The girl, of the hundreds under contract at every lot, who gets the attention of the producer or director, so he throws her a line in a picture, is the lucky one who is hit by a modern miracle.
She is the one each year at each studio who may possibly have a future.
The others, perhaps equally qualified, return to New York and sarcastic jibes, go back to the farm and marry the hired hand, or remain a part of the Hollywood flotsam, drifting from one extra call to another, back to a job in a chorus, possibly end up as a car-hop or checkroom-worker, as many have and will.
But, as we hinted, in New York dreams sometimes do come alive, though not always according to time-table or preconceived plan.
In the spring of 1937, Mortimer received a phone call from a 15-year-old redhead named Marianne O'Brien, who that day had joined the kid chorus of Ben Marden's Riviera, a glittering roadhouse on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge.
Said Miss O'Brien to Mortimer: "I'm 15, sweet, unspoiled and innocent. Rich men like to marry girls like me, the others tell me. Will you take me to the Stork Club and introduce me to one?"
Mortimer is an obliging soul, especially when he smells a story, so he escorted the youngster to Chez Billingsley, but ran into no millionaires.
Marianne got no proposals of marriage that season, but did achieve some attention due to publication of the following story:
It seems Ben Marden demanded all "new faces" for his chorus that year. When he interviewed Marianne in the line-up, he said, "Wait a minute, dear, haven't you worked for me before?"