Public Opinion from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania • 6

'flllllltlillllllllllllllim pyinjiimiiiuira ii ri- A mcrlca's yeiuis LQts Ste Tie gtVZ tttsfies se hadn't heen so beautiful Dorothy Knapp. not trying to mn success as an actress. By DEXTER TEED HE was born with the gift of beauty and she lived to be known as Venus. Broadway's bright lights have flashed her name. Artists have pictured her for millions.

Plaudits of many thousands have welcomed her to the stage. Handsome blades have courted her. And young girls have sighed and pleaded, "Oh, if I could only be as beau 1 1 1 LZ i w- leaf 'A- I fl ttP-'- Sketch by JOE KING I arrf Chandler Vt I JL-s Christ md his 'i i jj-r0 li- Fehner ft I GknJfer. "X.t.J I I' tiful as she is! A pretty face and perfect form brought international fame to Above, Dorothy Knapp and her moth-er, who "wanted mi; girl io be beautiful." Right, Miss Knapp as she looked 10 years ago. Dorothy Knapp, hut in its wake came disappointments, quarrels, lawsuits and a touch of tragedy Mi i But Dorothy Knapp, in the 27 years since she was born, has met disillusionment.

She has been in one difficulty after another. There have been shadows across her glamorous career. The bitter has tainted the sweet. life has not been a triumph. She, his paid a penalty for beauty.

It has not brought her happiness. "I have found it isn't a fine' thing to be the most beautiful, she explains. "If I could go through it again I would ignore beauty and specialize on real acting. For I do love the theater and the stage." She's still unaffected and modest. She dresses simply, but you would pick her out as a beauty any place.

But when you watch the play of expression on her face you immediately see that troubles and disappointments have left their mark on the lovely girl of 10 years ago. A ROUND the ages between 16 and 18, beauty is something of a fad with a girl," she declares. "It was with me, but I can see the folly of it now. If I could have known what I know now, I'd have tried to succeed through hard work rather than beauty." Once it was not that way. There was a world ahead to conquer.

It had been drilled in her that it was her destiny to be "the most beautiful." In Chicago, where she was born, her mother, dreaming of the child that was to be, thought beauty into her daughter. That was the way she expressed it. In her own words; "The raising of the perfect child begins before birth. You see I wanted my baby to be a girl, and I wanted her to be beautiful. "I lived a good deal in the fields.

I pleaded with nature to give my daughter loveliness. I don't know why I was so certain that I would have a daughter, except that I wanted on? so badly I did not consider the possibility of a son. Some thought such an attitude was fantastic. Not the mother of Dorothy Knapp. It had become a passion with her this striving to make her daughter beautiful.

She believed whole-heartedly in pre-natal influence. Often she pointed out that one of her relatives about to become a mother had seen a man with a crooked finger, and when the baby was born it had a crooked finger! THUS it was to be expected that little Dorothy's life would be modeled around one central idea beauty. So it was. It came rushing at her from every side. Make your body beautiful.

Think beautiful thoughts. Live beautifully. Sleep beautifully, Eat beautifully. Be beautiful! It was a religion, an educational system, an almost fanatical driving forward towards one goal beauty. And then what? Dorothy Knapp could swim when she was two years old.

She learned to skate, ride a horse, hike, dance and to play in the open soon after that All because it would help to make her beautiful. And she was- and is beautiful. But during those early years the public did not know her. She moved to New York when she was 10 years old. Her mother taught her.

of course, stressing beauty. And when she was 17 years eld she was a nationally known beauty. That was explained when it was discovered it was another Dorothy Knapp. Well, she was soon in the "Vanities," the show that Earl Carroll, later of bathtub party fame, before New York. It was a hit, and beautiful Dorothy was one of the reasons.

She was a favorite of Carroll. When he was sent to Atlanta penitentiary following the party at which a nude girl bathed in a tub of champagne while celebrities roared with laughter. Miss Knapp went to see him. Such was the report. The country was astonished.

She was criticized, reprimanded. It brought her unpopularity, unhappiness. Romance caught up with her. While modeling for Howard Chandler Christy, the famous artist, in 1 925, she met his nephew, Fehner Chandler. It was love.

The courtship rushed on and the engagement was announced. Meanwhile she had left Carroll for "Zieg-feld's Follies." There was a clause in her contract, decreeing that she must not marry. Fame caught up with her. She welcomed it and found there was a price. With beauties she displayed her charms at a physical culture show.

