Harry Conover

Dusty Anderson – the life of a starlet

For a few brief years, dazzling, dusky, model-turned-starlet Dusty Anderson was up there in the public gaze – on magazine covers and the silver screen. But as a model her shelf-life was finite, while her acting talents were limited – she was never going to make it big as a movie star.

Her marriage to Jean Negulesco transformed her life and enabled her to pursue her interest in painting. It has also given us a window onto the life of a starlet who might otherwise have sunk into oblivion.

Dusty Anderson as Toni in Tonight and Every Night — 1945. Dusty Anderson publicity shot for Tonight and Every Night. Photo by Ned Scott.

Dusty Anderson grows up

Like so many models and movie stars of the 1940s, “Dusty” is not Dusty Anderson’s real name. Born in 1918, she’s christened Ruth Anderson. Her mother is of Cherokee origin and has given up her career as an opera singer to marry a Swede who has settled in the US.

Dusty attends De-Vilbiss High School in Toledo, Ohio, where she becomes president of the dramatic association. She also studies for six years at the Museum of Art of Toledo. During her time at the University of Toledo and photography school, she scrimps and saves in order to buy a couple of expensive cameras. Unfortunately, during a canoe trip along the shores of Lake Erie, a sudden squall overturns her canoe, and the cameras sink to the bottom of the lake.

To earn the money she needs to replace her equipment, she does some part-time modelling for local artists and photographers. She proves so popular that she decides to make a career of it. When she wins a $400 jackpot on Bank Night at her local movie theatre, she heads for New York. There, she gets a contract with Harry Conover, who rechristens her Dusty and makes her a Conover cover girl. It’s in New York that she meets newspaperman Charles Mathieu, and in 1941 the couple get married.

In April 1943, with her husband overseas with the US Marines Corps, Dusty and 15 other models are cast in Columbia’s Cover Girl, one of Rita Hayworth’s triumphs. In Hollywood, Dusty goes on to land a contract with Columbia Pictures, and features in a handful of movies including Tonight and Every Night (another Rita Hayworth vehicle), A Thousand and One Nights (1945) and The Phantom Thief (1946). She also appears on the cover of the October 27 1944 and December 14 1945 issues of Yank, The Army Weekly.

Dusty Anderson becomes Dusty Negulesco

Dusty Anderson is doing okay if not spectacularly, but her career as an actress is about to take second place to her love life. In February I945, two months after her husband returns from the war with malaria, Dusty Anderson files for divorce. Apparently, in the course of an argument he’s given her a black eye.

Dusty Anderson keeps fit

Around 1945. The angle at which this photo is taken makes it look like Dusty Anderson has freakishly short arms! Fortunately, she is in fact perfectly formed.

Dusty Anderson with bicycle

1945. Love Dusty Anderson's bicycle with its cyclops headlight! This photo is reproduced at the Ned Scott Archive, where it is identified as a shot to promote Dusty in her role as Toni in Tonight and Every Night. Photo by Ned Scott.

Dusty Anderson keeps fit

Around 1945. Looks like all that exercise pays off, judging by Dusty Anderson's awesomely flat tummy. But close inspection of the original print reveals traces of subtle retouching.

Soon after that, she finds herself at an auction in Beverly Hills. Attending the same auction is director Jean Negulesco, who spots:

…a tall shapely beauty, wearing a black hood, a black turtle-neck sweater, and black leather slacks. A tasteful blue turquoise Navajo necklace was dangling between her lovelies.

1946. Dusty Anderson as Sandra in The Phantom Thief.

The girl in question is, you’ve guessed it, our Dusty. Her companion at the event, publicist Dorothy Campbell, obligingly makes an introduction. Dusty plays it cool and returns her attention to the auction to bid on an antique mirror. But she fails to win it because, you’ve guessed it again, she’s outbid by Jean, who plans to invite her round to his place for dinner and make a gift of it for her. But she’s vanished off the scene before he can make his move.

Jean is not the kind of guy who lets a small setback like that get in his way. He makes a few enquiries, discovers her phone number and asks her out. She says no, she’s in the middle of a divorce and her attorney has instructed her to keep a low proﬁle so as not to complicate proceedings. But a few weeks later, she calls him back to accept his invitation.

What draws them to one another? Well, clearly she’s gorgeous and he fancies her – there’s no doubt he has an eye for the girls, as will become apparent. He, meanwhile, is arguably the most eligible bachelor director in Hollywood and therefore not without his attraction for any aspiring starlet. But perhaps there’s more to it than that simple, ages-old equation. They share a strong interest in fine art. Jean has come to Hollywood from Romania, where he was a successful painter. Dusty has studied for six years at the Museum of Art of Toledo and has tried her hand at both painting and photography.

Anyway, from that night on, the two become inseparable. The main obstacle blocking the path of true love at this point is Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, to which Dusty Anderson is contracted . He disapproves of the relationship and reminds her repeatedly of Jean’s playboy reputation. He even suggests to her that Jean is bisexual. Dusty is devastated and ready to leave, but discovery that she’s pregnant puts paid to that.

Dusty Anderson’s divorce becomes ﬁnal in June 1946, and on 21 July the couple tie the knot. Their wedding is an informal affair held in the back garden of the West Los Angeles home of director Howard Hawks, Jean’s best man. Dusty’s attendants are Howard’s wife Slim, Joan Perry (Harry Cohn’s wife) and Dorothy Campbell. Pianist Jose Iturbi gives the bride away. Because of Jean’s commitments at Warner Bros, the couple go on just a brief honeymoon to Laguna Beach. The plan is to have a longer honeymoon in Europe the following year

1944. Two shots of Dusty Anderson with her personal collection of magazines

Dusty Anderson has a family

Jean and Dusty badly want to have children but they are out of luck. After five months of pregnancy, Dusty has a miscarriage, which makes her very ill. They try again and the same thing happens. At this point, their doctors advise them to give up their efforts so as not to endanger Dusty’s health.

So the couple turn their parental yearnings elsewhere, supporting orphans under the Foster Parents for War Children plan. On a visit to Italy in August 1953, they invite nine-year-old war-orphan Adelina Peluso from Naples to Rome to meet them. They have supported her for three years and on this occasion Dusty buys her a whole new wardrobe. Four years later, while in Greece, they meet 12-year-old Chryssoula Yannidaki, a fatherless Greek girl whom they have been supporting for two years.

Then, in 1959 while Jean is away in Hong Kong, Dusty hears about illegitimate children born during the American occupation in Germany after the War and abandoned by their mothers. She finds out that there’s a three-month-old girl in a hospital in Stuttgart and, after consulting with Jean, takes the next plane to Germany to adopt Christina. While she’s at it, she discovers another little girl, Gabrielle, whom she adopts to be Christina’s “sister.”

It’s not until May 1961 that all the paperwork is completed. Jean and Dusty are reunited in Rome with “’Tina” and “Gaby.” Their arrival at Rome’s airport is captured by the local press and shown in Italian newsreels.

Dusty Anderson asserts herself

A news snippet in the September 1949 issue of Screenland magazine, reveals that:

Mrs Negulesco, who is Dusty Anderson, has given up acting for painting. Had her first art show and we understand Greta Garbo has bought one she did of a whole flock of cats.

