New Eliza Doolittle Training As Model

Press, Volume C, Issue 29712, 4 January 1962, Page 2

New Eliza Doolittle Training As Model

{Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

LONDON, January 3.

The much-publicised plans for the six months’ transformation of a 20-year-old Lancashire factory girl, Pauline Walton, into a glamorous figure as a leading model, sent “Daily Mail” reporters to talk to other girls who have been chosen to take the same path.

It seems from their reports that £lOO and upwards, which most of the top models earn each week, is all very well but being a model means sacrificing any sort of normal life at all.

Miss Walton, who is being called “the Eliza Doolittle of 1962” earned £7 a week in a Blackburn factory and lived in a back street council house. She always wanted to be a model, but saw no possibility of finding the money for schooling. Then along came a London merchant banker, who agreed to pay all her fees and to see she was looked after while undergoing training. “Will Be A Hit” So she began the New Year travelling in the banker’s chauffeured RollsRoyce to a London model school. After the first lesson the school principal told the “Daily Mail”: "Marvellous. She has natural charm and grace. She will be a hit as a model.” The first model interviewed was 26-year-old Nancy Edgerton, whose home town is Hull. She began her working life as a children’s nurse and is currently appearing in a series of posters and photographs advertising beauty preparations. “When I go home I don’t seem to have any real friends any more,” she said. “My former boy friends give me a wide berth. It is difficult to know what they are thinking about me, but they are far from friendly. “When I am invited to parties in Hull, other girls stand around and stare. My makeup and false eyelashes are a bit strange to them, but to me they are second nature and without them I feel naked. “Modelling is hard work This week it’s swimsuits in the open air. There is very little time for relaxation. Sometimes I think I will

scream if I have to put on another smile. “Then there's the boredom of continually applying make-up. It becomes such a habit that without it I feel as if my face has disappeared. “I spend my week-ends horse-riding and other women say they wished they had time to put all that on first thing in the morning. They don’t realise I can’t do without it.” She added: "All have to live with the awful worry of what we will do when we are no longer in demand. After all, the public gets tired of the same old faces." Celia Hammond, aged 19, who features the latest fashions in the most glossy magazines, described how she had to change her attitude to life after leaving her job as an assistant school matron to become a model. "I do not have much freedom.” she said. “Even now I have to be in bed by 9 o’clock because I can’t risk getting bags under my eyes. For the last year I have not tasted meat—a vegetarian diet is so much better for the skin and figure. To be a success, I tackled things scientifically like an athlete. “Overheads are enormous and an awful lot of people are slow about paying,” ahe said. "It would never do to remind them to pay up. You have to smile and pretend you are so much in demand you don’t miss the money. “Men are a problem. I am continually having to

prove I am as intelligent ss the rest,” she said. “Although my face is my fortune. I have so little free time that when I am invited to parties I am so afraid to waste time I ask myself what I am going to get out of it Consequently, my circle of acquaintances gets narrower all the time.”