HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Evening Star, Issue 23723, 2 November 1940, Page 5

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

If you want to be in motion pictures don’t hide the fact that you once woi'ked in a store. Many Hollywood stars have done it. Not that selling ribbons or thrusting cash slips into a money tube is regarded as a certain sesame to screen fame —but judging from a few who have done it, it is no barrier to screen success.

Take that company of Paramount’s making ‘ Hoad to Singapore.’ Dorothy Lamour never has made a secret of the fact that, when she was young and taking acting lessons, she earned her way as elevator operator in a Chicago store. As a matter of fact, Dotty was quite perturbed recently, after going to Detriot for the premiere of ‘ Disputed Passage,’ when she stopped in Chicago on the way back to Hollywood and found'that they had removed her pet elevator and substituted an escalator.

Bing Crosby, too, and Bob Hope, who co-star with her in the same picture, are department store graduates. Bing was once a cash boy in a store in Spokane, while Bob is proud of the fact that he once set a weekly sales mark in Cleveland for disposing of shoes.

Not to be outdone by this group of department-store alumnae, Director Victor Schertzinger, who alternates between handling players in pictures and writing such famed songs as ‘ Marquita,’ ‘ One Night of Love,’ and many others, says that he once sold pianos in New York.