Dusty Anderson as a pretty kitty

1946. Now that's what I call a catsuit! And that's Dusty Anderson larking about...

Dusty Anderson as a pretty kitty

1946. It looks as if the success of Dusty Anderson's Hallowe'en shoot last year...

Dusty Anderson as a pretty kitty

1946. Dusty Anderson is the subject of this typical mid-1940s kitschy cheesecake shot, with...

Dusty Anderson as a broomstick-bearing witch

1945. The first in a sequence of three pin-ups featuring Dusty Anderson as a...

Dusty Anderson as a witch bestride her broomstick

1945. The second in a sequence of three pin-ups featuring Dusty Anderson as a...

Dusty Anderson as a broomstick-bearing witch

1945. The third in a sequence of three pin-ups featuring Dusty Anderson as a...

In October 1950, Dusty presents 15 of her latest paintings at a big show at the Drouant-David gallery in Paris. “Her pictures include scenes of London’s River Thames, conventional flowers and fruit, a study of her two Siamese cats, and a self-portrait.” She’s enjoying her new career as a painter and lets Jean know that she would like to go to Paris to study art and improve her technique. Jean is not in favour because he reckons it would require at least two years of study and practice.

This becomes a topic of ongoing friction between the couple. Another is Jean’s constant philandering. His bungalow on the 20^th Century-Fox lot, where he invites stars and starlets for lunch, is known as “bangalow.” “Poor Dusty,” says producer Jerry Wald’s wife, Connie. “[She] had to put up with a lot.”

Dusty Anderson as a glamorous witch — 1945. Dusty Anderson provides a touch of Hallowe’en glamour. Photo be Robert Coburn

The marriage goes downhill. In 1953, columnist Dorothy Kilgallen reports that the Negulescos “are writing the Unhappy Ending after all these years.” In May, Dusty Anderson ups and leaves for Paris with Dee Hartford, Howard Hawks’ latest wife.

In order to try to win back his Dusty, Jean persuades Darryl Zanuck, his boss at 20^th Century-Fox, to give him an assignment in Europe and chooses to work in Italy on Three Coins in the Fountain. Before leaving, he confides in columnist Harrison Carroll:

I don’t pretend she went to Paris with my blessing, I thought it was a stupid expense. But Dusty wanted to study painting, and when one of those Cherokee Indian girls makes up her mind, nothing is going to stop her.

En route to Rome to scout for locations, he stops off in Paris to talk Dusty into a reconciliation. The couple make up and a few days later Dusty joins Jean in Rome.

Jean’s love affairs are something Dusty Anderson has to cope with throughout their marriage but she goes some way to getting her revenge. When she suspects that he has a crush on Sophia Loren while making Boy On a Dolphin, she travels around the world on his credit card, expense no object (or perhaps even THE object). Jean will later remark: “I am still paying the bills. My weakness for my stars cost me a fortune.”

But, to return to Dusty’s career as an artist, in August 1955 it is reported that “Dusty Negulesco has made much progress as a painter and her pictures have received good notices from the art critics.” And her paintings appear in at least two of Jean’s movies: Daddy Long Legs and The Best of Everything.

Dusty Anderson gets around

Dusty Anderson’s first trip abroad is in May 1948, accompanying her husband who’s off to research his next film, Britannia Mews. This is presumably the pretext for their extended honeymoon. With the job complete, Jean takes her to Paris for some sightseeing, not least to visit the most important museums and art galleries. On their itinerary is Galerie Drouant-David in the fashionable rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, where Jean buys all the paintings they have by then unknown expressionist painter Bernard Buffet.

In 1950, Jean gets a new, more lucrative contract with 20^th Century-Fox, which means the couple can now afford a new home. After viewing a series of properties in and around Bel Air and Beverly Hills, they decide to buy the house that Greta Garbo has put on the market. Having lived there for 14 years, first with actor John Gilbert, then with conductor Leopold Stokowski, she’s decided to leave Hollywood and move to New York. Latterly, she’s been using only a part of the house, sharing it with a maid and a gardener, and leaving the remainder of the property empty. By the time the Negulescos get their hands on it, the huge, mostly abandoned living room is covered by such a thick layer of dried leaves that it takes seven people to clean it up. The house will be their home for 13 years.

Dusty Anderson as Sandra in The Phantom Thief

1946. Dramatically lit and wrapped in a cloak, Dusty Anderson is ready for the...

Dusty Anderson as Sandra in The Phantom Thief

1946. Dusty Anderson stars in The Phantom Thief (original title Boston Blackie's Private Ghost)...

Dusty Anderson as Sandra in The Phantom Thief

1946. The dramatic lighting, exaggerated eyelashes and exotic costume including two outré neck pieces,...

In 1963, Jean and Dusty move to Madrid. It’s a joint decision, although partly the result of Jean’s desire to work in Europe, where there are opportunities to get involved with projects that are less commercially driven. Writing for the Chicago Tribune, Hedda Hopper reports that Dusty has told her that, having rented their Beverly Hills house:

We are traveling light to Madrid, with two small children, trunks full of photographs, records and paintings, one small Rolls, and a secretary with our casting files. The airplane couldn’t make it, and I am not sure we won’t sink the boat.

Jean brings his career to a close in 1970 with the release of Hello-Goodbye. It’s time to retire and enjoy the fruits of his efforts. At 71, he is a wealthy man with a fabulous art collection and a number of houses in different parts of the world as well as a beautiful wife. In the 1970s, the couple are living in Marbella, on the southern coast of Spain, in a house they have had built for themselves not far from the sea. The house is always full of friends visiting from all over the world.

Dusty Anderson’s last days

In 1993, Jean’s health suddenly deteriorates. On 18 July, three days before their 47^th wedding anniversary, he dies at home of heart failure. Dusty is at his bedside. The last news we have of her comes in an email message from Malcolm Abbey to Michelangelo Capua, Jean’s biographer. He reports that she was “sent away” to a nursing home.

Last I heard, and this was 20 years ago, she was severely alcoholic and unable to remember from moment to moment who she was talking to. Very tragic.

But hold on. An article about Dusty Anderson’s 99^th birthday published on Fabiosa in December 2017 suggests that she “is peacefully enjoying her advanced years.” Let’s hope so.

Want to know more about Dusty Anderson?

There’s not a whole lot of information about Dusty Anderson out there on the Internet. The most informative source is Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen. There are two books about Jean Negulesco though, which provide most of the material on which this piece is based:

Jean Negulesco: The Life and Films by Michelangelo Capua
Jean Negulesco’s autobiography – Things I Did … and Things I Think I Did – a good read but with disappointingly little about Dusty Anderson.

Jinx Falkenburg – all-American girl

You may not have heard of her but in the late 1940s and early ’50s Jinx Falkenburg was a household name in the US. What’s wonderful about her is that she made the absolute most of her talents and opportunities.

Jinx Falkenburg photo inscribed to Cinelandia — Around 1944. Photo of herself dedicated by Jinx Falkenburg to Cinelandia magazine

She’s tall, athletic, handsome, garrulous, giggly, full of beans and fun to be around. As one reporter put it, her “natural endowments … included good looks, vivacity and a fearful physical exuberance.” To quote an article by Dugal O’Liam in the October 1942 issue of Screenland:

Jinx makes no claim to being an intellectual. She likes the things the average outdoor girl likes, viz, tennis, swimming, horseback riding, hiking, golf, groceries and men. Not necessarily in that order, but pretty close. Her top interest in clothes is sports styles. She wears evening gowns like La Pompadour herself, but isn’t mad about them, largely because they make her look taller. She has always yearned to wear high heels, but hasn’t because they increase her height. She absolutely never wears them on the street, nor in the bath tub.

Hers is the archetypal American story of the girl from a modest background who makes good. She builds a successful career and manages to combine it with a happy home life. Her story is a refreshing contrast with the travails of the likes of Gene Tierney and Hedy Lamarr.

