Newspapers / Zebulon Record (Zebulon, N.C.) / April 9, 1937, edition 1 / Page 13
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Trials cfc being a Famous model OR a very pretty girl, with a Missouri accent that she came by honestly, big-time modeling F in the city has its rewards —and its tribulations. It’s something to see your photograph in the best magazines, receive fan mail, be pleasantly shocked on the street by admirers who recognize you from your pictures—and be potently paid for it all. But it’s something else to stay in nights, be careful what you eat and drink, and keep your mind on your work hour after hour as the klieg lights take broadside punches at vitality and complexion. Get that straight from Betty Wyman, a svelte blond who came east to achieve a reputed SIO,OOO-a-year income *for displaying her face and figure as New York’s leading fashion model. And another thing, says Betty: “In the middle of the summer, when the sun is broiling Broadway and most persons are working up their sun-tans, I’m usually in for a long stretch of modeling furs and other winter cloth ing. “Then when January rolls around, I am still before the cameras, but wear ing only those sheer summer things be- I ®gr 1W ** f g^jg||Xm| Saturday night is her only night out. Then she can explore the Broadway night club front. ing hatched for a season six months •way.” Thus does a famous model martyr herself for fashion, at a very fancy figure per sitting. But, shell tell you, when you take one of those “sittings” apart it becomes a “standing” order for a lot of con centrated work. The first thing to make sure of, says Betty, Is that you get home early the night before. Leave a call for 7 a. m., and don’t oversleep. Work begins at fee studio at 9 with an extensive siege of makeup and dressing that makes the average woman’s time budget for fee boudoir seem very insignificant. m 'T’HE clothes a model wears must be not only exactly right to begin with, but she must get them on exactly right And, as every husband has been told, feat just simply takes time. Then come long hours under glaring lights as the cameras catch those very particular effects required when a fa mous model is posing in the best ac cepted plumage for a concern which is paying a lot of money for the job. There is a brief respite for lunch, then posing is resumed, and may continue until as late as midnight. Just what is a new fashion to a model? Something that comes usually in size 14, direct from Paris or the product of a New York shop, with frills on it that are doomed to be discarded as the American woman begins to make it popular. Perhaps fellow-Missourians can best sympathize with Betty Wyman for one of her greatest unrequited yens—a good lunch and plenty of time for it. In the five years after she deserted Kansas City for fame as a model, she has tried vainly to find time for more than a salad at noon. Her recent departure for Hollywood to take a principal role in “Walter Wanger’s Vogues of 1938,” a full-length color fashion feature with a plot, in spired in her the hope that there break fast would be followed, at a regular interval, by a good, healthy lunch. 'T'HERE’S one thing she doesn’t have A in common with many models and actresses, and that’s the fear of avoirdu pois. She can eat, drink and be merry, and not rue it later when she has to squeeze into a fragile 14 frock for a special posing. She can, feat is, when they give her time. Since, as a visitor to New York in 1932, she was called in by friends to pose when the regular model failed to appear, Betty has remained the paragon of slimness and proportion that other models aspire to. Combined with her five fefct eight inches and 115 pounds of exemplary femininity, are a pair of friendly hazel eyes and mouse-colored hair. She has a laugh and a personality distinctly flavored with the freshness of fee mid west. One thing that fee hustle of changing costumes and “making up” has taught Betty that will be envied by every woman is fee ability to apply perfect lines of lipstick—without a mirror! How fee does it, she herself won’t venture to explain. j|j^ |ggs |^^bbb|b^b glflfg fj&ti&SF'i jhß Smßh » M. k} ; : : • 4sM I jflß B miM JHF iiHBBBH ■MppP^ Betty Wyman, the Missouri girl who made herself New York's leading fashion model—at 810,000 a year. “It seems to be just one of those things a person learns to do by practice, I suppose. We have to learn to do everything simply, and that just fits in,” sea says. “If a lot of girls who want to be models would take a simpler path to their goal, there would be fewer heart breaks. “Wear clothes without affectation. That’s something every model has to do. They can’t afford to be spectacular be cause that isn’t the way women make themselves noticed any more. The prime rule of a successful model, of course, is to retain her shape and her fresh ness, but she must also know how to dress for effect without overdoing it.” She is almost a “first lady” in her own right, but she discredits the value of some of her “firsts” in modeling. For Instance, she was a pioneer in posing for color photographs, and she rates feat more of a pain than a paean, in her accomplishments. The reason: It adds several hours to her average work day. Before some one's genius found away to reproduce fee colored flowers on a girl's dress, as well as the bloom on her cheeks, mod eling was considerably less fatiguing and much more pleasant. 4tT>UT now ...” You can draw your own deductions as to blond Miss Wyman’s reaction toward color. But if, in fact, you pinned her to an opinion, she probably would admit it was just another step forward in the art, and perhaps another little thing that all well-disciplined models must take with their pay checks. A large proportion of New York's best models are not from New York. But there doesn't seem to be any par ticular basis for the cliche that corn fed gals provide the cities with their startling beauties. Outdoor sports aren’t part of fee model’s repertoire. But doesn’t a New York fashion model have any time for personal rec reation? Yes—on Saturday night, even as the girl on the switchboard, only in a more glorified way. With the week’s work over, a model may reconnoiter the Broadway night club front as she pleases. And usually she takes advan tage of her “night out.” Right now, Betty is too much ab sorbed in her combined movie-model career to admit a definite romantic in terest. She resisted Hollywood until she felt that she really wanted to try it. So, as for men—well, she would rather, for a while at least, put up with the trials and troubles that she is heir to as a public figure. It means no vacations, little chance to visit one’s family, irregular hours which lengthen out into days on end be fore a breathing spell comes. But it’s the carter that counts, says Betty, and she stubbornly declares she likes it in spite of its shortcomings. After all, she i c reputed the w< i Id’s mod photographed model, and the job doc s fairly w< 11 by her exch< im r.
Zebulon Record (Zebulon, N.C.)
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April 9, 1937, edition 1
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