Beauty Fair

One of Hollywood’s most repeated myths is that all screen beauties are born beautiful.

According to the legend started and perpetuated by press agents, each star entered the world endowed with flawless figure, classic features, milk-and-roses complexion.

Not true.

The truth is that most movie actresses are attractive. But beautiful? Well—not necessarily.

In Hollywood more than anywhere else the difference between a good-looking girl and a real beauty is a finely drawn line. And the line that divides the average from the extraordinary depends on one major factor—awareness.

Those girls who acquire the aura of true beauty do so by being as much aware of their weak points as they are of their strong ones.

True beauty is founded upon the softening and correcting of imperfections. No one in Hollywood was born perfect. Liz Taylor came close to it, but even she, as you will see, has had to improve upon nature’s endowments.

One example of a basically attractive girl who has grown into a beauty is Janet Leigh.

When Janet first reported to MGM seven years ago, as a result of Norma Shearer’s having sent her photo to the studio, she was no prettier than dozens of other coeds from the College of the Pacific in Stockton.

LIZ TAYLOR

Undeniably, Liz had a head start on almost everyone. Perhaps too lovely naturally, she thought her looks would take care of themselves without help—even after she gave birth. It took strenuous reducing to bring her back to shape. Now she grooms with care, watches her weight.

First, she was a little too plump, at least for the movie cameras. They have a way of enlarging everything. Secondly, her hair was too fluffy. It fell down around her forehead, broadening the entire facial structure. Her eyebrows were sharply angled at the ends, her clothes fussy.

Like many young and inexperienced girls, she knew very little about applying makeup. What she used, she used too heavily in the wrong places.

In the words of one MGM makeup man, “Janet was a sweet kid but she was too much of muchness.”

IT TOOK time, of course, but honest, objective self-appraisal and learning a few basic makeup skills gradually brought out Janet’s true loveliness.

First she gave up completely her beloved peanut butter sandwiches and pastry. For these she substituted cottage cheese and tomato salads. She also gave up all soft drinks, a sacrifice which even today drives husband Tony Curtis slightly mad as he can drink them ceaselessly without any visible signs of, weight increase.

Having lost weight, Janet began giving away her dirndls and ruffled blouses. They had served only to make her look heavy. She began to buy suits and matching shoes. Today she is always well dressed, usually in one-color outfits.

DEBRA PAGET

A lady still in the dark, Debra has experimented with every beauty type from sweet-and-simple to sleek-and-sophisticated. Willingly, she has dyed and re-dyed her hair, altered her makeup, changed her personality. But one can have too much of change, too. It’s time she made up her mind.

She calmed down her hairdo. She brushed her hair back over her face instead of letting it droop. To highlight her face and accentuate her eyes, she used a makeup shade three tones lighter than her base color. Because her upper lip was a little thin, she gave herself a thicker one.

Janet developed into one of Hollywood’s foremost beauties.

A few years ago, however, not long after she had married Tony, Janet, for reasons known only to herself, suddenly began to go to extremes. “I guess I just wanted a change,” she says.

She dieted too strenuously. She let one hair-stylist cut off her long bob and lighten her naturally honey-blonde to a startling platinum. Simultaneously she began buying some pretty daring clothes. She looked strained and devastatingly out of character. Her new acquisitions did not seem to match her personality.

Jnet is an open-minded and intelligent young woman. A half dozen candid photos and a long, unbiased look in the mirror soon proved to her that she had swung the pendulum too hard and too far.

Now Janet is in the process of seeking a near-perfect balance.

BETTY GRABLE

An all-time favorite beauty queen, Betty attributes her still perfect figure to the strenuous exercise it gets when she dances, recommends workouts. She’s an advocate of the study-yourself method, keeps an eye out constantly for ways to perfect herself.

She is gaining weight with a doctor-recommended diet re-enforced by frequent milkshakes. She has started to wear her hair long and loosely waved again and two shades darker. Her clothes are a bit more on the conservative side.

At the premiére of The Egyptian a few months ago, it was Mrs. Tony Curtis who took the limelight. Wearing a high-necked white lace sheath, softly feminine and expertly fitted to show her figure, she set the fans to screaming.