Jinx Falkenburg and her dad — 1944. Daddy’s girl – Jinx Falkenburg with her father

Jinx Falkenburg gets around

Born in Spain in 1919, she’s christened Eugenia Lincoln Falkenburg. Not surprisingly, no one actually uses that name, instead they call her Jinx or The Jinx. Her father Eugene is an electrical engineer, her mother Marguerite (Mickey to her family and friends) an accomplished amateur tennis player. Age three, Jinx moves with her family to Santiago, Chile, where they spend 13 happy and relatively prosperous years. Mickey becomes tennis champion of Brazil, Jinx swimming champion of Chile. But as the country slides towards revolution, the family goes broke and is forced to leave the country.

They decamp to the US, where they arrive with just the possessions they’ve managed to load into the car in which they’ve fled. Fortunately, Mickey is a spirited, gregarious, outgoing woman who can walk into a room and know everyone there within a matter of minutes. She’s full of enthusiasm and get-up-and-go. It takes her no time at all to talk her way into Hollywood’s West Side Tennis Club, where she strikes up a friendship with the casting director for Spanish-speaking movies at Twentieth Century-Fox. Within months Jinx, who speaks fluent Spanish, finds herself playing walk-on parts in movies for the Latin American market.

Following in her mother’s footsteps, by the time she leaves Hollywood High School age 16, Jinx Falkenburg is California’s third-ranking junior tennis player. And West Side Tennis Club continues to play a big role in her life. It there that, after a series of auditions with David O Selznick’s studio that go nowhere, she’s summoned to meet Samuel Goldwyn. He signs her to a seven-year contract. But at five foot ten it turns out she’s too tall and after six months the studio cancels her contract. Even after that, she gets bit parts in a handful of movies with other studios. And back at West Side Tennis Club at a celebrities’ tournament, she’s teamed with Paulette Goddard, then Charlie Chaplin’s wife, who will be one of her closest friends over the following decades.

Jinx Falkenburg gazes admiringly into her mirror

Jinx Falkenburg gets a break

One day in 1937 Jinx is waiting with a friend in the MGM commissary to go on a tour of the studios when she’s approached by a man who asks her if she’d be interested in doing some modeling. He suggests she meets him at his apartment the following day. While she’s game for a test shoot, there’s no way she is going to be rocking up on her own at a stranger’s apartment. So she suggests meeting at her tennis club. Deal done.

The stranger is none other than Paul Hesse, a leading commercial photographer. And it turns out to be a match made in heaven. He quickly recognizes her as the embodiment of the healthy outdoor girl and will later describe Jinx Falkenburg as “the most charming, most vital personality I have ever had the pleasure to photograph.”

Two and a half months later, she’s on the cover of The American Magazine and her modeling career is launched, with invitations from more than five dozen other magazines to feature her.

Jinx Falkenburg takes a tumble

After six months of modeling, Jinx gets a contract with the Matson Steamship Line that involves not just a trip to Honolulu but also being photographed by the legendary Edward Steichen. Here’s how she describes what happens in her autobiography:

The night before the last day’s shooting [in Honolulu] Patsy and I had to be up at ﬁve a.m., so we decided, or rather Mr. Bowman of the advertising agency decided, that we ought to forego the evening’s festivities and get a good night’s rest. They sent us up to our rooms and we sat out on our lanai [veranda] for a little while and talked. Patsy and I thought it would be fun to walk over onto the roof above the open dining room and wave goodnight to everybody below. I took my shoes off and went ﬁrst. I stepped off the balcony and – fell through the roof. …
In any case, I fell about thirty-two feet to the cement ﬂoor below … right between two chairs. Why I didn’t kill any diners, or at least a waiter, I’ll never know.

She’s unconscious for 16 hours. When she comes to, she’s told:

“They took X-rays this morning while you were still unconscious. By some miracle you have no broken bones, but every rib is bruised and your body is a solid mass of black-and-blue marks. You won’t be able to move for quite a while.”

She’s in hospital for two weeks. As luck would have it, Al Jolson is cooped up in the room next to hers so the two get to know each other and he offers her a part in his upcoming Broadway musical. By the time she leaves she’s lost 25 pounds – 20% of her body weight. That all happens in March/April 1939. That November, she’s taken to hospital with a high temperature and acute back pain. X-rays reveal that she was born with a single kidney and the other is in serious trouble thanks to the fall. A major operation is needed and she’s in hospital for over six weeks right up until Christmas.

1942. Aching feet – Jinx Falkenburg and friends on the set of Sweetheart of the Fleet

Jinx Falkenburg hits the headlines

By the time she’s discharged, Jinx Falkenburg’s family is pretty much broke due to the cost of her treatment. Fortunately, in the meanwhile Paul Hesse and his client, Albert Hailparn at Einson-Freeman sales promotion agency, have sold Rheingold Beer the idea of making Jinx the first Rheingold Girl – the face of Rheingold Beer.

Once the campaign hits the billboards in March 1940, Jinx Falkenburg’s name and face are in every store in New York that sells beer. No surprise, then, that she’s approached by John Robert Powers offering her an exclusive modeling contract worth $200 a week. She turns him down – she likes sports and out-of-doors and she doesn’t want to do indoor work. But his rival, Harry Conover, is more persuasive, pointing out that while she’s in NYC for Al Jolson’s show, she might just as well maximize her earnings potential with his modeling agency.

Harry drops by to see her on the first day of rehearsals for Al Jolson’s Hold on to Your Hats. The same day, Tex McCrary, a writer for The Daily Mirror, shows up, looking for an interview. It turns out to be start of a long and, partly thanks to the war, tortuous romance that will culminate in their marriage. When Hold on to Your Hats closes in February 1941, Jinx signs a six-year contract with Columbia Pictures.

In 1941 and 1942 Jinx is at the peak of her success as a model. In its January 27 1941 issue, LIFE magazine publishes a long article by Oliver Jensen – Jinx Falkenburg Is Leading Candidate for Title of America’s No. 1 Girl for 1941:

Jinx Falkenburg, Truck Krone and Isabelita on the set of The Gay Senorita — 1945. Jinx Falkenburg (centre), Truck Krone and Isabelita on the set of The Gay Senorita

It was Paul Hesse, the commercial photographer, who … made a picture of her and sold it for the cover of the American Magazine. Since then she has been on 52 covers and posed for 150 products including Lux, Campbell’s Soup, Nestle’s Chocolate, Mobilgas, Rogers Silverware, Drene Shampoo. At first she did her modeling in Hollywood but last year the Rheingold beer company brought her to New York to do a series of ads featuring her by name as the Rheingold Girl. Jinx got $2,000 for the job and stayed in New York. …
As a model, Miss Falkenburg’s specialty is sparkling outdoor vitality. She is usually photographed with sports clothes, tennis rackets, skis and the like. She loves posing – the glamor of the lights, the men focusing their attention on her, the fuss – but it is not necessary to pose her carefully. Most models are known for the completely forgettable quality of their beauty. “The trouble with them,” Paul Hesse says, “is that they turn on expressions 1, 2 and 3 and smiles 4, 5 and 6. You don’t know how to liven them up.” Miss Falkenburg is never bored or deadpan and Hesse makes the most of this by often snapping her unawares. He keeps her outdoors and plays her favorite swing records (Only Forever and Two Dreams Met) on a portable phonograph to get her in the mood. When he wants a particularly romantic smile he tells her about the thick juicy steak they are going to have. …
Miss Falkenburg’s tremendous appeal – “draw” in the show business, “pull” in the advertising world – is an established and commercially measurable quality. It has sold thousands of theater tickets, tons of cigarettes, gallons of perfume, tank cars of beer. It has made her the hit of the Tuxedo Park Ball, the darling of the Stork Club and the most famous model in America with an unrivaled record of 1,500 separate advertisements. At this moment she is the leading candidate for the distinction of America’s No. 1 Girl for 1941.

