The San Bernardino County Sun from San Bernardino, California • Page 21

i imf iMMi trA I -1 Ji- iW If Ik JANUARY 23, 138 A CAMPUS BEAUTY QUEEN MA i mA'm Qk I Marjorie Weaver (right) and Judi 'fj Parks, close friends now but it oj 'V V' 'Z'frS'-idf at' was not always thus. Back in their A college days Miss "Weaver threw L.Va, A Miss Parks and her wardrobe out CI Jr 1 of the sorority house room they .41 shared. 'JP a By Lucie Neville HOLLYWOOD WHEN a girl gets the Hollywood bee in her bonnet, you can't stop her. Usually it's the bee that gets the credit. Marjorie Weaver, 20th Century-Fox's Kentucky babe, gives it to the bonnet.

Furthermore, she still has the original hat that brought her here. It wasn't her own hat at first. Miss Weaver was a dignified senior at the University of Indiana and she didn't wear hats like that a femme jalale black felt with a mesh veil and a New York label. The first time she saw it was during rush week, when, as a senior, she was head of the welcoming committee at the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house. A mere freshman rushee was wearing the hat.

The frosh also flaunted an umphy black dress and made herself very much at home. "You can imagine what I thought!" said Miss Weaver. "I was so used to seeing nice, sweet little girls who did just what they were told. And there she was, laughing and carrying on with the girls she knew up in the president's room, instead of being downstairs to meet the other rusliees. So when her name came up a few nights later, I just wouldn't vote for her.

The only way you've got of judging a girl you're going to live with for the next year is the way she acts during rush week. "We sat up till 4 o'clock that morning, 40 girls all arguing with me and saying, 'You don't know her, Marjorie! What have you got against And I said, That hat! Any girl who would wear a hat and a dress like that all black! ought not to be a Kappa! She finally gave in, and the freshman, one Ruby Nell Parks, was duly pledged and promptly lived up to Miss Weaver's sour predictions. She did everything she wasn't sup-pored to, from snatching the fraternity pin of the best dale on the campus to scattering her clolhes all over Miss Weaver's room. "She was the only person I ever disliked in my life, and I simply detested her," the actress said vehemently. "She'd come in my room and just sit and look at me and laugh!" The grand scene came when the senior threw the freshman's wardrobe into the hall and locked her out until she promised to be a good girl.

Then they found they really enjoyed scrapping together and from then on were inseparable. IT was Miss Parks' idea to enter her roommate's picture in a beauty contest, without telling her, and when the picture won she was more pleased than the winner. Professional modeling in New York City started Miss Weaver on her way to the movies. "I hadn't thought about movie work then," Miss Weaver said. "I'd planned to be a teacher.

My family couldn't afford to send me to college just to have a good time." Her father, John Thomas Weaver, is general freight agent for the Louisville Nashville Railroad, at Louisville, Ky. "Before I left, mother had said, 'You've got to make up your mind what you're going to be and be But New York and a dance scholarship the contest prize promising more than a summer at home, she decided to go. The effervescent Miss Parks went along too, just in case she might something if she stayed. "But I needed a hat," Miss Weaver said. "So when we were packing I said, 'Judi' The success story of Marjorie Weaver Nis one of the strangest in all Hollywood.

She owes her start in the movies to a freshman she didn't like in college and now that same freshman is her stand-in Hoagy Carmichael started calling Ruby Nell that 'will you sell me that black I think I got it for $5 and she'd paid an awful lot for it. Judi always had plenty of money at school, but I was always lending money to the prosperous ones." CHORT of money during the course in ball- room and tap dancing, Miss Weaver did professional modeling in New York and posed for cigarets, beer, clothes and soap ads. Her scrapbook is full of clippings sent by sorority sisters back in Louisville with jeering marginal notes. Movie offers followed, and she signed a contract with Paramount. After six months of inactivity and she can't bear being idle she went to 20th-Fox.

Judi Parks came along tr Hollywood later and now is her stand-in. Marjorie Weaver always has done things. Sold watercress when she was 10. At 1 3 she was training her own horse for the Kentucky Hollywood is enthusiastic about the fresh beauty of Marjorie Weaver. And why not? fair show rings.

At 1 5 she had her own car, bought with winnings from the races. "I always had plenty of horses to ride because my daddy had a livery stable," she said. "Mother's family had horses, too, and at one time the two families were in business together." That was in Louisville, where the family had settled, after several moves, from Crossville, Miss Weaver's birthplace. "But I'd never had one of my own until my 1 3th birthday, when my daddy gave me a big chestnut sorrel, I6V2 hands high, and five-gaited. It took me a year to break him for the ring because he was scared of anything he hadn't seen on a farm.

He was up against stiff competition with the New York horse crowd, but we always got some kind of win or mention." Typical of Miss Weaver's determination was her preparation for shows. "You know, a chestnut's color will fade in the sun," she explained. "So for three years, while I was i.l. iJL film WlfliW (piii This photo of Miss Weaver won the University of Kentucky's beauty contest when she was a freshman there in the school year 1929-30. showing him, I got up every morning from April to September and rode him from 5 to 8 o'clock.

Then, at 4 o'clock, no matter whether I had a date or school or what, I rode him until 7." She sold the horse for $800 when she went away to school; he had cost $130. "He wasn't the best horse in the world but I always tried to get some attention with him, like making him rear up as we came in the ring. And I'd put a different bridle on him eyeryday, and wear a brown habit and an unusual scarf. My daddy taught me that," she said. She's applying her daddy's flair for showmanship now.

When she found that the cast of a radio program on which she was appearing were supposed to be Thetas, she persuaded them to change to Kappas. She also credits her father with teaching her the fine points of playing the ponies, although she followed hunches in picking six Derby winners. Before coming to Hollywood, Miss Weaver and her sister used to pool their winnings for a huge yearly house party. "One year we had 25 boys the whole Purdue football team," she remembered with satisfaction. TVpSS WEAVER herself is superstitious about one thing only.

"I think it's just luck when you get good breaks," she said. "After that, it's hard work. And when you get a break, you ought to be all set and ready for it. I don't think I've ever passed up an opportunity. Sometimes, they've just been little ones, but I'm kind of like the kindergarten teacher I believe in making 'the little things learn to count.

The thing she is superstitious about is the number 13. But she believes it's lucky. "My screen test was on Friday the 13th," she recalled. "The reviews of 'Second Honeymoon came out on the 13th, I got my car on a 1 3 th and my norse on my 1 3th birthday." She doesn't say what luck has saved her from harm in countless falls from horses. "I never was really hurt just dragged," she said casually.

She has had five minor automobile accidents since she came here. Both arms have been broken. There is a deep scar on her forehead where she was kicked by a mule when she tried crawling under it. "And I shouldn't tell this the mule broke its leg and had to be Just before the first shooting on "Second Honeymoon," she fell and broke her nose and blacked both eyes. It was in this picture, where she practically stole the show, that Miss Weaver reached movie success after bits and minor parts in 18 pictures.

She said she would like to play comedy parts on the Claudette Colbert and Carole Lombard order. She sings a little in "Sally, Irene and Mary" and her dancing comes in handy. But this girl is an old trouper in musical comedy for she had the lead in the college ones for four years. She also won campi's beauty contests for four successive years, first at the University of Kentucky, the others at the University of Indiana. She is a Kentucky colonel, also an honorary captais of the ROTC "though I didn't know a thing about drill; the real captain would poke me with his sword and whisper 'Turn left'.