To her admiring public Elizabeth Taylor is the ultimate in natural beauty. And to a great extent this is true. But like many happily-endowed individuals Liz used to take her beauty for granted. She never thought much about careful grooming.

She’d succumb to a manicure only when there was nothing more exciting to do. Her luxurious head of curls, shaped by studio hairdressers since she was a child, continued to be shaped by them.

When Liz was off-salary she’d cut her hair with nail scissors. And insofar as weight was concerned, well, Liz used to eat pretty nearly everything as a youngster, and because she was athletic, she gained little.

When Liz married Mike Wilding, however, she reached the turning point. She gave up her careless childhood habits and began to look more womanly. But she could not or would not give up her eating routines. When she became pregnant, she continued to eat as she had always eaten. But her exercise was cut down.

SUSAN HAYWARD

Susan believes in placing strong emphasis on one outstanding feature; in her case, her masses of auburn hair. She tones her make up down so that it does not detract from the effect, dresses in colors which blend harmoniously with her long, thick hair.

You all know what happened. Liz gained thirty-five pounds during her pregnancy, twenty of which stayed on after the baby’s birth.

Under normal conditions, Liz would have bounced back in six months. However, the studio didn’t give her six months. Vivian Leigh suffered a nervous collapse during the filming of Elephant Walk, and Liz was loaned to replace her.

LIZ HAD THREE weeks in which to take off twelve pounds. It was a painful experience consisting of appetite-curbing pills, steam baths and strenuous massage. But it started a new phase in Liz Taylor’s approach to beauty and to health.

“She now watches her weight very carefully, never letting it rise more than three pounds.

Because she’s been around studios all her life, Liz knows a great deal about makeup. According to an MGM makeup man “Elizabeth Taylor is one of the most proficient actresses in the art of cosmetics. She has studied her own coloring and has a thorough understanding of her own special problems. One of the major ones is her heavy eyebrows. Liz has learned that she needs eye shadow to balance her eyebrows and violet eyes. Although few people are aware of it, she uses a lot of eye makeup. And in her case it’s absolutely necessary or the brows would become the focus of attention rather than her beautiful eyes.”

JEAN PETERS

A tall girl, Jean found that her hairstyle made a great difference to her overall appearance: swept up and out, it helped proportion her head perfectly to her body. Jean’s mature face is set off by her personal poise, will grow still lovelier with time.

Liz is also extremely careful to match her lipstick to the color of her costume. She knows how to apply lipstick carefully. She uses a small amount of lipstick, evenly distributed in one thin layer.

Doris Day is not often listed as one of the outstanding screen beauties, and possibly it’s her own fault. Ever since she became a star, Dodo has been saying that she isn’t really very good-looking.

The truth is that she has a fresh, bouncing personality. Her face is freckled, her blue eyes sparkle. Her blonde hair is not natural, but it looks it.

Doris, however, knows what she is doing. “People look upon me as the girl next door. That’s why I wouldn’t let the studio try and turn me into a belt-line beauty. I think it would make me lose what individualism I have. There’s nothing wrong with freckles. Why cover them up? There is no point in looking like everyone else.”

When Doris sang many years ago with Bob Crosby and Les Brown, she tried to look like the popular conception of a star. She wore her hair long and down over the back of her neck. Her eyebrows were pencilled too darkly and her mouth makeup was much too large for her face.

When Mike Curtiz signed her for Romance On The High Seas, however, Doris learned that the fans liked her as “a friendly, typical American girl—with blonde hair.”

DORIS DAY

Unsuccessful as a glamour girl, Doris came into her own as the fresh, young, outdoorsey type. Her short, casual but not careless blonde hair, the freckles she never tries to hide, the wide smile and bubbly atmosphere she generates all fit together most appealingly.

‘That’s when she decided that the freckles considered a liability by many girls were really her greatest asset. She also learned from studio makeup men that she didn’t have to dye her eyebrows to go with her hair, that dark eyebrows and blonde hair offer a vivid contrast. She learned the value of artificial eyelashes and the youthful appearance short hair can give. Her looks blend with her personality.

Twenty years ago a Brooklyn girl named Edythe Marrener obtained her first modeling job. Although she was only sixteen and not too much to look at, she was smart. She fully realized that it was the heavy crown of auburn hair on her head that set her apart from other models.