No surprise, then, that in April 1942 Jinx goes on to be voted America’s No 1 brunette by 25,000 beauty shop owners (Rita Hayworth is named No 1 redhead and Evelyn Keyes No 1 blonde).

Jinx Falkenburg and her mum

1944. According to Oliver Jensen writing in the January 27 1941...

Jinx Falkenburg with a selection of fabrics

1944. The production code number suggests that this photo is from the same shoot...

Jinx Falkenburg, outdoors girl

Around 1945. Though this could be mistaken for a fashion shot, it is in...

Jinx Falkenburg, country girl

Around 1945. Ever the picture of health and happiness, with one hand on a...

Jinx Falkenburg glories in her luscious tresses

Jinx Falkenburg sparkles

Around 1945. Though you'd never guess it looking at this photo, Jinx's luscious tresses...

Jinx Falkenburg as a Tahitian maiden

1944. This portrait of Jinx may have been taken to promote Tahiti Nights, in...

Between 1941 and 1945 Jinx appears in 11 Hollywood movies made for distribution in the US. The best known of them is Cover Girl, for which she is uniquely qualified, alongside Rita Hayworth. She looks great but acting is not really her strength and most of her films are basically rubbish.

Jinx being Jinx, she isn’t spending all her time modeling and acting. In December 1941, with Charles “Buddy” Rogers, her co-star in Sing for Your Supper as her instructor, she becomes one of Hollywood’s most expert women flyers. The following month she’s off skiing almost every weekend. And of course she continues to play tennis.

Jinx Falkenburg supports the war effort

But arguably the most impressive thing about Jinx Falkenburg around this time is her commitment to supporting the US war effort.

Like many Hollywood stars, she helps to sell war bonds. In May 1942 she’s in New York promoting the Lips for Liberty campaign for buying war stamps. The following month, posing for a series of posters on the war effort, she’s named Victory Poster Girl. And in September, together with Evelyn Keyes, she’s the first film actress to sign up with the hundreds of housewives, boys and girls to pick fruit and vegetables in the tomato fields of the San Fernando Valley to aid the War Manpower Commission. That’s as well as being on tour selling more bonds with Jane Wyman and John Payne. Another bond-selling tour in late 1943/early 1944 culminates in Washington, where Jinx and her fellow-stars appear in 16 theatres in a single night and get to meet President Roosevelt at the White House.

Jinx Falkenburg wins her stripes

1944. Those two chairs suggest that Jinx is on-set at Columbia Studios rather than...

Jinx Falkenburg sets an example

1944. Is this Columbia Studios publicity shot taken in a real post office or...

Jinx Falkenburg sets an example

1944. With her signature inscribed on the Citizen's Pledge behind her, Jinx has committed...

Then there’s her work with USO (United Service Organizations), a charity founded during World War II to be the GI’s “home away from home.” One of its principal activities is entertaining the troops. Much the most arduous and exciting trip for Jinx involves traveling to China, Burma (Myanmar) and India in the last three months of 1944. This extract from her autobiography about the visit to Paishihyi gives an idea of just how hazardous the tour turns out to be:

1942. Jinx Falkenburg is dried between rain scenes for Sweetheart of the Fleet

After our nightmarish sedan-chair ride, needless to say, even with all the risks, we chose the plane. And it was really a bad ride, even though it lasted only ﬁfteen minutes. We had completely socked-in weather. Ordinarily, no matter how hazardous the route, the pilot can follow the river to his destination, but this day the ceiling was so low that we were forced to go thousands of feet up and ended up ﬂying on instruments. There were ﬁve horrible minutes when, in the middle of nowhere, we started circling for a landing. The pilot had no idea where we were – he was taking the word of the radio engineer on the ground who really didn’t know where we were either. We were all scared to death but nobody dared say a word. All of a sudden, Pat [O’Brien, a Hollywood actor] said, “Relax, kids. I’m praying for the whole d––n bunch of us.”
And I saw then that he had his rosary out. This was the ﬁrst time that Pat had made any reference to being nervous or saying prayers – we were glad that he was praying for us.
Zoom! Suddenly we were rushing headlong down into the clouds. Centuries later, when we landed, I looked at our pilot – he was wringing wet. And after we’d done the show, we went through exactly the same thing ﬂying back to Chungking, late that afternoon…

Soon after Paishihyi, the troupe visits Liuchow:

Liuchow was probably the worst and most dangerous spot we had been in. We arrived at eight p.m. by the light of a full moon with the Japs only eighteen miles away. Wherever you went, you couldn’t escape the excruciating wails of the women and children as they were stacked, one on top of the other on freight cars to be evacuated to the South. When we left the next day, we were the last civilians out before the Japs arrived.

By comparison, the European tour in 1945 is rather routine – except that on 19 July, Jinx Falkenburg and the other members of her troupe are granted an audience with Pope Pius XII in the Vatican. By the end of World War II, she has travelled over 60,000 miles entertaining the troops and is awarded the Asiatic-Pacific campaign medal for her work.

Two photos of Jinx Falkenburg, the first of her holding aloft a poster of herself promoting Mexico; the second of her with Vicente Peralta — 1944. Mexio honours Jinx Falkenburg

Jinx Falkenburg becomes a celeb

During the war, Jinx pursues a mostly distant romance with Tex McCrary, whom she met for the first time when she was rehearsing Hold on to Your Hats on Broadway back in 1941. Since then, their hectic schedules have kept them mostly apart, with Jinx fretting non-stop over him. After the war, Lieutenant Colonel John Reagan, “Tex,” McCrary proposes to Jinx Falkenburg and they are married in New York in June 1945. He is 34; she’s 26. They settle in Long Island.

The following year, Tex and Jinx persuade radio station WEAF in New York to give them their own show and they become pioneers of talk-show hosting. Tex writes most of the show himself and coaches his wife, who has no experience as an interviewer, into the role. Hi, Jinx, broadcast on weekday mornings, is prepared to tackle controversial issues such as venereal disease, the United Nations and the atom bomb and quickly becomes a hit with audiences and critics alike.

After that, the couple are on a roll. In 1947 they make their television début with At Home, an NBC series in which they interview guests in their homes, following it up with The Swift Home Service Club, in which they offer household hints and conduct chatty interviews. Another radio show, Meet Tex and Jinx, is a big success, and they also begin a syndicated daily column in the Herald Tribune called New York Close Up. Crucial to the success of Tex and Jinx are the latter’s energy and enthusiasm.

1946. Jinx Falkenburg learns lensing from Burnett Guffey and Floyd Crosby

Jinx Falkenburg in later life

Tex and Jinx have two sons, John born in 1946 and Kevin in 1948. On one memorable broadcast, a hook-up between Tex in New York and Jinx in Bermuda, he asks her, “How are the children?” “Oh,” she replies, “I thought they were with you.”

In 1951 Jinx Falkenburg publishes an autobiography, Jinx. During the early 1950s the couple get increasingly involved with politics as staunch Republicans. Not only do they help raise money for the party, they also play a part in persuading Dwight D Eisenhower to run for president in 1952. And two years later, Jinx becomes head of the Republican Party’s women’s division.

