Welcome to Vintage Paparazzi.

Dear Winner

It’s fun writing to you who are entrants in the new Photoplay Scholarship Contest, and I cannot help anticipating the thrill in store for the 1952 winner. I know the winner will find, as I do every day, that winning the contest and being a student at the Pasadena Playhouse College of Dramatic Art are the most exciting things that ever happened. I re-live my own first student days just thinking of yours.






You’ll live and breathe the whole theatre world. Every phase of acting is covered at school—stage, screen, TV and radio. You’ll live in the dormitory, and you’ll soon find that you and your roommate—she’ll probably come from a part of the country different from yours—are great chums; you’ll spend most of your waking hours talking about acting. For both of you, of course, want to be the best actress possible. That’s why you’re studying. That’s why Photoplay believes in your talents.



In classes you’ll learn a lot of things you never tied up with acting but which, nevertheless, are important to it. Speech is, of course. If you’re like me, you’ll have to work hours getting rid of those localisms in your speech! (And if you’re like me you’ll love every minute of it.) The lance is a part of acting, too, and you’ll find that dancing class teaches you to convey mood and emotion without saying a word. I’ll bet you never associated history with acting—but you’ll learn here at school that history and manners of the times have a lot to do with the way you play a costume role. Music appreciation becomes a part of acting, too. We tie in mood music with our thoughts of the way a scene should be played.






Probably you’d never think of your dates l!at school as being related to acting—but you’ll find that on most of your dates you’ll go to a movie or to a play at school. And afterward you’ll find yourself sitting in a restaurant talking about the performances while you eat your pizza and rink your milk.



You’ll love every grand and glorious moment of it. For you want to be an actress. And so do I. That doesn’t particularly make us any different from other girls, but being Photoplay scholarship winners at the Pasadena Playhouse does! As one winner to another—lucky us!—I offer you my sincere congratulations and best wishes for happy studying.

Yours truly,

Virginia McGuire

THE END

 

It is a quote. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE JULY 1952