Future Favorites — Barbara Roberts (1937) 🇺🇸
Resuming a career that was interrupted four years ago when she fell in love, blonde Barbara Roberts today is on her way to celluloid fame. And this time she is determined to let nothing stop her... Once before she was just getting a good start up the film ladder...
Having appeared in Earl Carroll’s Vanities in New York, she was signed for the feminine lead opposite George Walsh in an independent western... that led to a contract and a trip to Hollywood...
Soon afterwards the company went out of business... and Barbara found herself wondering what to do next..
Two days later she became one of the Goldwyn Girls in Eddie Cantor’s Strike Me Pink... that was when Cupid stepped in to alter her life... The company was working on Thanksgiving Day... but Barbara decided she was going to have her Thanksgiving dinner just the same... so, early in the afternoon she walked off the set... hurried through the casting office... stepped into her car and started to drive off...
Casting Director Bobby Webb saw her and asked her where she was going... “Home to my Thanksgiving dinner,” she replied... Bobby told her she couldn’t... She insisted she was going to anyway... A terrific argument ensued... Early the next week Webb called her and invited her to dinner... three dinners later they were engaged... and on September 16, 1933, they were married in Beverly Hills...
Bobby wanted his wife to give up her career... he figured that one member of the family in the movie racket was enough... so Barbara gave it up... But the desire to make a name for herself finally got the upper hand... and bit by bit she coaxed friend hubby into letting her go back to work... First it was just doing plays in Ben Bard’s Little Theatre...
Then she was back before the cameras again, first playing a bit in Walter Wanger’s “Vogues of 1938”... and then a more important role in Wanger’s Stand-In...
With that as a start she already is on her way up and you’ll be seeing her name in electric lights before many months have passed...
She has what it takes to get there — determination, personality, a photographic face, good figure and acting ability... Besides that she’s very romantic and has a terrific temper... both excellent assets for exhibiting emotion on the screen — when properly controlled...
Born and raised in Philadelphia, where she attended public schools, Barbara, now 23, was offered her first stage job at the age of 15... that was a chorus job in the Ziegfeld Follies... But her mother wouldn’t listen to her leaving school at that time... so she tackled her text books and forgot about acting or dancing until after graduation.
Collection: Motion Picture Magazine, December 1937
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