Although she partially retires in 1958, she will go on to stage fashion shows for charity and, in 1975, to be part of a celebrity team playing a pre-opening tennis match at Forest Hills. Towards the end of her life, she is still living in Long Island and serving on the board of the North Shore Hospital, which Tex and she helped to found. In the 1980s the couple will separate but remain friends. They will both die in 2003 within months of each other. Once asked for her own epitaph, Jinx immediately wrote, “She died trying” and there’s no doubting she had a great deal to show for her efforts.

Want to know more about Jinx Falkenburg?

The main sources for this piece are:

Jinx Falkenburg’s 1951 autobiography, Jinx.
An article by Oliver Jensen in the January 27, 1941 issue of LIFE magazine, Jinx Falkenburg Is Leading Candidate for Title of America’s No. 1 Girl for 1941.
Lucky Jinx, an article by Dugal O’Liam in the October 1942 issue of Screenland (available online at the Media History Digital Library).
The Jinx Falkenburg page at Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen.

For some photos of Jinx on the China-Burma-India USO mission, take a look at LIFE magazine’s Jinx Returns from the War.

Jinx Falkenburg as herself in Cover Girl

1944. The production code reveals that this photo is taken in conjunction with Cover...

Susann Shaw and Jinx Falkenburg, cover girls

1944. Two of the era's supermodels pose on the set of Cover Girl. Susann...

Jinx Falkenburg and Evelyn Keyes perch on a car bonnet

1944. Jinx Falkenburg (left) and Evelyn Keyes perch on a car bonnet. The pair...

Jinx Falkenburg in Tahiti Nights

1944. Jinx Falkenburg reclines princess-like on a leaf-strewn coverlet in this promotional photo for...

Jinx Falkenburg as Elena Sandoval in The Gay Senorita

1945. Difficult to say much about The Gay Senorita since it seems to have...

Jinx Falkenburg as Elena Sandoval in The Gay Senorita

1945. The movie might not be up to much but the jewelry, the fitted...

Cover Girl – fashion goes to the movies

Cover Girl is a 1944 movie in which Hollywood embraces the business of fashion. It offers an opportunity to take a look at the modeling businesps, then burgeoning but still in its infancy. And it provides a showcase for the fashions of the day and the talents of Rita Hayworth and a bevy of models.

It’s a bright spectacle with songs by Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin, costumes by Travis Banton, Muriel King and Gwen Wakeling, choreography by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, and that special early-Technicolor lushness. Donen would go on to direct Funny Face, another musical about the world of fashion, with Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn as its stars. Funny Face would help to cement the reputation of Paris after World War II as the world capital of fashion.

Anita Colby

1943. Anita Colby – "the most beautiful face this side of heaven and the sharpest tongue this side of hell," according to Valdemar Vetlugen, editor...

Cecilia Meagher

1943. Cecilia Meagher began modeling in 1936 when she was barely 17 years old. In the early 1940s she signed with Conover models. In 1942,...

Leslie Brooks

1943. Leslie Brooks started her career around 1940 as a model. In 1941 she signed with Columbia and had a makeover: she changed her name...

Peggy Lloyd

1943. Peggy was adopted age five by Harold Lloyd, a famous comedian, a shrewd investor and the richest man in Hollywood. Despite the family’s wealth,...

Eileen McClory

1943. Eileen McClory is a vivacious, cute, girl-next-door type, so has just the kind of looks and personality that Harry Conover likes. So when she...

Betty Jane Hess

1943. Betty Jane Hess began modeling in 1938, when she was barely 17 years old. Like many aspiring models, she competed in various pageants and...

Dusty Anderson

1943. Dusty started out as Ruth Anderson from Toledo, Ohio. Harry Conover spotted her in New York “doing some designing”, decided that the name Ruth...

Jinx Falkenburg

1943. With her hazel eyes and lithe figure, Jinx Falkenburg is one of America’s highest-paid cover-girl models during World War II and, with her...

The plot of Cover Girl is both pure fantasy and pretty banal. A Brooklyn nightclub owner loves his principal dancing girl. The dancing girl loves the nightclub owner. But the dancing girl has a driving ambition to become a famous cover girl… Bear in mind that while the world of Cover Girl might feel like it has nothing to do with reality, former Vogue editor Rosamond Bernier would recall:

Vogue was something in those days. I came in my first morning and saw all the editors at the typewriters wearing hats with veils and big rhinestone chokers and earrings. I looked with absolute wonder!

To give you a flavour, here are three extracts from the movie

1. Put Me To The Test

Set to Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin’s Put Me To The Test, this number is one of the movie’s highlights: two phenomenally athletic and graceful dancers, a treacherous set (different levels, stairs, a ramp) and no quick cutting to mask mistakes. The supporting girls and the costumes are the icing on the cake.

2. The shoot

So they’ve hammed it up for the movie, but this scene offers a light-hearted insight into the art behind the stills photography that is such a focus for aenigma. We see the make-up artist (remember Perc Westmore – the makeup king of Hollywood?), the hairdresser, the dapper photographer and his assistant, and the final product – the magazine itself.

3. The cover girls and round the mountain

We’re in the Wheaton Theatre. The curtain goes up and an enormous lens is lowered onto a podium in the middle of the stage. Through the lens we see each cover girl in turn enter from the left and watch her pose full-length and close-up. Her session ends with a glimpse of the magazine cover on which she appears. The whole thing has a nice pace and wit.

It's followed by the wonderful "round the mountain" scene in which Rita Hayworth dances down and back up a cloud-shrouded Art Deco mountain peak. In this version, the original soundtrack has been replaced by a Madonna mash-up with Victor Cheng.

Cover Girl – the business of modeling

In 1944, the modeling business in the US is dominated by two agencies.

*Mid-1940s. Andrea Johnson, John Robert Powers model.* *Read more*.

John Robert Powers has blazed the trail. In the 1920s as an out-of-work actor he finds himself using his network to help photographers find models. He spots a business opportunity and sets up shop. As he later recalls, he:

…had their pictures taken, made up a catalogue containing their descriptions and measurements, and sent it to anyone in New York who might be a prospective client – commercial photographers, advertisers, department stores, artists.

The depression that follows the 1929 stock market crash enables him to broaden his talent pool by attracting debutantes whose families are on their uppers. At the same time he works hard to make the business respectable. His success changes the social status of models. Society hostess extaordinaire Elsa Maxwell says that she might give a party without debutantes but she wouldn’t dream of doing so without inviting a few Powers Girls.

The 1940s see Powers basking in the light of success and publicity and expanding his business portfolio. He has a radio show and writes a regular syndicated newspaper column, Secrets of Charm. Warner Bros release The Powers Girl (1943), a movie about two sisters living in New York and aspiring to become high-profile models. And Powers Girls are hired by the Hollywood studios and go out with and marry the rich and famous.

In 1941 Powers publishes the first of many books, The Powers Girls. Promising “The story of models and modeling and the natural steps by which attractive girls are created,” it’s partly a behind-the-scenes look at the agency, partly a beauty and grooming guide, and partly a marketing piece. In 1943 he launches a correspondence course, including “practical hints about what men really do and don’t like.” Meanwhile, his wife begins teaching charm courses covering grooming, diction and coiffure, the first step along the road to a nationwide chain of John Robert Powers Schools. But Powers has taken his eye off his core modeling business and this provides an opening for a new competitor.

Harry Conover begins his career in the modeling business as a model and works for John Robert Powers before deciding to set up in competition. He’s handsome, suave and unscrupulous, taking with him models Anita Colby, Phyllis Brown and her boyfriend, who agrees to invest in the start-up. The boyfriend is Gerald Ford and in 1974 he will become President of the US.

