Barbara Kent — Barbara Through the Looking Glass (1927) 🇺🇸

A looking glass played a big part in the discovery of Barbara Kent.

She is the young girl, you know, who made such an impression as the child sweetheart of Jack Gilbert [John Gilbert] in Flesh and the Devil. She did a fine bit of emotional work in her prayer scene in that film.

Barbara was “discovered” for the movies while making a purchase in a department store in Hollywood. Paul Kohner, of Universal, happened to notice her, catching his first glimpse of her in a mirror. “Who is she, I wonder?” he said to himself, but couldn’t place her as being among any of the newcomers he had seen on the screen. Struck by her appearance, and convinced that she would look well in films, he stepped up to her, introduced himself, and asked if she would consent to have a screen test made of herself. This sounded to Barbara like a fairy tale, but she stammered that she would love to have a test made.

It was several days before she could summon enough courage to go over to the Universal studio and take advantage of Kohner’s invitation. The test was made, and it turned out so well that she was put under contract and given a lead in a Western.

Some Metro-Goldwyn officials, seeing her in this Western film, thought of her at once for the part of the little German girl in Flesh and the Devil. She was sent for, given a test, and assigned to the rôle.

Since then she has played the lead in “War Eagles,” and in “The Small Bachelor,” two Universal films.

Subsequent to the making of her first test, it developed that Barbara had won a couple of beauty contests, but they really had nothing to do with putting her into the movies.

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Collection: Picture Play Magazine, August 1927