On one hand, the boldfaced headline somberly notes that the Nazis were marching into Bulgaria, who had just joined the side of the Axis powers in the war raging in Europe.
But right under that headline, is a story (and glamour photo) of a former Amherst girl who was making headlines of her own out in Hollywood, where her movie career was beginning to take off.
Read all about Juanita Stark and the Cinderella story of how the Ohio beauty got her big break in the article below.
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Former Amherst Girl’s New Film
Cinderella; Has Movie Contract
Juanita Stark Has Whirlwind Rise to Success
A former Amherst girl, 20-year old Juanita Stark, is being hailed as Hollywood’s first “Cinderella Girl” of 1941, possessor of a movie contract and a role in a new picture.
A month ago Miss Stark was unemployed and it was while she was standing in line for her last unemployment check that she was “discovered” by Lewis Green, a Hollywood agent.
Green was attracted by her beauty, arranged for a screen test at Warner Bros. and Miss Stark is now on the payroll there – all within a week’s time.
FATHER’S INJURY
LEADS THEM WEST
When Juanita went to Los Angeles with her parents six years ago, she had no intention of being a movie actress, altho she had once desired to become a singer.
The family left Amherst, where Juanita finished the ninth grade, for the west when her father, former world’s champion punching bag puncher, got a job in Los Angeles.
Shortly after arriving in California, Juanita’s father, who had recovered in Amherst from an injury suffered in a fall during one of his exhibitions, was again stricken with the ailment. Juanita was forced to get a job so she became a waitress after school hours in a restaurant where her mother worked.
Mrs. Stark finally had to give up her job to attend her husband. In the following five years that Juanita worked as a waitress she was employed at three different places. The last of these was at Republic studios.
While at Republic, she was suggested by two directors for bit parts but the front office frowned at the suggestion. Juanita quit her job there six months ago because “I would have been fired anyway because of this complication.”
Juanita, her parents and one sister came to Amherst from North Olmsted. They were former Clevelanders.
After landing the movie contract, Juanita first moved her family from Los Angeles to Burbank, Cal., a mile and a half from the studio. She then had her 15-year-old sister who was working weekends give up her job.
Then she went to her first Hollywood party, one given by Rex St. Cyr at Ciro’s which resulted in a picture layout of the former Ohioan in Life magazine.
Juanita is now studying drama and posing for publicity pictures and is looking forward to having her fingernails manicured in a beauty shop for the first time.
She has been offered a bit part in “Affectionately Yours” and has no desire to be like anyone else on the screen, she says.
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It’s easy to see why Juanita Stark was discovered, with her ‘girl next door’ beauty (honed in Amherst no doubt) and haunting eyes.
She didn’t have a very long career in the movies, though. According to her biography on a blog about little-known Hollywood actresses entitled “Those Obscure Objects of Desire”, Juanita had retired by 1946.
She passed away in California in the early 2000s.
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I did a little field research for this post, watching one of her movies, Thank Your Lucky Stars. The musical comedy starring Eddie Cantor featured almost the entire galaxy of Warner Brothers stars and was a fundraiser for the war effort.
Juanita has two funny scenes in the movie, playing a flustered secretary to prissy Edward Everett Horton. Chubby S. Z. Sakall is also featured in both bits, one of which involves an elephant and other animals that were disrupting the big show rehearsal – much to Horton’s consternation.
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