Harry differentiates his agency from that of his erstwhile employer by promoting a different kind of model. He mocks the Powers Girls as “Adenoid Annies, rattling bundles of skin and bones.” Focusing on preppies and campus queens, he pioneers a new type of model – “the windblown outdoor girl”, in the words of Bob Fertig his head of promotion. Conover calls these recruits Conover Coeds, then Cover Girls – and that’s where Columbia’s Cover Girl gets it inspiration and title. While, taking his cue from Hollywood, Conover develops a habit of rechristening his models – including his future wife.

In 1941, the winner of a Miss Atlantic City contest turns up at the agency. She introduces herself to Conover: “I’m Jessica Wilcox.” “You’re Candy Johnson,” he replies. “And your rate is $5 an hour.” He later shortens her name from Johnson to Jones because she has trouble remembering the longer version. By 1943, thanks to her looks and his promotion – including candy-striped outfits and calling cards – she is a top model. And in 1946 Conover marries her.

But the marriage is fated from the start. Conover is always chasing skirt – seemingly out with a different model night after night. He is also less concerned than Powers about respectability – he has a much more laissez-faire attitude when playboys approach him for dates with his models. “Right in my own office we have the very thing that every man looks for, works for, fights for and dies for,” Conover says, just before being excommunicated by the Catholic Church.

In 1952, having dropped out of the agency business and franchised his schools, Powers will move to Beverly Hills, where he will settle until he dies, age 84. Conover, by contrast, will die age 53, having succumbed to a classic combo of booze, lechery and profligacy. The modeling business, like the movie business, is unforgiving. It has a habit of chewing up its practitioners and spitting them out.

Cover Girl – behind the scenes

Rita Hayworth and co-stars on the set of Cover Girl — *1943. Filming a scene for Cover Girl. Photo by Ned Scott. Read more.*

Cover Girl has more in common with Gilda than their very different plots and styles might lead you to expect. Both are Columbia productions commissioned by Harry Cohn. Both are directed by Charles Vidor with cinematography by Rudolph Maté. And both have scripts by Virginia Van Upp.

Cohn is known to be tightfisted but he makes an exception for Cover Girl. He sets aside no less than a million dollars for the production and accepts it going US $600,000 over budget, with the lavish dance numbers devised by Kelly in no small part to blame for the overspend.

The movie is quite a coup for the Conover agency – a massive riposte to (and possibly inspired by) The Powers Girl, released the previous year. Harry Conover and Anita Colby are both employed by the studio as “technical consultants”. The latter is in charge of a troupe of Conover models who travel west from New York in a special railway carriage – a great publicity stunt that’s lapped up by the press.

The girls are all excited about what lies in store for them in Tinseltown but they’re in for a nasty surprise. Harry Cohn has made arrangements to ensure that they stay out of trouble. Francine Counihan, one of the models and also Anita Colby’s sister remembers:

Cover Girl was produced by Harry Cohn. Oh, he was a monster. He decided to put us all in one house together where he could see that nobody could get out. So we stayed in Marion Davies’ home in California. He only let us out to go shopping.

And there they stay for months while Harry Cohn apparently searches for an actress to play the lead role. Surely he’s known all along that this is to be a vehicle for his studio’s leading star, Rita Hayworth? Perhaps he just likes the feeling of power over the girls.

Rita and the gang

1943. On a lawn, presumably outside the studio, Rita Hayworth poses with the cover girls. It looks like the photographer must be perched in a...

Lucky man!

1943. Some people have all the luck. Rita Hayworth gives Tech Sergeant Gordon L Smith a peck on the cheek. A caption on the back...

Tea time

1943. The stars relax in the hot California sunshine during a break in filming. The maid (as usual) is uncredited. A caption on the back...

Susann Shaw and Jinx Falkenburg, cover girls

1944. Two of the era's supermodels pose on the set of Cover Girl. Susann Shaw is taken with the fashion sketch she's holding, while Jinx...

Anyway, whatever the reason, there’s a great story about how all the girls sneak out one night to go to a party. They have to return at intervals, one by one, to get past the security guards. To the guards’ growing consternation, each in turn announces herself as Anita Colby, who is the only member of the troupe allowed out. Inevitably, the last one back is the real Anita Colby.

Meanwhile, Anita Colby, who also acts as the girls’ agent, makes the most of the stay by managing to book three magazine covers each for the girls. Her success with the press doesn’t go unnoticed and she’s appointed “Feminine Director” of the David O Selznick studio.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photo probably by Ned Scott.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Ned Scott.

Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Ned Scott.

Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Ned Scott.

One of those most closely involved with the way Rita looks in Cover Girl is Robert Coburn, head of Columbia’s Photo Gallery. In John Kobal’s biography of Rita Hayworth, Coburn talks about photographing Columbia’s biggest star:

The contract I signed put me in complete charge of the studio’s stills department. Mind you, if I ever relaxed and let a bad picture of Hayworth or any other star out, Cohn would call me on the carpet immediately.
In those days we had the Johnson Office, and if we had any cleavage showing the pictures would be sent back. The Code was very strict. Any sign of breasts, even the shadow between, had to disappear. A woman wasn’t supposed to have any. We spent all our time touching photos up.
Hayworth didn’t need touching up. She didn’t treat herself badly, she wasn’t an all-night carouser, although naturally we had to watch for wrinkles under the eyes and around the neck. Of course, any skin marks, small pimples, we would take them out. I don’t remember Hayworth ever looking at a picture, I don’t think she ever cared how she looked in a picture. She’d come in once in a while and ask how they looked but she didn’t bother checking or approving them. That’s rare for women. Whereas Cohn was interested in her every minute of the day. He’d call whenever he knew from the call sheet that I was shooting her. They fought a lot. I told Cohn a million times that if he stopped picking on her I’d get what I wanted but he kept needling her and fitting in more hours.
I’d usually talk to her all the time when I was photographing her, getting her in the mood. Then, I’d catch her at her peak. She had the famous Hayworth look, looking over the shoulder, and after doing three of those she’d had it. She’d say, “What do you want that for? Get something else.” She didn’t realize that she didn’t have that come-and-get-me look except in that one pose.

Cover girl Rita Hayworth with magazines — *1941. Rita Hayworth contemplates her cover girl status. Photo by George Hurrell.* *Read more*.

Cover Girl – Rita learns new role

“Cover Girl” – Rita learns new role is the title of an article that appears in the 18 January 1943 issue of LIFE magazine.

Rita Hayworth is just a little bit bigger in the bust and in the hips than the average top-notch photographer’s model. The movie star is 35 in. around bust and hips whereas the average model is, at best. only 34.
These extra inches, which look fine on Rita Hayworth, did not worry Columbia Pictures at all when they cast her for the lead part in their forthcoming movie, The Cover Girl. The movie, which goes into production soon, will tell about photographers’ models who appear on the covers of national magazines. In it Miss Hayworth will combine her looks, figure and talents with Technicolor, some songs and a complicated story about two cover girls, one of 30 years ago and the other of today. The second cover girl will be the first one’s daughter. Miss Hayworth will play both of them.
When Miss Hayworth was in New York City recently, it occurred to Columbia Pictures that she ought to go through a model’s routine to see how a photographer’s model really worked. Miss Hayworth, who is a game girl, spent a full day working out of Harry Conover’s model agency, making believe she was a real cover girl. She learned that beauty is not enough.
For $3 an hour – $10 an hour if in great demand – models work exhausting hours in front of hot lights and fussy photographers, always trying to be charming and intelligent. To get work they have to be on time for appointments, be well-groomed and sweet-tempered. They spend days tramping around from client to client just to keep up their contacts. They are on their feet so much, in fact, that after being a model for a few months a girl’s feet invariably grow a whole shoe-size bigger.
The girls with Rita are Conover models, each chosen by a national magazine to play its cover girl in The Cover Girl. Being the star, Miss Hayworth will not represent any single magazine. This week, however, she is LIFE’s own cover girl.

