Adventures of Heloise

Two years ago Heloise Martin, an 18-year-old sophomore majoring in psychology at co-educational Drake University of Des Moines, Iowa, took stock of her unusual physical advantages and decided in favor of a theatrical career in New York. She persuaded her father, a retired Naval lieutenant named Ora who was also tired of Des Moines, to accompany her. Brunette and shapely, Heloise got a job as a dancer on Captain Kay Parsons' Show Boat, making nightly excursions on the Hudson River. Within two weeks she left Captain Parsons to join the chorus of Rudy Vallee's Revels of 1935 at the Hollywood Restaurant, a torrid Broadway hot-spot notable for its bare performers, bad air and brusque service.

At the Hollywood, Heloise made $50 a week. In addition she was soon drawing regular fees modeling for Murray Korman, a theatrical and commercial photographer who admired her "fine character, brown eyes, and 34 in. bust." Only hitch in her quick rise was that Father Martin suddenly determined that she should finish her college course. When Heloise refused, he enlisted the aid of her friends Korman and Vallee (Yale '27) and with them engaged Heloise in a long-drawn argument. "Look at Katharine Hepburn," said Photographer Korman, "there was a girl with no looks but a college education and hasn't she made a success of herself?" Mr. Vallee assured her that a college education was an advantage in any profession. The result was that Heloise agreed to go back to Drake as a junior last autumn. At the station she broke down and wept.

Except that she had developed a propensity for passing out large pictures of herself in scanty costumes, the returned Heloise was accepted as a normal Drake coed. She joined Delta Gamma Sorority and was elected to the Student Council. She was appointed the school's social chairman to arrange for dances and entertainments. And she entered into a campus romance with 200-lb Footballer Ernest ("Bus") Bergmann of Chicago, a mainstay of the varsity eleven.

Last January the even tenor of Heloise's resumed undergraduate career was suddenly interrupted when a free-lance photographer named John Naegle, then in Iowa City, received an assignment from Editor Robert Pines of College Humor for a set of pictures on the daily life of a coed. Told to avoid well-photographed University of Iowa, Photographer Naegle journeyed to Drake, interviewed the University's business manager, Ed Lytton. Business Manager Lytton recommended Heloise. She immediately accepted. The pictures were taken in a bed, a shower of the Delta Gamma House, on the campus, in a classroom. As a final shot, Friend Bergmann was without difficulty persuaded to pose with Heloise in his arms.

While news of the incipient publication of College Humor's pictures spread over Drake last fortnight, "Bus" Bergmann was enraged to find printed in the daily Times-Delphic one of Heloise's earlier publicity portraits. It showed most of her and was slyly captioned "Today's Hot Tip." The editor of the offending issue was a 160-lb. student named Dan Anderson of Salt Lake City. Before he knew it he was hauled out of his office by "Bus" Bergmann and told to take his hands out of his pockets. He declined and woke up in a University washroom. Editor Anderson had loyal "Bus" Bergmann arrested for assault and battery, at which point Heloise and Drake began to make headlines. "Bus" Bergmann, insisting that he was contending "for a lady's honor," was given a suspended sentence of 15 days.

Last week this chronicle, which lacked only words & music to make it a typical college musical film, became a national story when College Humor appeared with its four-page spread of eight pictures on "A Day in the Life of a Co-Ed." Heloise was shown climbing out of her double-decker bed in the morning, showering behind a transparent curtain, snaking into a dress, taking notes in class, posed outside with a bow & arrow in a bathing suit, posed inside again "practicing a few dance steps," dancing at a Des Moines hotspot with "Bus" Bergmann, and, also with Friend Bergmann, in the "lingering reality of a good-night kiss."

Armed with these spectacular pictures, the Des Moines press descended on Drake to find out what awful thing was going to happen to Heloise. Nothing did. Manager Parsons of the Show Boat shot Motherly Dean of Women Carrie Taylor Cubbage an earnest wire: HELOISE MARTIN IS A GOOD GIRL STOP SHE IS ONE GIRL UNSPOILED BY BROADWAY. And Heloise convinced Dean Cubbage (but nobody else) that she had not posed nude in the shower, as the picture indicated, but in a "flesh leotard, which is similar to a bathing suit. And besides I understood the picture would show only from the shoulders up." Business Man ager Lytton sputtered that he had labored under the same misunderstanding. Snapped the Dean : "Drake does not intend to take any action." At week's end the New York World-Telegram, was able to make it known, in a fitting cinematic denouement to Heloise's adventures, that "it is only by chance that today the management of the Hollywood Restaurant . . . announced that Heloise Martin is coming back. There, as before, Miss Martin will toe-tap, perform in the chorus line and dance a number with a jumping rope. . . . Honest, we didn't think it would turn out this way."

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