Report On Modern Screen’s Cinderella Girls

Maybe you’ve never had the experience, but it’s a great one. One day the movies are a million miles away—and the next you have a part in one via your winning photograph in MODERN SCREEN’s Girls Wantedcontest! You wait impatiently in your home town for the news that Girls Wanted is getting started. When it’s postponed you’re absolutely ready to die! But, the day you’re told that RKO wants you for a new 3D Technicolor film, Son of Sinbad, all of you except mothers-to-be Linda Peppel and Florence Harper toss your things frantically into a bag and kiss your families goodbye.

And what a trip! Your first visit to the studio—will you ever forget it? Your wardrobe as a princess in the harem of the Khalif of Bagdad—will the neighbors ever forget that? And then an unexpected week while the picture waits for Lili St. Cyr’s appendix to calm down and you visit the famous nightclubs on “the Strip,” chat with the stars (your co-workers!) and eat at the Brown Derby.

Some of you are inspired to try an acting career. Congratulations particularly to Mary Ann Edwards for capturing some TV work! But all of you had a trip straight out of a Technicolor dream—a time to be long remembered not only by you Cinderella Girls, but by everyone who had the fun of knowing and working with you.

WHEN MODERN SCREEN AND RKO PROMISED WORK IN A HOLLYWOOD MOVIE TO THE WINNERS OF THE GIRLS WANTED CONTEST, 18,000 READERS ENTERED THE RACE. HERE ARE EIGHT WINNERS AT HARD LABOR.

 

Reporting for harem duty. Left to right: Dawn Oney, Joan Pastin, Judy Raben, Mary Ann Edwards, Alyce Cronin, Janet Camerford, Marilyn Bonney and Marvleen Prentice.

In the RKO casting office, Janet Camerford signs the proffered document. This is her first movie assignment since she played a baby role.

Always more paper work. Filling out biographical questionnaires aaccounts for the eight pensive expressions.

The girls go over script with Robert Sparks, producer of Son Of Sinbad. They were originally cast in Girls Wanted.

Designer Michael Woulfe supervises the costume fitting. Joan Pastin and Dawn Oney, both photographers’ models, try on their Oriental finery.

To the harem, at last. Our girls look right at home in this Bagdad on the Strip with welcoming potentate Leon Askin and son Dale Roberson.

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE OCTOBER 1953