9 September 1943. Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth get hitched. Read more.

In fact during the shooting of Cover Girl it turns out that Rita has two new roles. The second is as the wife of Orson Welles. It’s no secret that the couple have been dating. Even so, when it happens on 7 September 1943 their marriage takes everyone by surprise. According to Lee Bowman, the day the teams are shooting the film’s wedding scene, Rita arrives on the set.

She looked very lovely sitting there in her wedding dress [for the movie] while the crew were setting up. Rita sat there with her hands in her lap, her eyes very big and a lovely big pussy smile on her face. When any of us asked, “What is it, Rita?” she’d just shake her head and say, “Mmm, I’ve got a secret.” Wouldn’t say anything else. The first we knew what it was came during the lunch break when somebody brought us the papers with the headlines.”

While Rita is on cloud nine, director Charles Vidor is anything but. According to the film’s producer, Arthur Schwartz:

And you know who was terribly jealous and unhappy? The director. He had fallen in love with her. He came and cried on my shoulder and didn’t want to go on. He had to continue shooting every day and she was now married and looking more radiant all the time. She had a tremendous empathy, tremendous sex appeal. All those fifteen or so Cover Girls together didn’t have what she had.

Cover Girl – just a piece of fluff?

Cover Girl wins the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ annual award for Scoring of a Musical Picture. It is also nominated for Color Cinematography, Color Art Direction, Sound Recording and Best Song.

Bosley Crowther, the influential film critic of The New York Times from 1940 to 1967, says in his review:

The script is so frankly familiar that it must have come from the public domain. And the characters are as sleekly mechanical as only musical comedy characters dare to be. But it rainbows the screen with dazzling décor. It has Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth to sing and dance. And virtually every nook and corner is draped with beautiful girls. Further, this gaudy obeisance to divine femininity has some rather nice music in it from the tune-shop of Jerome Kern.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photographer unknown.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photographer unknown.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photographer unknown.

At the office

1943. Rita Hayworth and models pose at the offices of Vanity magazine. This is just the epitome of mid-1940s chic in terms of both the...

Heavenly sight

1943. In this ravishing fantasy sequence, Rita Hayworth appears at the top of a stylized Art Deco mountain down which she dances into the arms...

Round the mountain

1943. Having indulged her admirers, Rita Hayworth dances back up to the mountain peak in a rain of golden snowflakes. The caption on the back...

Later on, Arthur Schwartz, whom Harry Cohn brought in to produce Cover Girl, recalls:

In spite of everything people have said about Harry Cohn, his vulgarity, his lack of education, neither of which was a unique characteristic among the men in his position – he had an instinct for quality. Cover Girl, as I made it, couldn’t have been made at WB: Jack Warner wouldn’t have had the taste somehow, while at Metro they would have overproduced it – too many girls and too many of everything.

Cover Girl magazines and models — The magazines and models: Cosmopolitan, Betty Jane Hess; McCall’s, Betty Jane Graham; Vogue, Susann Shaw; Harper’s Bazaar, Cornelia B Von Hessert; Woman’s Home Companion, Rose May Robson; The American Home, Francine Counihan (Anita Colby’s sister); Mademoiselle, Peggy Lloyd; Glamour, Eileen McClory; Coronet, Cecilia Meagher; Liberty, Karen Gaylord; Redbook, Martha Outlaw; The American, Jean Colleran; Farm Journal, Dusty Anderson; Look, Cheryl (Archibald) Archer; Collier’s, Helen Mueller; Rita Hayworth. Collage copyright and courtesy of Blonde at the Film.

In his programme notes for the BFI, director Karel Reisz observes:

In Cover Girl we can see the transition from the old to the new taking place. Though its story has the usual backstage background, many of its numbers are staged in the open air and characters dance in it for the joy of dancing and as an expression of mood, not simply as professional performers. The design of costumes and sets moreover, is notably above the usual standard of the routine product. Cover Girl also saw the emergence of Gene Kelly as a choreographer playing the role which he has since played many times: he dances pieces of the ‘plot’ instead of interpolating numbers, and his style is that of a ballet dancer, not a ‘hoofer’.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Cover Girl – want to know more?

Apart from the LIFE article, key sources are Michael Gross’ book, Model – the ugly business of beautiful women, and John Kobal’s biography of Rita Hayworth. You can find my favourite online article at Blonde at the Film. Other articles worth reading are at The Vintage Cameo and moviediva. And there’s also Caren Roberts-Frenzel’s beautifully illustrated Rita Hayworth: A Photographic Retrospective. For biographies of some of the cover girls, take a look at Those obscure objects of desire.

Hazel Brooks – the human heat wave

Hazel Brooks, model, pin-up and Hollywood star of the 1940s is all but forgotten now. Except for here…

‘Known among the wags of Hollywood as “The Human Heat Wave”’, as the caption of one of her publicity stills puts it, she was lucky in love but not in her career. Or perhaps, when push came to shove, her marriage was more important to her than her career.

Hazel Brooks’ MGM years and before

The story starts in 1941 and Hazel, age 17, is working as a model for New York’s two leading agencies of the period – Walter Thornton and Harry Conover. With her red hair, green eyes, high cheekbones and svelte figure she certainly has what it takes.

Hazel Brooks – dream girl dreaming — 1944. Hazel Brooks, ‘chosen by servicemen as the girl about whom they would like to dream’. Photo probably by Laszlo Willinger. Read more.

So it’s not surprising that she’s ‘discovered’ by Arthur Freed, who has recently become head of his own unit at MGM and has quite a track record as a talent spotter. He is in the process of helping establish MGM as the leading Hollywood studio for musicals and will go on to produce An American in Paris, Singin’ in the Rain and Gigi. A couple of years after her arrival in Hollywood, he will cast Hazel as one of the 14 ‘glorified girls’ in Ziegfeld Follies.

When she arrives at MGM, the studio goes to work on her, one of the first steps being to send her for a photo session at the stills studio. An early sitting for Laszlo Willinger uses dramatic lighting and props to create some truly moody images, aspects of which seem almost to foreshadow Guy Bourdin. The three shots by Clarence Sinclair Bull a year or so later seem to be experimenting with different personas.

As with Ava Gardner, MGM can’t decide what to do with Hazel and she ends up with a series of bit-parts. But Alberto Vargas, pin-up painter extraordinaire, has no such doubts. In 1942 he uses her legs as inspiration for the perfect MGM glamour girl. The other features are Inez Cooper’s hands, Mary Jane French’s hair, Thea Coffman’s feet, Ruth Ownbey’s hips, Aileen Haley’s bust, Eve Whitney’s’ waist, Kay Williams’ arms, Kay Aldridge’s profile, Natalie Draper’s lips, Marilyn Maxwell’s ankles, and Georgia Carroll’s eyes.

