1944. The title quote refers to Betty Field and is drawn from an article by Dee Lowrance in the 22 February 1942 edition of The Salt Lake Tribune. He reports that:
Betty Field and Jane Frazee are two more newcomers who are proving that the “A for Acting” comes before the “B for Beauty” in Hollywood’s alphabet.
When Betty Field was first signed for pictures, conversation buzzed. “But she’s not pretty,” was the first objection. “And her mouth is much too large.”
Yet how many people, seeing Betty Field on the screen, have cared? In three years she has become a Hollywood paradox. The successful young star who is anything but pretty, has been anything but typed.
Remember her first part on the screen, the gangling school girl in “What a Life”? Remember her as the farm wench in Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”? Since then she has been the untamed hill-filly in “The Shepherd of the Hills,” and a cheap, roadhouse singer without talent in “Blues in the Night.” Her portrayal of a tragic psychopathic in “Kings Row” is movie-history making.
So it seems that photographer Ned Scott has performed something of a miracle in this promotional portrait for Tomorrow the World. Wrapped in gauze and lace and with a lock of hair falling over one eye, the actress is every inch the femme fatale. And indeed she proves adept at portraying nasty, conniving vixens in Of Mice and Men (1939) and Blues in the Night (1941).
Back