See that sweet kid? demanded a motion-picture-theater man from Mobile, Alabama. He pointed to a small, pert-faced, apricot-haired girl of twenty-one, who looked eightenn and acted as if she were thirty. Dressed in a white velvet gown and sable wrap, she was sitting at a table in a Southern department store autographing photos for a crowd of 1,500 adults and squealing teen-agers.
"She's sold more than $4,000,000 worth of products in the last two years. Not all of it very good, either. The exhibitor was talking about Piper Laurie, possibly the most remarkable saleswoman of movies yet discovered by Hollywood. And he knew what he was talking about. By traveling more than 100,000 miles in three years- during which she has met 250,000 people and responsible for about 25 per cent of Universal-International's estimated income of $20,000,000 from her first nine pictures. Studio statisticians arrived at this estimate by comparing ticket sales for her pictures in cities where she made personal appearances with attendance in cities where she didn't appear.
Piper balks at almost nothing that will win friends and customers for her pictures, from being patted patronizingly on the back by a drive-in owner from Winnetka, Illinois, to an interview with a U.S. senator with whom she hardly felt equal to discussing the political gyrations of Washington. She even wears her clothers with a purpose- like a garment patterned after the skirt she wore in Mississippi Gambler, and manufactured to be marketed when one of her pictures of that name opened. Tie-ins like that are only the preliminaries to the publicity campaign which precedes her tours, like the red carpet before royalty. For her latest opus, The Golden Blade, she will have the most elaborate build-up of her young career.
The Golden Blade is a sand-and-slaughter melodrama in which Piper plays the Princess Khairuzan, daughter of the caliph of Bagdad. The princess, in order to escape forced marriage with the villian, disguises herself as a stable boy and flees the palace. The plot twists around a mysterious amulet, and a magic sword which gives complete protection to its wearer- a commoner named Harun, played by Rock Hudson. Ultimately, Piper discards male clothes, reveals that she is the princess, and Harun falls in love with her. All ends well under the desert stars, with Harun as the new caliph and Khairuzan set to become his wife.
For the build-up of this story of violence and romance, the studio's publicity department prepared a long memo. Some significant excerpts: "Fix up a story with columnist Earl Wilson on how tough it was to make Laurie look like a boy." "Laurie does not wear the usual harem trousers. Cook up a story by a designer saying trousers are not as sexy as skirts. Controversy?" "Half of Hollywood's great adventure films might have been lost to the world had not he glamour girls disguised themselves as guys. Show how Laurie does it." "Phot layout showing Laurie in sexiest harem pose." "Photos showing how Piper Laurie, the princess becomes Piper Laurie the stable boy. A chance for provocative dressing and undressing [in good taste, of course]." "Shoot Laurie on magic carpet floating through the air." "Laurie will do an an exotic dance. Take her from rehearsal in jeans through costume make-up and increasingly sexy changes of garments to the dance itself in which she looks ravishing." "This is Piper Laurie's third role as an Arabian Nights princess. Can't we convince some cosmetic company that a Princess Piper perfume will make money?"
Piper's film career began in 1950 when she made a picture called Louisa. Before then, she had won public attention only as the owner of the legs that appeared in every studio holiday publicity shot- under a valentine, shamrock, firecracker, turkey or a Bikini Santa Claus suit.
FEATURED AS A FLOWER EATER
A U-I publicity man, previewing Louisa, saw a sequence which seemed to offer a magnificent opportunity to get Piper talked about. The sequence showed Piper talked about. The sequence showed Piper eating a marigold salad. He had her eat flowers for the still cameras, and the next day the columns of the movie capital bloomed with the planted news that Piper doted on gardenias and rose-leaf hors d'oeuvres. Three newspapers called for exclusive interviews. They were each given 'exclusives' on three successive days as Laurie nibbled demurely at a few gardenia and rose petals scattered over a mound of lettuce with French dressing. How did it taste? "Never again", says Laurie.
She never did eat another floral cocktail, but she won fame as Piper [Gardenia] Laurie. Her first public success came with the release of her third picture in which she was co-star, The Prince Who Was a Thief. She went out on an extensive tour to plub it with a handsome, toss-haired juvenile named Tony Curtis. Her role was described as that of 'a lovable gamin.'
The picture was a routine Arabian fantasy, but by the time Curtis and Laurie were halfway through their eight week, 26-city series of bows before the nation, it was on its way to grossing nearly $2,000,000 and becoming one of U-I's biggest pictures of the year. Curtis had transformed into a full-fledged star and Laurie's fan mail had risen to more than 600 a month [It now tops 100,000 a year].
Proving that Piper's success was not entirely due to Curtis, the studio recently sent her on another grand tour to pitch for Mississippi Gambler. Laurie and Julie Adams, covered 25,000 miles, 14 cities and three successive 'premieres' along the Mississippi in a couple of months. They did so well that Mississippi Gambler- helped of course, by the prominence of the leading man, Tyrone Power- promises to do above a $3,500,000 gross, and become U-I's second best money-make of all time, next to the Egg and I [$5,500,000 since its release in 1947].