Edythe Marrener is now known as Susan Hayward. She still knows that her beautiful hair is her outstanding endowment.

The advent of color movies and the popularization of Technicolor has probably done more for her than for any other actress because of her photogenic hair.

She always makes it a point to wear the palest of pink or orange lipsticks offscreen. Neither clashes with the red of her hair.

Susan is very careful about clothes. She chooses greens, beige, black and always. Nothing to detract from her hair.

Susan has extremely white skin. She freckles easily and any kind of a sunburn blisters her skin badly. As a result she avoids overexposure like the plague.

She is more the screen siren than actresses like Doris Day or June Allyson. In her case, it pays to camouflage the freckles. She does this very easily on her face with basic makeup, but the freckles on her arms and shoulders are too numerous to hide, so she doesn’t try, merely relaxes and forgets all about them.

We it comes to all-time beauty queens, Betty Grable is a ‘popular choice to head the list. “Dancing has always kept me shapely,” Betty offers, “and that’s why I’ve never had any trouble with my figure.”

BEAUTY FAIR ANALYSIS CHART

 

NAME	FIGURE	HAIR	EYES	MOUTH	POWDER	ROUGE	BEST COLORS	BEST STYLES
JANET LEIGH	38” bust 24” waist Tendency toward thinness	Honey blonde	Uses brown mascara and brown eye-pencil	Clear tones. Light Lipstick is only make-up accent	Light	None	Blue	Sport clothes, form-revealing and feminine
ELIZABETH TAYLOR	Size 12 Post-pregnancy weight problem	Blue-black Italian cut	Blue-green eye shadow	Lipstick matches clothes	Olive	Dark red	White	Tailored blouses, tightly belted full skirts
DORIS DAY	Size 12 Tall-type (5‘ 7”)	Cut short to look casual, but neat	No eye shadow	Lipstick matches clothes, follows natural line	None Lets her freckles show	None	Tan and beige	Peddle pushers, shorts, all aport clothes
SUSAN HAYWARD	Size 10 Loves butter, diets before pictures	Natural auburn Heavy, shoulder-length bob	Greenish eye shadow	Pale pink or light orange, depending on clothes	Little Has the good complexion of a redhead Freckles show	Burnt orange	All shades of green	Soft black cocktail dresses, short evening grown
BETTY GRABLE	Size 10-12	Platinum Very short cut	Eyebrow pencil	True red lipstick	None	None	Any pastels	Tailored suits, shirts, slacks
VIRGINIA MAYO	Size 10	Blonde Long bob	Brown eye pencil, mascara, artificial lashes	Slightly fuller than natural. Color blends with clothes	None	Peach-colored cream type	Red and pink	Cocktail, full glamour treatment for evening
JEAN PETERS	Size 12	Brown Sleek, well-brushed, shaped upward for height	Doe-eyes Brown mascara, greenish eyeshadow	Red	Little Likes a tanned, scrubbed skin	Little	Brown-grey to deep brown	Suits, evening dresses
DEBRA PAGET	Size 8	Red (at the moment) Short, sculptured cut	Doe eyes	Bright shades	Base color	Reddish	Pastels, prints; went through violet phase at one time	Everything dramatic from full skirts to sheaths

On the subject of facial beauty, however, she insists that her features are not exceptional, but merely “adaptable.”

“Over the past ten years,” she says, “I’ve studied myself and from time to time made some pretty radical changes.”

Betty has worn her hair in every conceivable style from upswept to poodle. She’s varied her lip-line, re-done her eyebrows, modified her makeup. All this is important, but Betty’s greatest asset is her voluptuous figure. Her greatest effort goes into maintaining that.

SELF-STUDY is the one thing all movie actresses have in common. This selfstudy must be honest, constant and searching. Actresses cannot kid themselves. When age catches up with one beauty feature, they compensate by concentrating on another.

Virginia Mayo is typical of the actresses who study themselves with professional candor. Admittedly, Virginia has been gifted with delicate coloring and near-perfect features, but she claims that isn’t enough for true beauty.

She believes that her skin tone, the lustre of her eyes and the sheen of her hair depend on inner health. She scrupulously follows a doctor’s diet for health.

