But the true glamorette, as she is known on Broadway and Fifth Avenue, Vine Street and Sunset Boulevard, and even in such remote oases of joy as Galveston, Texas, is virtually non-existent.
Chorines are but a memory of leg and lavender for the old inhabitants. Except for a rare transitory line in a night club, there is no such thing. Occasionally an imported single or sister-act plays the vaudeville house. Some of the painted peelers who work in the suburban dives sleep in Washington hotels. A movie celeb popping in for publicity, to attend a birthday ball or be photographed smiling down on Truman from the top of a piano, is an event. If there are any gorgeous, dangerous, slinky spies, we didn’t find them. Judy Coplon, by the men who specialize in the field, was called exceptionally lush for that trade. So we stopped looking.
The indigenous flora shape up about as they do in Brooklyn, except that they are better dressed and have less sooty complexions. They do not come downtown in slacks. Sloppy galoshes are de trop. Most girls at 16 appear and behave grown up.
But few can enter the accepted avenues where beauty may command a respectable commercial return. In any ranking hierarchy of glamor the model comes first, having long since passed the chorus girl, because of the more stable rewards and higher standards brought about by the great advertising demands. Washington has little need for animated manikins. Some of the choicer shops employ them to demonstrate clothes. There is no extensive advertising field.
The most lucrative and the steadiest calls for models come from sources not seeking those who might be employed in industrial cities for modeling. They hook on as hostesses, guides, ushers, and to decorate the booths and exhibits at conventions and trade shows, which are numerous. Those who are engaged sporadically earn a minimum of five dollars an hour, plus indeterminate tips. Their morals vary with the personal equation. The models who are willing to pose in the nude at stag-parties get fifty dollars an evening. These register with surreptitious characters of the middle-world between flesh-market procurers and shady promoters.
Among the better-known models’ agencies are Models Bureau, in the Chastleton Hotel; Ralston, 711 14th Street, NW, and Phyllis Bell, 306 13th Street NW.
The girl who sets out to be a model in Washington is usually one of those rare creatures—the native. An out-of-towner with such ambitions would naturally head to New York.
(Note: Most model agencies are schools instead of employment agencies. They seek to sign job-seekers to contract to learn how to walk, instead of sending them out to work. Some, billing themselves as agencies, provide girls—but not for modeling.)
Another reason for the shortage of really high class cheesecake is that there is almost always a displacement movement in effect.
The trains and planes to Hollywood are loaded with lookers, sent there with entree obtained for them by such influential VIP’s as cabinet officers, four-star generals, bureau heads, etc. When a prominent daddy gets fed up with his dame, he can’t just brush her off; she might make trouble, and that might get into print.