The Daily Monitor Leader

Taking Time to Pretty-Up

Left, Penny Edwards, dancer in a USO Camp Show variety presentation, has located a mirror aboard a cruiser and is carefully applying a powder base to face and neck. At right, Phyllis Brooks, singer, takes time out before her performance at Camp Robinson, Ark., to add a few finishing touches to her make-up.

Freshing Up Brings Its Problems

"KEEP 'EM LAUGHING" is the slogan of USO Camp Shows, the organization that brings entertainers of stage, screen and radio into army posts and naval stations for programs of free entertainment for the men in the service. To make that slogan a reality, hundreds of performers—from acrobats to Hollywood's and Broadway's most glamorous stars—are playing the circuit nightly.

Blackouts, alerts, cross-country jeep rides and army mess are all in a day's work for these intrepid troupers.

Since dressing rooms are the exception rather than the rule in all but the largest and newest camps, girls in the casts of the shows and special guest stars appearing with the regular units make the best of impromptu facilities for changing costumes and prettying up.

Marlene Dietrich, for one, once used an abandoned ice box for a dressing table in a camp appearance, and Judy Garland, singing in an army tent, requested that one corner be screened off with canvas to serve as an improvised dressing room.

Make-up is a serious problem for these actresses. Of course, every girl wants to look as pretty as possible when doing a show for Uncle Sam's service men, particularly when the performance is at a remote post where entertainment is rare and furloughs few and far between.

Meager Spaces

The girls have found that shows are frequently presented in so small a space—in the mess or ward room of a cruiser, in a small service club or in a hospital recreation hall—that full stage make-up is out of the question. For these dates the girls make a point of doing an exceptionally careful job with their ordinary street make-up. But not too much even of that, for there is nothing a soldier or sailor likes less than a girl whose make-up is splashed on with an over-liberal hand. This is especially important when space is limited or for daytime appearances when the most subtle blending and subdued colors are in order.

Screen actress Phyllis Brooks, who recently made guest tours of encampments in Texas and Arkansas, carried with her a streamlined kit with all her beauty preparations carefully assembled so that she could retire back stage immediately before a performance and at least freshen up her powder and lipstick.

According to the actress, almost more important than the freshening up before her appearance was the thorough removal of all make-up at the end of the day. No matter how exhausted she was with traveling from camp to camp, doing several shows in an evening, visiting hospitals and signing countless autographs, she never omitted removing every vestige of make-up with cleansing cream, following with a thorough scrub. If soap and water weren't available, she had a brisk sponging with witch hazel.

Penny Edwards, a young specialty dancer, who recently made a spot appearance aboard a naval vessel, is another advocate of the clean face policy. Penny was lucky enough to find a full-length mirror—no small accomplishment aboard a cruiser—and carefully worked cold cream into her face and neck to take away the extra layer of powder base she had applied for the performance.

Highlights in Tresses

Besides using a good powder base to make rouge and powder last as long as possible, Penny has another trick or two up her sleeve. For one thing, she always carries a tiny hairbrush in her handbag and on spot bookings, when time does not allow a special hair-do, she vigorously brushes last minute highlights into her blonde tresses. Her hair is worn so naturally and casually that as long as it's fluffy and bright, it looks pretty without special styling.

It's not always easy for the girls on Camp Shows tours to be as meticulous with their grooming as they are when living quietly and comfortably in New York or Hollywood, just as it is not so simple for the girls in factories and other war jobs to look as pretty at all times as do their more leisurely sisters. But feminine workers can take a tip from wise actresses on the circuit—a minimum of make-up when in doubt and a thorough cleansing at the end of the day with cream or good old soap and water.

War-Work Girls Can Take Tip