Herald and Review from Decatur, Illinois • Page 103

12 TIMEOUT! www.neraia-review.comfcntertainment Central Illinois woman finds Hollywood ending From Marilyn Monre to Elizabeth Taylor, Lucille Carroll spent her life mentoring some of Tinseltown's brightest serving as head of Macon County schools from 1923 to 1939. Carroll's brother, Herbert D. Ryman, was a highly successful artist who worked for MGM and Walt Disney studios. Ryman, who died in 1989, was credited with creating the artist renderings for Disneyland that helped persuade New York financiers to bankroll the family theme park. Their sister, Christine Pensinger, was the head nutritionist for the state of Illinois, head of the food department for Marshall Field Co.

in Chicago and hosted perhaps the first TV cooking show. i mi i i iijiji r- m) lit J- vt r- 1 1 Hopper. "It was the first time anyone had offered to pay me back. I told her to forget it and to pass the money along to some other kid someday some kid who needed a helping hand." in i Harrison Price, Lucille Carroll's longtime friend and executor of her estate, said Carroll was a generous spirit who was raised partly in a fatherless household. "She was an easy mark for somebody with a hard luck story," Price said.

"She was very often taken advantage of by people in the strange and glorious entertainment business, but she always had the spirit to come back for more." Price said Carroll, who never had any children of her own, often acted as a kind of "dorm mother" for Louis B. Mayer's highly paid stars. "Mien they would get a young actress, she was the lady who looked after them," he said. Even during her long years of retirement, Carroll was an impressive person. "She was very much a lady of the old school, very formal clothes and furnishings; elegance was her style, yet she could be tough as nails when she had to be," Price said.

"She lived in nice homes that were decorated to the hilt in grand style. She maintained that quality of life until the end. It scared me, because I was afraid she'd run out of money. If she would have lived much longer, she would have." ID I Perhaps her tastes were shaped by her prominent parents. Her father, Capt.

Herbert R. Ryman, a Mount Pulaski physician, was killed on a French battlefield while tending a wounded soldier during World War I. Lucille was 12 years old. Her mother, Cora Ryman, received her husband's posthumous Distinguished Service Cross from President Woodrow Wilson. Cora Ryman, a second cousin to former President Zachary Taylor, moved to Decatur with her three children after her husband joined the Army so they could later attend Millikin University.

After teaching at Durfee School for several years, she became one of the state's first female school superintendents, By HUEY FREEMAN Staff Writer It was an implausible story, even by Hollywood standards. A girl raised in small Midwestern farming towns, partly by a single mother, became a woman who discovered and trained the world's most glamorous movie stars. Lucille Ryman Carroll, who died Oct. 23 in California at the age of 96, was a young teacher at Roosevelt Junior High School when she went out to Los Angeles for a summer to study acting. Ten years later, she became one of the most powerful women irHollywood, head of the talent department at MGM Studios.

She was a mentor to Marilyn Monroe, who she took into her home when she was a penniless actress. Carroll and her husband helped the 21-year-old land her breakthrough movie role. During her 13 years at MGM, Carroll also helped develop the careers of Elizabeth Taylor, Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, Janet Leigh, Donna Reed and many other stars. "In our family, we were expected to do something," Carroll said in an interview with the Herald Review during her 1973 visit to Millikin University, from which she had graduated in 1926. "I rushed through school so I could work.

It was so inbred in us, we had to make something out of our lives." Her work helped shape the way movies were made, said Andrea Favilli, a sculptor who was one of Carroll's closest friends in recent years. He said she was the highest paid female executive in the nation while she was at MGM, from 1941 to 1954. "She was the architect of the MGM school," Favilli said. "She created the department to take fledgling stars and train them to and how to present themselves." Partly because of Carroll's influence, MGM was considered Carroll was born June 10, 1906, in Topeka, while her father was a medical student at Kansas State Medical College. She graduated from Decatur High School and went on to Millikin, where she was a member of the Delta Delta Delta sorority and acted in plays.

During the following five years, she taught at Assumption High School and Roosevelt Junior High, acting in plays staged by Decatur's Town and Gown H0LLYW00DT013 Ozark Jubilee "Christmas: me Reason tor uie reason DECEMBER 1st 2:00 pm $20.00 Neal McCov Christmas Showf i DECEMBER 7 6:00 9:30 pw $23.50 John Berry Christmas Show WmA DECEMBER 14 5:00 8:30 pm $23.50 The Barn Christmas Show DECEMBER 15 2:00 pm Sunday $8.00 New Year's Eve wTouaayOverstreet DECEMBER 31 OfH. Tuesday 1 $23.50 wlightbufa shows Lucille Ryman Carroll the "Tiffany" of the business, with glamorous stars who were well-groomed and had excellent manners. "She identified, located and shaped the talent," Favilli said. "She was extraordinarily intelligent. She was very intuitive.

She had a knack for who was right and who was wrong for pictures." In her autobiography, "My Story," Monroe credits Lucille Ryman with playing a leading role in her success. "Miss Ryman had not only been kind to me and loaned me money and things to wear, but she had also assured me I was going to be a star," Monroe wrote. She recalls Ryman called to tell her to contact director John Huston to test for the role of the gangster's mistress in "Asphalt Jungle." There was more to the story than Monroe knew or told. Carroll's husband, actor John Carroll, had pressured Huston into testing Monroe by threatening to sell Huston's 23 racehorses, Carroll told People magazine in a 1987 interview. Huston owed the Carrolls $18,000 for boarding his horses at their ranch.

"She and John looked at Marilyn as a little lost kitten and they adopted her," Favilli said. Monroe spent much of her childhood in foster homes and an orphanage. "They felt sorry for this lost little girl. They put her up in their apartment in Hollywood. Lucille groomed her and worked with her." In an interview with gossip columnist Hedda Hopper in 1952, Carroll said after Monroe began landing leading movie roles, Monroe tried to repay her: "I was stunned," Carroll told 217-287-2103 www.nvnusa.com TAYLORVILLE, IL.