out here and the girls who come out back of there, most of the jbtiyers are women, anyway, and any girl 'who weighs less than 14."> 1 b and can manage to work fast and gracefully while looking as if she had never done : ,'a day's work in her life is apt to find' [h. place for herself in the glamourl business. i Miss Lester looks at it this way. There 1 |are about 10.000.000 women in the country who weigh less titan 14-">lb, and, 'as things work out, sooner or later there 1 are at least 10,000.000 men who go crazy' over them and regard them as glamourl girls. .Men hiring models, she says, are men. and some of their i<lea* on| what a glamour jjirl should look like; would knock vour eves out. I Calm, Kind, Indifferent. I Hut Ihe girls do have to look as if they had never done a day'., work in their lives, and that i.- very exhausting, work. So. when the whistle blows at quitting time, the rule is the glamour: girls hot-foot it home in the subway and tell ma to tell anyone who enlU that they're out for the e\cniii_r with an out-of-town buyer. Maybe, suy-e^ted 1

Miss Lester, that explains why the old p legend has never died and probably-never i will die. <j Anyway, what they like to do at home -i is take their shoes off and fan their [j feet, because modelling all day long— swishing and sashaying and curvetting j| hither and yon—is mighty deleterious to I the dogs. Come ten o'clock, and the 'j pretties are in bed, because modelling is "' also very deleterious to that old urge for romance. Night time becomes just; ' j teepie-teepie time for baby. i This romance* business among the ■ glamour girls, says Miss Lester, is •awfully exaggerated anyway. "We ; teach our girls to be calm, kind and : ; indiirerent,"' she said, "and that «ems ' to take care of all the situations that "• may ari.-e. Most girls never marry the •'men they meet in a business way, anyi way.'' ! .Miss Lester says most "situations'* .arise from the sale-men who are back- ;, patters. 'if a girl is calm, kind and indiirerent." the word is, "then eventually the salesman will get tired." "Thev don't mean anything by it, anvwav,"'' -ay.- Miss Lester, ''they just do it from . habit." —(X.A.X.A.)