Future Favorites — Rita Johnson (1937) 🇺🇸
Even Rita Johnson’s high-school dramatic coach told her that she would never become an actress... Consequently, Miss Johnson never received a role in any school play in all her scholastic career...
A short while ago, that coach sent her a telegram of congratulations on the excellent possibilities now being offered her in pictures by the largest studio on earth, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer...
Rita is the daughter of Lillian and William Johnson... and was born in Worcester, Mass., on August 13... Rita attended grade and high school in the usual manner... but it wasn’t till she had left school that she took dramatics up in earnest...
Following graduation, she took a job in her mother’s tea-room to pay for her dramatic lessons... Once a week, Rita attended dramatic school in a little town thirty miles from her home... Her training there led her to take up music... so she enrolled in the New England Conservatory of Music at Boston, studying piano...
It was while at the conservatory that Rita got the idea to do something sensational to further her career... and guess what she did... she joined the Olympics as a champion swimmer... from there she went directly on the stage as a headline attraction... this then led to Rita’s big chance in theatricals with Conrad Nagel and Florence Reed...
The following season Rita, to gain experience, devoted herself to small plays in New England towns... Later she went to New York (Broadway had beckoned) where she played in Fulton of Oak Falls and If This Be Treason for the Theatre Guild...
After a successful season on the New York stage, Rita decided to try her hand at radio... this led to an important part in the March of Time program... Rita came to Hollywood this Spring for a screen test and a contract... the studio talent scouts had liked her stage and radio work...
Cooking is Rita’s main hobby and mixing combination salads is her favorite pastime in the kitchen... Swimming, tennis and golf are her favorite sports...
A blue-eyed blonde, she is five-feet-four-inches tall and weighs 110 pounds... Although her birthday fell on Friday the 13th, Rita declares she is not superstitious... Rita’s marriage score is “0,” but don’t think that the boys are not rushing her.
DID YOU KNOW THAT Sonja Henie and Sigrid Gurie have never met each other although they were both born in Oslo, Norway, about the same year, have many mutual friends and have both been in Hollywood for about a year working in films?
Collection: Motion Picture Magazine, November 1937
---