The excitement sparked by Laurie's appearances may be judged by the New Orleans opening. A 1,200 seat theater took in a near-capacity 2,300 customers during the first two showings; fans were so enthusiastic police were called out, and one reviewer was so carried away that he headline his article: Gambler Best Film since Gone With the Wind. This overstatement of the decade did the trick. One exhibitor, representative of the 328 theaters in and around New Orleans, declared: "The ballyhoo gave me $1,500 extra in the week-end box office."
The personal appearance, with its accompanying blare of publicity, promises to be a powerful shot in the arm for Hollywood, one sadly needed in an industry where the number of theater-goers has reportedly dropped from 75,000,000 a week to 50,000,000 a week in the last few years. U-I actors have done more than five times as much junketing as those of any other competitor in the last fours years; over that period the studio has sent out 160 personalities for average tours of three to 10 weeks each at a cost of about $100 a day per person. Sometimes, more thatn 20 U-I stars and unknowns are criss-crossing the country at the same time , glad-handing the public. Most are expected to give a month or two of each year to travel- all contracts include such a catchall provision- and spend 38 weeks of the year making pictures to plug.
This ballyhoo has paid off beyond question. U-I grossed more than $64,000,000 in 1952 and profited by $2,307,000. In the first quarter of 1953, a revenue rise of more than 15 per cent over the same period of 1952 was reported- a spectacular comeback for a company that was more than $4,000,000 in the hole two years ago. Much of this zoom is attributed by U-I officials to the down-to-earth policy of 'giving the stars to the public.' According to William Goetz, head production executive, "We sell faces and they sell pictures." Sam Israel, studio publicity director, claims that "personal appearances get a picture going fast and Laurie seems to pitch faster and better than anyone else."
Piper's pitching has taken her from New York to Korea, where she has entertained 85,000 men; during the last three years, she has plugged her pictures in an average of 122 American cities a year. She is tireless. When she reaches a city, she is up and dressed by the time the train pulls in, no matter how early in the morning, so the newspaper photographers can get shots for early editions.
After posing at the station, she hurries off to her hotel,where more pictures are made for the hotel's publicity department. Then- if her press agent has been able to arrange it- she shows up for an early-bird radio or TV show. After breakfast, the rest of the morning is spent dashing off to pose with the mayor, climbing up on fire engines for the photographers, signing autographs, filling any other radio or TV engagements that have been made. The local theater manager throws a lunceon at which she makes a speech, after which there's an autograph party, a press conference and an amateur photographers' session.
During the afternoon, she makes appearances wherever there is an opportunity to get a crowd. She meets other people, signs more autographs, until time for the inevitable cocktail party and dinner. The day ends with a triumphant appearance at the premiere of her picture. After a late supper, she stores up a little sleep against the rigors of a tomorrow which will be an almost exact duplicate of the day she has just finished.
Piper herself invents some of the gags which get her newspaper space. One of her most successful was a statement to interviewers that Tyrone Power kisses "make me hear bells. Like switch engines." But, naturally, most of the stunts are invented by press agents. Piper cheerfully goes along with almost anything the tub thumpers dream up. But sometimes they don't consult her about a stunt- and when they don't the results can be unhappy. Once they had a unit of GIs designate her "the girl we'd most like to have wriggle into our tent." Piper didn't like that.
But for every dark second in her ontour life, there are minutes of glory. She frequently has the happy opportunity to help others- and others help her. She cherishes her copy of a letter sent to ther studio by M. S. Lightman who controls 65 theaters in Tennessee, Arkansas and Kentucky. The letter reads,in part: "Laurie was asked to sell premiere invitations over the radio for the benefit of a home for convalescent children. She jumped at the chance and did it for three hours. I want you to know that in her you have probably the finest ambassador for good will I know of in Hollywood."
The ambassador for good will was born Rose Etta Jacobs, the granddaughter of a Polish baker who came to the United States in 1902. His son was Alfred Jacobs, a furniture salesman who married a girl named Charlotte Sadie Alperin. (New Information!) They lived in a Cleveland, then New York and ultimately in Detroit. Both their daughters- Sherrye Arlene and Rose Etta- were born in Detroit. Rose Etta on January 23, 1932, a couple of years after her sister.
WHEN HER SISTER HAD ASTHMA
By the time Rose Etta was seven, it was clear that Sherrye had a bad case of asthma; the doctor recommended southern California. The family journeyed out to Tujunga Canyon near the Pacific and there, for $25 a week, boarded both the girls at a children's home called Restlocks, and then returned to Detroit.
"That was the most terrible year of my life," says Laurie, who had volunteered to stay behind and keep her sister company. "Not that the place was something out of the pages of Dickens: it was kindlly, healthy and well-run. But it was simply not home. The worst thing was that they weighed us every Saturday morning and my sister and I were always called "the fat ones." We weren't; the rest were too skinny."
