Australian Women's Weekly (1933 - 1982), Saturday 23 August 1947, page 40


JANE BARRETT, English atai, who will arrive soon in Australia, to play the feminine lead opposite Chips Rafferty in the Ealing production, ' Eureka Stockade." In addition to her film work she has appeared in more than 2000 radio sessions for the B.B.C. She is engaged to

Danish artist Hans Helweg.

Hard work and no glamor

for starlets

Sfrict training at English

film school

By BILL STRUTTON in London

Many a romantic young English girl dreaming of overnight film stardom would wake with a shock if a producer really decided she was the girl he was seeking

to make into a star.

The first thing the huge J. Arthur Rank organisation does when it discovers a newcomer as star material is to pick her up gently and shake the stardust out of her eyes.

There are no parties and no fan mail for months ?maybe years.

THE candidate for stardom

is sent to school with an allowance of ten pounds a week and a few weeks' rations.

The school is called "The Company of Youth," and to the horror of its teachers (but the secret delight of its starlet pupils) newspapermen have taken to calling it

Rank's "Charm School."

Its proper name does sound a

little earnest.

There, back at school, the new starlet meekly accepts reproofs when she falls to dreaming of a mink coat, and usually suffers the humiliation of being told in front of others that her accent is terrible

She loses her illusions and her self-consciousness very quickly.

"The Company of Youth" is now two years old and is responsible for most of the new faces now appearing on the British screen.

Patrick Holt, formerly a young

' - ? ~-i

MOLLY TERRAINE, director 0/ J. Arthur Ranttft ' Company of Youth," a school for promising ftiml players, watches students Zena Marshall and Shawa

Noble go through a love scene.

British colonel in Burma, came back to school, and as a result won feature roles in "The October Man" with John Mills and in "The Mark of Cain" opposite Sally Gray.

Maxwell Reed, the tall, dark, strikingly handsome hero of "Dear Murderer" and "The Brothers" (in which he co-starred with Patricia Roc), was the company's earliest white hope.

Hazel Court, who now has a string of films behind her. including "Holiday Camp" and "Meet Me at Dawn,"

started her career there.

They all had to sit on forms, stand up to recite their pieces, and listen hard when the principal, Molly Tcrraine, gestured and mimed and drilled them in the art of acting before the camera.

I visited "The Company of Youth" at its studios in Highbury this week.

In one room a number of pretty young girls and handsome lads, mostly teen-agers, sat round in a 1 circle, while their teacher, a portly, motherly woman, had them intoning the alphabet.

This was the "Breathing Class.'

In addition, their curriculum includes movement and mime, fencing, accent correction, play reading, script study, rehearsing of excerpts, remedial exercises, and diction.

The first three months at the Rank "Company of Youth" is called quaintly, but with some accuracy, the "purdah period," because not until after that time are the starlets allowed into the wider and more exciting world where actual films are made, and where they can meet producers, directors, and stars, and maybe be allowed to walk on in a bit part themselves.

Grooming also includes posing for publicity shots in ultra-formal evening clothes or gay beachwear, taking on a job as a star's stand-in to see how they work, and sometimes acting as usherettes at some large and glittering charity premiere of a new film.

If the pupils can garner experi

-_^

ence on the way by acting in sofjl small repertory company thi ui gladly let off from school for the; richer experience of actual wort on the stage.

For this reason Arthur RanK has interests in a small reperton ompany at Worthing.

Each month Molly Terraim endi in a "school report" on the progress of each pupil.

In addition to acting as miins and gathering practical i perience on the stage of some mall theatre, many of Molly Terraine's "children" will be drafted int. roles in Highbury Studios, which have

just opened into production of seen ond feature films as a new bianch of film magnate's Rank's activities

Currently, John Stone, a squatfl

jawed, fair-haired, talented vounf actor, whose monthly repor are sprinkled with high praise, is costarring there opposite Ealnu star Jane Barrett?the girl chosen for the role of Alicia Dunne in Australia's "Eureka Stockade"?in a period comedy called "Colonel Bogey."

How are pupils for stardom

chosen?

There are now 22 studying under the teachers of "The Company of Youth." and a large majority ot them had previous experience before being found by talent scouts.

Rarely does a letter accompanied by a photograph sufficiently convince the casting bureau of the vast Rank organisation that the applicant is sufficiently keen or capable

for films.

Advises stars

^0 great is principal Molly Ter

raine's reputation for coaching among film producers?she comes from a theatrical family and has played every sort of role herself? that she is often called in to ftroom a prospective star in a particular film part, or even for a film test

At present she is down at Denham, spending all her time by the side of young Jean Simmons, who, , though she has never played

J Shakespeare before, is appearing as

Ophelia to Sir Laurence Oliviers

j Hamlet

Molly, the small, vital mother of» 20-year-old daughter herself, has already seen the graduation of

many of her starlets to feature roles and even star status.

Tiny, honey-blonde Carol Marsh j went from her classrooms straight to stardom in "Brighton Rock," opposite Richard Attenborough.

Tall, glamorous Sonia Hoim is an example of an actress who has "arrived" through "The Company of

Youth."

Firstly, she got a small part B

Peter Ustinov's "Top Secret," then j

a slightly larger role in Ealing's "The Loves of Joanna Godden," and, currently, a "plum" part in Cainsborough's "Rescue."

Other graduates from "The Company of Youth" gradually being worked into British films are blonde Susan Shaw, who features in Gainsborough's "Miranda" and Anatole de Grunwald's "Bond Street": hefty character actor Andrew Crawford, who is featured in "The Brothers" and "Dear Murderer."