GIRL MODELS WIN STARDOM

Southland Times, Issue 22948, 22 July 1936, Page 11

GIRL MODELS WIN STARDOM

FROM MAGAZINE COVERS TO SCREEN

(By Sheilah Graham in The Melbourne Herald.)

You have seen her on magazine covers and in commercial advertisements —sometimes smoking a well-known brand of cigarettes; sometimes advising by pictorial example the use of a certain brand of toothpaste. Her face has smiled at you from the pages of the nation’s smartest fashion magazines. She has been gowned in the chic creations of leading designers, her beautiful head, crowned by hats from Dache and Sally Victor. She has been voted the best model in New York by the artists and writers .there. She has been toasted as one of Gotham’s reigning beauties and one of the city’s best-dressed young women. In short, she is Anita Colby, nee Counihan, daughter of Bud Counihan, the cartoonist, who forsook the photographers of New York to fulfill a picture contract with RKO-Radio. Happened by Accident She has been in Hollywood only a couple of months, and already is right in the middle of a good role in RKO’s “Mary of Scotland,” which co-stars Katharine Hepburn and Fredric March. Her entrance into a career as a model was sheer accident. A little more than a year ago a friend asked her to accompany her to see John Robert Powers, head of a commercial advertising agency in New York. Anita went along, just to be companionable, and sat in the waiting-room while her friend went in to see Mr Powers. She was reading when in rushed one of the agency’s photographers, creating a disturbance about something. The din finally made Anita look up to see what the fuss was about. He caught sight of the lovely girl in the big black hat and cried: “That’s the girl

| I’m looking for!” asked her to see Mr Powers, and thus Anita entered the advertising field. In a year she was j ranking with Gwili Andre, Betty WeyI man and Janice Jarrett as one of the most-photographed girls in the country. It was Mr Powers who recognized film potentialities in Anita and took her to the New York office of RKORadio. She was given a test immediately. About this time, Pandro Bermna. one of the studio producers, happened to be in New York, met Miss Colby, saw her test, and was so enthusiastic about her that he immediately had her signed to a contract. Six In One Month. Now, the studio is looking for increasingly good parts-for her, and hopes in a short time to have her graduated into leading roles. In “Mary of Scotland,” she plays Mary Fleming, one of the four attendants who constantly surrounded Mary Stuart. Louise Stuart is the sixth girl signed by Paramount within the last month who received her chance for screen fame through posing for magazines and commercial advertising. She was born in Chicago, but has lived in Fort Worth, Philadelphia, Augusta, and Tarrytown, New York. After leaving school in I Tarrytown, Louise migrated to New York City and posed for cigarettes and other commerical commodities. A New York talent scout persuaded her to take a screen test. A contract followed. She will shortly be assigned a screen role. “Soap And Coffee.” Other advertising models recently signed by Paramount include:—Narsha Hunt, soap and coffee advertising girl, selected for a role in “Three Cheers for Love”; Elizabeth Russell,- of Philadelphia, glorified by James Montgomery Flagg, Russell Patterson, McClelland Barclay and Jefferson Machamer Elizabeth gets her first screen chance in “The Good for Nothing.” The present fad for finding film stars in the ranks of the commercial posers is by no means new. Norma Shearer posed for fashion advertising before working on the screen.