Betty Jewel — How Betty Broke In (1925) 🇺🇸

A girl stood in the hallway of the Griffith [D. W. Griffith] studio, four years ago, struggling to master her emotions, to keep from bursting into tears.

She was Betty Jewel, and only seventeen years old. She had just come from a convent, and had gone to the Griffith studio, hoping to be given a chance in pictures. Denied admittance at first by the doorman, she finally gained an entrance, and got the attention of one of D. W.’s aids. He told her that there was no opening for an untrained girl like herself; persons like that were applying in droves every day. Then he hurried on about his business.

By chance Mr. Griffith passed by, and, attracted by the emotion upon her features, stopped and spoke to her. He ordered a test made, and it resulted in her being given a bit in “Orphans of the Storm.” From that beginning she gradually rose to playing the ingénue lead in “The Silent Command,” leading woman for Tom Mix in “Mile a Minute Romeo,” and a featured rôle in “Blood and Gold.” Lately she joined Famous Players and has been supporting Bebe Daniels in “Argentine Love” and “Little Miss Bluebeard.”

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Photo by: Russell Ball (1891–1942)

Collection: Picture Play Magazine, April 1925

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Among Those Present:

1. Tancred Ibsen — Good News for Highbrows
2. Edward Everett Horton — Playing Safe With Fame
3. Betty Jewel — How Betty Broke In
4. Snitz Edwards — A New Career at Sixty
5. Lucille Lee Stewart — An Occasional Visitor
6. Jack Dillon — How Directors are Made [John Francis Dillon]
7. Evelyn Brent — Out of the Fog
8. Bryant Washburn — By the Sign of the Mustache
9. Forrest Stanley — Wedded to the Screen at Last
10. Jean Hersholt — An Artist of the Grotesque
11. Creighton Hale — And How He Rose
12. Belle Bennett — The Fatal Wedding