Ascent to Screen Stardom

Northern Advocate, 30 January 1939, Page 2

Ascent to Screen Stardom

Beverly Roberts goes one better than most girls, even actresses, in the way of dressing room and stage make-up mirrors. The curly-headed Warner Bros, blonde used a quadruple mirror in filming her new picture, “Expensive Husbands,” so as to get a proper view of the back of her head. As she plays a movie star in the film, hairdress is , i ■ ‘ N particularly important. After less than two years in Hollywood, blonde curly-topped Beverly Roberts says she feels like a veteran. “It seems as though at least five years of screen career and movie colqny life had gone behind ihd*’ she declares. “Not, of course, that it has been dull. The time passed quickly—but so much was packed into the few months that in review it seems as though I must have been here a very long time.” Her first notable leading role was opposite Pat O’Brien in “China Clipper.” After that she was featured, and then had the remarkable luck—if you call making grand film tests luck—to be chosen as the star in “God’s Country and the Women.” That was a role Bette Havis had wanted, and Jean Muir had tried out for, and Josephine HutdhinSon was once announced in—but Beverly got it.

Origiixally a stage and radio singer and night club entertainer, she was somewhat disappointed when in picture after picture at Warners she was given dramatic leads to play, and never had the chance to offer the wares which had originally attracted attention to her. Now she is glad. Musicals remain an experience in reserve, and meanwhile she has proven herself as a fine dramatic actress and a refreshing personality. “If I’d been given the chance to sing I might have been typed as a singer and given no opportunity to prove I could act,” says Beverly. “As it is, chance brought me gradually into good parts as a dramatic actress. The powers that be know I. can sing, or if. tjhey’Vo forgotten it can always be. proved to them.

“Pretty soon I hope to be well enough known as a dramatic actress that there’s no need to fear I’ll bo forgotten in that -field if I do a musical occasionally.”