She was 10 years away from teh Piper Laurie tag- a plump, red-haired freckled, pig-tailed little girl with an almost pathological shyness. She found it hard to speak to anyone: she would sit alone in her room for hours to gather courage to say hello. She says she spent most of her time reading fairy tales from the local library. Her dreams in those years were "of becoming someone like Deanna Durbin; to wear a beautiful dress; to come into a room and find everyone looking at me." The hitch was that Piper Laurie always knew she burst into tear, turn around and run out again.
IN A BEVERLY HILLS BUNGALOW
Her parents finally left Detroit and settled in souther California. Rose Etta and Sherrye joyously joined them in a small apartment near the children's home. They lived there for a while, then took another apartment in suburban Los Angeles where they stayed for about eight years. Four years ago, the family bought a house in Beverly Hills. (1949) It is a small brown-and-white bungalow furnished in 1890 style. Laurie considers it her parents' home rather that her own; her most prominent possessions in it are a kimono tray and a Korean tea set that she brought back from the Far East.
She and her sister spent two years at grammar school and graduated three years afterward from the John Burroughs Junior High School with a yen for acting. Her ability was not thought of highly, she was turned down three different times when she tried to get roles in plays given by her drama class. Determined to find out what it was like to pretend in public, she joined one of the little drama schools that dot the Hollywood landscape.
Laurie put on an acto of her own, pretending to be eighteen when she was actually was sixteen. She made exucse both at the drama school for not rehearsing between nine and three- "I'm taking postgraduate work" and to the high school crowd for not joining their activities: "I have to help my mother."
One of her friends introduced her to Sam Jaffe, an agent. He got her an interview at a studio. They tested her and burned the film. Jaffe did not get in touch with Piper for another 371 days- she counted each one of them. After that Jaffe arranged for her to test at a second studio, which also shuddreed; but U-I heard about it, sent her to the studio's drama coach, ran their own test and gave her a contract.
Unfortunately, Laurie was still seventeen. U-I sold her that her salary would not start for two months, until her eighteenth birthday. Laurie agreed to pose for still pictures for free until she was eighteen. At about this time she graduated from the U-I school-house, her name was chaned, and the juggernaut of publicity began mangling her private life. Three weeks later she began her first picture and in another eight months she was billed as a star. Her name was not particularly catchy, so she and her family cast about for a new one. They got nowhere until an anonymous letter came suggesting "Piper Laurie." It stuck. Piper's first picture was Louisa. Then she made two more- The Milk Man, with Jimmy Durante and Donald O'Connor and The Prince Who Was a Thief- and her career was off to a promising start. She did Francis Goes To The Races, Son of Ali Baba, Has Anybody Seen My Gal, No Room for the Groom and M ississippi Gambler in quick succession.
What with making pictures at such a rapid clip and gadding about the country a good part of each year, Piper has had little time for boy friends. Currently she is engrossed in a gossamer romance with Richard Eller, an oil company employee whom she worshipped when he was a football star in high school.
But Hollywood gossip has her engaged to fifty-year-old Leonard Goldstein, who gave her her first job and produced her first really successful picture, The Prince Who Was a Thief. Piper denies the gossip, but says Goldstein has been a godfather to her career- "We've been friends ever since my first picture," she says, "and he still gives me lots of good advice, even though he's moved over to 20th Century-Fox."
Of the thousands of boys Piper has met, she remembers with particular tenderness a GI in Korea. She made her first trip to Korea in December, 1951, spending three weeks touring the rear areas and visiting hospitals. Once she wrangled her way to a front-line position with a chaplain. "There were about twenty men there" she said. "We were talking when I felt someone touching my hair. I turned around and a sergeant was feeling it. He apologized and said: But it feels so good, it smells so good."
Laurie came back home so affected by the ruggedness of what she had seen that, with the help of her mother, she personally answered mail from service-men that ran as high as 300 letters a week. Last March she was asked by the Army to make another trip to Korea. She cheerfully undertook it.
WHAT TEEN-AGERS WANT TO KNOW
Her tours at home, of greater box-office value but certainly far less important, are more spectacular. Laurie took only two suitcases with her to Korea; for a junket at home she carries two hatboxes, two fortnight cases, a wardrobe trunk, and separate bags for underwear, shoes, toilet articles, handbags and gloves, and make-up, hair and fancy washing. Her hardest interviews are with teen-agers. They press her with such questions as "Whom do you like to kiss best?" or "What do you think of low-cut dresses?" she answers the latter demurely: "Every woman should take advantage of what she has."
"Laurie's salary, which started at $100 a week in 1950 and jumped to $400 in 1952, is now up to $750 a week. Her contract will expire in 1958. If it is renewed then, she will get $2,250 a week. Her value as a stalking horse for U-I pictures is so considerable at this time that there is no new picture script prepared for her. When the studio welcomed her home from her last trip to Korea , it began getting ready to send her on a junket ot London, Paris and South Africa.
Laurie has no objections. Once she rests up from the effects of the virus pneumonia contracted on her second trip to Korea, her will-to-be-a-star will take her anyplace and get her to do anything in or slightly out of reason. She appears still to enjoy the antics that made her a movie leading lady. "It's like the fairy stories I used to read," she says. "You know, where the kitchen maid wakes up and finds she is a princess- and it's all on account of she wished so hard."