The San Bernardino County Sun from San Bernardino, California • Page 28

If 1 )mwfM iisi lili ri The nation's biggest state contributes another beauty to the capital of Filmdom. Like all her sister-Texans Nancy is a prize package! I 1 MOM Ml MMn I I If dlJ-A III f. By DEE LOWRANCE 4 1 I I -il y- HOLLYWOOD seems appropriate, even in a wartime Christmas, to mark the day of celebration with the announcement of a new gift to movie-goers. That the gift hails from Texas is particularly significant. Let's 1 Then there Is Brenda Marshall, who wasn't Texas-born but was Texas-raised.

Ginger Rogers is a Texan to make all Texans proud the ton Contest she won on home soil, which sent her off on her climb to not-forgotten history. Mary' Martin, with the heart-shaped face and lovely voice, is a Texas daughter and when she made her mark on Broadway singing "My Heart Belongs to Daddy," all her fellow Texans hummed the song in an excess of pride at her achievement. Another young star who has won a top place for herself is Linda Darnell, the one who has been called "the girl with the perfect face" almost since she hit town after leaving her birth-and-growing-up-place, Dallas. i fi 1 i t-v if Vlf no secret of it our gift is powerfully potential movie She's a Texan, too, which is i of at all surprising once you re( 11 the history of Texas' par-tic ation in the creation of vie stars. 1 hat that large hunk of territory in the southwest of the nation should be noted for the production of more beautiful women than any other state is by way of being a reputation it would seem any other state could earn if it were equally as large.

But consider it calmly. Non-Texans have an answer a bit on the bitter side. No wonder, they insist, Texas has more beautiful women than any other state. It probably has more pretty ones, more cute ones, more ugly one? even simply because it has more I -t that's not quite true. Figures us that while Texas is certainly the arrest state in the Union (larger evt than England, Italy, Germany or France) it only ranks sixth in place as 'o population according to a 1940 cer.

us-taking. And per head, it boasts mo: men than women! numoers mean nothing. Yet it is generally conceded that Texas does seem to have a corner on beauty especially those who turn up as movie stars. It must be the climate, the open spaces or something. Lovelies from Texas crowd the extra ranks.

Breath-takingly luscious lassies from the same sprawling state are to be found in all lists of aspiring young actresses. And there is a handful of Texans who have made their mark in Hollywood and keep the name of their home state in high regard. Ann Sheridan heads any such list of arr ved Texas beauties. Joan Blondell was in there pitching long before the Oo; "iph Girl arrived and she still seems to rate well with movie audiences. A LL of which lengthy report of terrific Texans brings us to the very newest, young Nancy Gates, who appears on the star-coming horizon at a time when she can easily be dubbed Texas' Christmas gift to movie-goers.

Nancy is a baby still. She won't reach 17 until Feb. 1 of this next year. But she's a White Hope as far as acting goes and definitely worth watching carefully for the next few years. Nancy was born -in Dallas but she spent her spawning time in the township of Denton, a few miles outside the city.

"Denton," explained Nancy "is not very big. But it's right in the middle of two universities and lots of things happen there. Ann Sheridan, Brenda Marshall and Joan Blondell all happened there, for instance." Nancy was all of five when her path tangled with Brenda Marshall's. It seems that Nancy had been elected "Sweetheart" of the Texas Teachers' College Band a year before, when she was a child wonder, singing and dancing. At five she made her acting debut in "A Kiss for Cinderella" presented at the college and starring Brenda Marshall.

Not very long afterwards, Nancy appeared in a Kiwanis Minstrel Show in Denton which also presented Ann mistress-of-ceremonies on her own radio program in Dallas for a whole year before the Hollywood venture was made. That was because she had made a momentous decision about her career some time before. "You see," she said as she sat around waiting for the lights to be set on the stage where her next picture, "This Land Is Mine," was being shot, "I had to decide to be either a dancer or a singer. But I couldn't be both. I started out tap dancing but I can't sing hot to match.

And I like to sing sweet. So I dropped the dancing." "Singing sweet" obviously went well in Dallas as the extreme youth of the mistress-of-ceremonies proves. A Dallas newspaper was so impressed they printed an entire page of pictures of Nancy Gates that was the Open Sesame to Hollywood. The pictures did Nancy's slight but handsome figure and pixie face full justice and soon thereafter a page found its way into the hands of Hol Sheridan. But Nancy's connection with Ann went even further than that one appearance.

"When she was Clara Lou Sheridan," Nancy recalled, "she went with my brother Pete. They were in junior college then and we liked her very much we being the rest of the family, mother, father and me." But when Nancy and her mother came to Hollywood, Nancy didn't look Ann up though she wanted to see her. She felt it might appear as if she were imposing to say hello to an established star while she was just a gal trying to break into the movies herself. The people who know Ann Sheridan well, say that Nancy was overly modest. But Nancy herself is looking forward to seeing Ann sometime in the near future, now that she herself seems to be on her own.

AND that she certainly is. Nancy and her mother hit Hollywood when Nancy was 15. She had been lywood's ever-watchful talent hounds. Three studios all besieged our heroine at one moment. She trailed her offers out to the coast, all expenses paid, and began the horrifying experience of facing a movie camera for the first time.

It took a little while but soon her name was signed on a nice contract. 'T'HEN nothing happened. That is often the case with young hopefuls. They get used to it. But Nanqy is a youngster of rare good sense'.

She didn't worry. Just went on with her school work and waited. Then along came Orson Wolles, looking for a young actress to play the lead in the second love story wrapped up in "The Magnificent Ambersons." He made a test of Nancy which was very fine indeed. He also made a Welles convert of her she thinks he's one of the most wonderful directors in Hollywood. And she was heartbroken when she couldn't get the part.

It wasn't her acting 'that foiled her; it was her youth. Until an actor is lo, he can't work after 6 p. m. educational board rules, And school must go on, too, for under-age thespians. So Anne Baxter got the role in the film and all Nancy had was a test that is said to have been responsible for the first role she did get to play.

That was as one of the Tuttles in "The Tuttles of Tahiti" with Charles Laughton. Then she did the feminine lead and a larger role in "The Great Gildersleeve," and had a fine time, "But," she said, "now I have such a wonderful part. I'm second love-interest again as I might have been in 'The Magnificent I'm back with Charles Laughton again, which I like so much, in 'This Land Is Advance reports on the picture hava the studio raving, It is laid in Occupied France and is studded with fine characterizations and excitement. And the entire cast has a good word to put in for their baby star, Nancy Gates. 4Evry Week Magazine Printed In U.

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