The wise Willies said, "See what happens when an old guy with fame and dough comes along? He gets the rail post." So they thought.
They didn't even know about a good-looking young fellow who sang with a band.
Joanne met him in a night club, dated him one night when Jolson was busy elsewhere. He began to take up more and more of her time. Then she married him. It was at about the time he began to click on the radio. He did okay. He is now a top Hollywood star. His name is Dick Haymes. And Joanne is now Joan Dru, married to her second husband, actor John Ireland.
Earlier in this chapter, we implied that models are dumb. Most of them are. But one who was no dope was a blue-eyed rusty-mop who graduated from the local high school in Canton, N.C., at 13. Dumb, did we say? High school is correct. She finished it at 13.
Her name was Marianne Grey.
The next year, she matriculated at the University of Wisconsin, its youngest student. She majored in archeology—bone-dry digging up of things long dead. She got her degree in three years, at 17.
Luckily, all her spadework couldn't retard her physical development. She had curves and dimples wherever bewitching beauts at 17 can grow curves and dimples.
Carefully packing her sheepskin in mothballs, Marianne, the tomb-expert, set out to rummage around in the living world. She found it strangely clammy to specialists on mummies.
It might, though, find itself short of curves and dimples, red hair and blue eyes.
So Marianne Grey changed her diploma-distinguished name to Marianne Simms and headed for Broadway, where she registered it on the rolls of Powers' models.