Virginia weakens rather easily. “There is a lot of hard work and nervous pressure in this business,” she says. She eats hefty meals of steak, eggs, beef and other high-protein foods. She takes vitamins at each meal and goes to the doctor every six months for a checkup.

“It’s impossible,” she maintains, “to look really well unless you feel well. Health is the key to beauty. At least for me.”

JEAN PETERS believes in taking excellent care of her health, too. But while bad health may ruin good beauty, good health will not necessarily turn a girl into a raving beauty overnight.

At 20th experts re-did her hair, studied her facial features and taught her a good deal about makeup.

Because Jean is fairly tall, her hair was brushed up to make sure that her head was perfectly proportioned to her body. Jean also learned that the modern look is natural rather than artificial, that beauty technique should never be obvious, but hide itself gracefully. She learned, too, that poise and feeling at ease are as important as any physical reconditioning.

Jean Peters has the sort of face that rows more beautiful with maturity and love. Now that she’s married, she is looking prettier than ever and has decided to “leave whatever features I have alone, at least for the time being.”

DEBRA PAGET, on the other hand, is in the throes of experimenting with her appearance, One day she wears her brunette hair shoulder length. Next day it’s red and short.

She is equally indecisive about clothes. With amazing rapidity she shifts from seductive sheath dresses and fantastic jewelry to the demure skirts and flats.

Debbie simply cannot make up her mind. Neither can her studio. Some executives think Debbie should be publicized as a “sweet and innocent June Allyson type.” Others think she is too sexy for that. They say, “She can become an Ava Gardner, a regular femme fatale over night.”

At twenty-one, Debra Paget cannot put off a definite decision.

LIKE EVERYONE else, movie stars make plenty of errors when it comes to makeup. Not as many, however, as the girl who has no expert to advise her.

“The average girl,” according to famous makeup man Ben Nye of 20th Century-Fox, “has a wrong idea of what good makeup consists of.

“The desired result of good makeup should be naturalness, balance and understatement. No one feature should stand out too dramatically. Sometimes this is necessary for the Technicolor cameras, but it definitely is not necessary in real life. And yet many of the girls I see around town wear too dark lips or over-blacked eyebrows or exaggerated mascara lines.

“It is a good idea to emphasize the good points and detract from the bad. But too much emphasis, too much coloring, throws the good feature way out of balance and deprives it of its natural loveliness.”

Ben Nye says, too, that he sees from day to day, “a lot of faces where the eyebrows have been badly plucked. The girls thin them out at the ends and leave them heavy near the bridge of the nose. The result is a painted scowl, not a pleasant expression.”

He adds: “I would like to make a plea for eyebrow pencils with sharp points. The points should be so sharp that when used they make short, hair-like strokes.”

When it comes to home beauty aids, Nye thinks they’re swell. He likes eyelash curlers because when straight lashes are turned-up the eyes seem larger. He also approves heartily of the highlight sticks now on the market.

“They’re easy to use,” he asserts, “and effective in covering blemishes and lines.”

For women with dry skin, especially those who live in dry climates, Ben recommends face creams.

The answer to oily skin, he says, is a good grade of soap and at least two thorough washings a day.

Nye’s makeup philosophy is summed up in the adage, “Make the best of what you’ve got.” And don’t ruin what you’ve got in the process of making it better.

ANOTHER outstanding Hollywood makeup expert is Keester Sweeney. He, too, is an advocate of the razor-sharp eyebrow pencil. But Keester adds that the trouble with many eyebrows is that they are incorrectly spaced. They should correspond, he asserts, with the inner corner of the eye. Keester is also fond of the eyebrow line that finishes with an upward stroke or “wing” at the end.

On the subject of lipstick Sweeney recommends that the bow be Spaced neatly apart but not to an extreme. He warns not to make the lips full toward the outside but to finish the mouth with a slight upward lift.

In other words, the girl who, with her makeup, applies a little common sense, a great deal of care and, whenever possible, the advice of an expert, will without doubt improve her looks. She may stand a chance of becoming a beauty. It’s a chance worth taking.

THE END

—BY SALLY SIMMS

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE DECEMBER 1954