She paraded up and down in front of the judges and the people who came to see "the most shapely girls in America." nnHE show went on. As judges surveyed i-- this and that "modern Venus," interest centered on twq girls. One was Anne Hyatt, the other was Dorothy Knapp. On the final night they picked Miss Knapp and then the trouble began. Anne Hyatt sued the beauty show and Dorothy Knapp for $100,000.

She charged that there had been favoritism, that she (Anne Hyatt) was nearer the perfect Venus and could prove it by actual measurements. She claimed she should have been chosen "the most shapely girl in America." The suit never reached court.1 But the 1 7-year-old Dorothy Knapp had some very unpleasant experiences before it was satisfactorily adjusted. It was her introduction to being a professional beauty. She became famous as an artists" model. She was sought as a typical, perfectly-formed American girl with an Engaging smile and a rosy-cheeked freshness that won the applause of people who saw her in real life or in paintings.

The band played and the crowd cheered. Dorothy Knapp was at Atlantic City, a leading contestant in the beauty contest that drew girls from all over the nation. Tall, stringy girls with lovely faces; short, dumpy girls with lovely faces; and perfectly formed girls with lovely faces all were there. Miss Knapp belonged in the latter class. The crowd cheered when she won that contest.

SHE smiled as she locked forward to life. Then one day the country was startled when it read that "Dorothy Knapp was killed in an automobile accident at White Plains." leading part. She was the beauty, the center around which the action swirled. The show wasn't a success. Theatrical Broadway buzzed with rumors.

Miss Knapp was summarily dropped from the cast. She sued Mrs. Penfield, Carroll, Mrs. Evelyn Hub-bell and the composers of "Fioretta," Romilly Johnson and George Bagby. MISS KNAPP charged favoritism.

Mrs. Penfield flung back, in her reply, that Miss Knapp was in the cast because of Carroll's love and affection for her, and that she couldn't sing, dance or act. The controversy startled the theatrical world. The show Mrs. Penfield was reported to have lost $246,000.

And while discord was still raging Romilly Johnson was in Lynn, discouraged and embittered by the failure, Temperamental like all artists, he felt his life was ruined. He hurried into the kitchen and obtained a knife. They found his body the next day. He had stabbed himself. Miss Knapp heard of it, collapsed, was taken to a hospital, broken temporarily.

That was a part of fame. It was her first taste of real tragedy. The suit was in the courts. It still is. Resentful, Dorothy Knapp declared: "I've got a Christian disposition but I can't quite convince myself that it is best to turn the other cheek when the first is slapped.

I have been treated most unfairly. I want the people to realir.e how unfair that treatment was." Before the lawsuit could be finally disposed of by the courts, Mrs. Penfield, widow of a former S. ambassador to Austria, died and once again tragedy had entered the circle of those connecteti with the ill-starred show, "Fioretta." "OELASCO was reported to have dropped Lcnore Ulric and replaced her by Miss Knapp. Something happened.

She was THE inevitable and a career, been anticipated, what it could do clash came between love What she did might have Trained for beauty and for her, still bathed in the Still lovely, though she wishes she were not. A recent photo of Dorothy Knapp. engaged for a leading role in "Take It Easy." That didn't last long. It was a road show and it was out two months, then closed. Last spring, after modeling for Christy, James Montgomery -Flagg and MacClelland Barclay, she had her fling at minor roles in the movies.

She was never starred. Something happened. She decided she had enough of the world. She announced that she was going to enter a convent, this "beautiful, disillusioned girl who had hoped to conquer all that is Broadway. She said: "My sole duty is to have faith and serve' God.

Broadway and Hollywood holJ nothing but She flesh pots." But she did not enter a She de. cided it was admitting defeat. There was hope and she hopes for this: she's going to reenter the realm of the stage as a dramatic actreis. glamour of the bright lights, she at last decided not to marry. It was a heart-breaking experience but there was a career ahead.

Carroll had said: "You will come back to me. She did not believe it then, for her family' had wanted her to leave his show. But after a year with the "Follies" she was once more with the "Vanities." Except for adulation, increasing fame and the inevitable attention of unwanted admirers, her career was smoothed until 1929, when tragedy first shadowed her life. That ambitious music show, "Fioretta," produced by Carroll and bacTced by the socially prominent Mrs. Frederick Courtland Fenfield as "angel," opened-with Miss Knapp in a (CopyTlgrht.

1932, by EveryWeek Magazine Printed in U. S. i iHmmmmmimiuiwmiMMMUtUHlMim.