The girls who do this kind of work usually aren't as pretty as the babes who pose for cameras. Facial beauty is not a requisite, although a figure is supposed to be perfect in proportions, to fit commercial dimensions.
Many who work in the wholesale market are friendly and it is considered a regular part of their paid work to "entertain" the big buyer from Burlington.
Many models—photographers' models, that is—go into show business as chorus girls and, conversely, many chorines double as models.
Many of these have the most amazing experiences, and whenever tales like the one about redheaded Joanne Marshall are told, another thousand half-baked pigeons run away from their homes and hotfoot it to New York:
Joanne Marshall, whose real name was Joan Lacock, was born in Wheeling, W. Va., in the summer of 1922.
Her father ran a drugstore. She grew up, the average small-town girl, but shapely, lovely and with the most luminous eyes.
After her father's death, which left the family—her mother and her young brother—about destitute, she and Mrs. Lacock came to New York. Joanne was so entrancingly beautiful, she had little trouble catching on as a model, and quickly earned $75 to $100 a week. She was then about 18.
Some of the other Powers exhibits told her about the offer they had to become show girls in the new revue being prepared to star Al Jolson.
It would be loads of fun. Joanne joined the show, too.
It opened in Chicago in the summer of 1940, then made its Gotham debut that fall. Joanne was crazy about it.