In the meanwhile, though, Hazel meets Cedric Gibbons, head of MGM’s art department and the designer of the Oscar statue. Is it a coincidence that that the year she arrives, he divorces Dolores del Rio? Anyway, Hazel has a thing about older men and on 4 February 1943 the couple announce their engagement in Los Angeles Superior Court, where her $150-a-week MGM contract has to be approved by Judge Joseph W Vickers because she’s under legal age. He stipulates that one-tenth of her earnings be in vested in war bonds. The following year they marry. He’s 49, she’s 19 and eyebrows are raised.

God’s gift to the sweater industry

New York, 1941. The term sweater girl was made popular in the 1940s to describe Hollywood actresses such as Lana Turner, who wore tight sweaters...

Bedroom eyes

Hollywood, 1944. The tilted camera angle, the bed-head with its exaggerated padding (Guy Bourdin would have loved it!) and the deep shadows combine to give...

Ghostly apparition

Hollywood, 1944. Three years on from her sessions with Clarence Sinclair Bull, here’s another shot that’s high on drama with exaggerated perspective, a rather sinister...

Girl next door

Hollywood, 1945. Brought to Tinseltown age 17 by MGM, Hazel Brooks poses for Clarence Sinclair Bull, head of the Studio’s stills department. She’s no longer...

Drama queen

Hollywood, 1945. Clarence Sinclair Bull, head of MGM’s stills studio, uses dramatic lighting, a striking pose and mysterious foreground sculpture to create a striking portrait...

Glamour puss

Hollywood 1945. The gold lamé dress, the textured background, the subtle lighting – a totally fabulous example of Hollywood image-making by Clarence Sinclair Bull. And...

A bit of a mystery

Hollywood, around 1944. This slightly old-fashioned but very romantic portrait with its soft focus is a bit of a mystery. It’s by Max Munn Autrey,...

Relaxing at home

Around 1945. Hazel Brooks in a printed floral dress reclines on a banquette sofa as light filters through the the picture window behind her. A...

Hazel Brooks, outdoors girl

Hollywood, around 1945. You can almost feel the heat of the California sun in the picture. Hazel poses, hands on hips, very much the mistress...

Body and Soul – Hazel Brooks’ greatest movie

In 1945 Hazel Brooks obtains her release from MGM and tests for Selznick. 18 months or so later, she gets her big break – she will be groomed as a star by The Enterprise Studios, a new independent production company co-founded by actor John Garfield alongside producers David Loew and Charles Einfeld. You can read the story, including some comments from Hazel herself, in The million dollar gamble.

The studio goes into marketing overdrive for the release of Body and Soul. By way of illustration, here’s an extract from an article in Showmen’s Trade Review, November 22, 1947.

The News Post ran a contest on the question, “What Type of Girl Do You Prefer,” using portraits of Hazel Brooks as the “body” type and Lilli Palmer as representative of the “soul” type. Two radio stations also ran contests, with theatre tickets as prizes. The “Body and Soul” records were exploited through window displays in 23 music shops. Department stores also came through with fashion windows. The campaign was one of the most widespread Saxton has staged in some time, and the results at the box-office were ample proof of its effectiveness.

Body and Soul is one of the all-time-great boxing movies, with Hazel cast as Alice, a ‘gold-digging tramp’, as Bosley Crowther characterizes her in his New York Times review. Bud Graybill, the stills photographer for the movie, captures some great noir shots in which she seems to relish letting her hair down and vamping it up for the camera – her modelling background coming to the fore perhaps.

Regardless, it sounds like Hazel enjoys flaunting what she’s got. In May 1947, vacationing in Hawaii she…

Took with her for the edification of the islanders, all of the top-revealing dresses and swim-suits that the Johnston Office prevented her wearing in Body and Soul…

And the following year, Cobina Wright in an article for Modern Screen called Banned in Hollywood reports that…

Along the French Riviera, the ladies are wearing what they call “diaper suits” for swimming. The suit consists of a trifle of material on the top, a trifle of material on the bottom, and an almost unbelievable amount of girl in between.
Incidentally, just because I’ve said Hollywood’s pretty conservative, and we don’t go for the diaper suit, doesn’t mean we don’t have our own exotic fringe. Take Hazel Brooks (the Body and Soul menace). I saw her lounging near Mr. Kent’s pool, all covered by a flesh-colored clinging leotard covered with skin-tight black lace.

Sleep, My Love – Hazel Brooks’ follow-up movie

In 1948 Hazel Brooks stars as Daphne in Sleep, My Love, a Douglas Sirk melodrama that in terms of plot is a bit of a Gaslight rip-off. It is her only other major starring role. As Daphne, she’s another scheming bitch and in this case she likes to parade around in diaphanous garments. MGM might have struggled to figure out how to cast her but Triangle have no such problems.

One of the aspects that makes Sleep, My Love interesting is the way in which it illustrates the Hollywood studios’ attempts to push the boundaries of what is acceptable in 1940s America. According to IMDb:

In 1947, an amendment was made to the Production Code that cleared the way for the production and release of films dealing with drugs, and Hollywood wasted no time driving through the “drug” door. (Drugs still couldn’t be smoked or used free-will or for recreation, though.) While not the first film to take advantage of the drugs-can-be-used-when-essential-to-the-plot loophole, this Mary Pickford production for Triangle Productions made certain the use of a drug was most essential to the story of “Sleep, My Love.”

More of the same, please

1948. Hazel Brooks' performance in Body and Soul goes down a treat. So for her next movie, Sleep, My Love, Triangle Productions want more of...

Illicit lovers

1948. It's a hot night in every sense as eyes meet and hands clasp. But all is not well, as the caption on the back...

Dreaming

1948. Hazel Brooks lies back on a slightly-rumpled bed, and there’s a suspicion that she’s not wearing anything under that fur. But what’s on her...

Filming a scene

1948. Hazel Brooks and crew filming a scene for Sleep, My Love. Note the chalk lines on the floor indicating where to stand.

Preparing to shoot

1948. Hazel Brooks and George Coulouris getting ready to film a scene for Sleep, My Love. He had been a member of Orson Welles’ famed...

Take it from me…

1948. On the set of Sleep, My Love, Hazel Brooks discusses the scene she’s about to film with director, Douglas Sirk. He is one of...

Haughty look

1948. Hazel Brooks casts a disdainful glance towards George Coulouris, which typifies her attitude towards his character in Sleep, My Love. He is taking instructions...

Mistress and slave

1948. It's not difficult to see who wears the trousers here. Hazel Brooks can scarcely be bothered to conceal her contempt as she looks down...

Dressed to kill

1948. Hazel Brooks, dressed to kill in a diaphanous outfit, makes an eye-popping entrance. The angular staircase, raking light and deep shadows add to the...

And afterwards…

Hazel Brooks appears in a couple more films before leaving the movie industry. So why does her career stall? One factor is that though she looks terrific and is a competent actress, she doesn’t have the on-screen electricity or charisma of the likes of Lauren Bacall and Ava Gardner. But it could also have been down to the politics of Hollywood, to personal motivation and to luck.

1951. Cedric Gibbons, Hazel Brooks and Kathryn Grayson at the premiere of Showboat. Read more.

According to long-time friend Maria Cooper Janis, Gary Cooper’s daughter, in the years after her retirement from films Hazel becomes a skilled stills photographer and works actively for a number of children’s charities.

In 1960, Cedric Gibbons dies. In 1967 history repeats itself. Hazel marries Rex Ross, Jr., a Beverly Hills surgeon and founder of the Non-invasive Vascular Clinic at Hollywood Hospital – he’s 58, she’s 40.

He will die in 1999, she in 2002 after a long illness.

Want to know more and Hazel Brooks?

Apart from the captions on the backs of some of the photos, my two main sources of information have been: