A WOMAN'S SUCCESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18632, 13 February 1924, Page 14

A WOMAN'S SUCCESS.

Many girls when they first embark Upon a career have discouragements and rebuffs to face. Some go down before these and are failures; others, keep steadily on and eventually attain success. It is an antidote to despair to realise that women who have " arrived" have also had to go through "hard times." The career of Fanny Hurst, the wellknown American writer, who has succeeded both financially and artistically, reveals a triumph of almost insurmountable difficulties. Space does not permit of the details of Fanny Hurst's early difficulties. She graduated from her class and was noted in college early as a crcativo leader, at Clio sair>a time writing skits for the professional stage. ' Early facing disapproval at home of her choice of vocation, and realising that sho would not have scope for growth in her home, town, she borrowed the money from a friend for the expenses of her first months in New York. There she established herself in a hall-bedroom, lived frugally on a few dollars a week, and clamoured at Che doors of editors, unnoticed and unsung. Realising that tier borrowed money would soon evaporate, she sought the stage for minor parts which would give her si;a?a experience and technique, and at tliti same t'ime keep her nourished. At the oitisct of this, venture her irate father sought her and conducted her hack to the '"home town." Here she resfed only long enough to collect, more funds and sought New York again, deter mined ».<"* conquer the New York literary world. For the next few years she had ample chance to test her character. She varied her activities with enough newspaper reporfinp to keep her in touch with the "dailies" and with the actual world, and with constant story writing. Always she wrote and wrote—and wrote some more, being her own worst critic and aiming Co transfer the living, breathing soul of everyday humanity to paper. She besieged one well-known periodcal with stories nineteen or twenty times before one was accepted. It made a sensation and requests poured in for more. Her work attracted the attention of every editor in America. Her prices soared,, and she soon commanded the "dollar a word" limit which had hitherto been restricted to Kipling and Roosevelt. This did no? satisfy our young genius. She craved after the drama and the movie world. A few years ago she made the film sensation of the decade with "Humoresque," which ran into the hundreds of thousands and was shown simultaneously in fifty cities of America and Europe. PCill she was not satisfied. She re-wrote " Humouresque" as il drama and Laurette Taylor made the sensation of the year in it. Her activities range from writing short stories, articles, plays, novels, serials, to addressing colleges, women's clubs, civic societies on the promulgation of literature among ♦he young. She commands very high prices. However, all of this is but a slight introduction to the real Fanny Hurst She has definite, prodigious aims in literature and is an incessant, intense worker, whose success is based on real ability, character, indefatigable industry, and unswerving purpose.