Loretta Young, Polly Ann Young, Sally Blane — Three Young Gals (1928) 🇺🇸

With an ambitious movie aspirant in at least every second household in the country, the Young family, of Los Angeles, is really to be envied. How very proud they must be, with three beautiful daughters in the movies! All are under contract to different film companies, with promising careers ahead of them.

by Alma Talley

Each of the sisters is considered a beauty, with great screen possibilities, yet each is quite unlike the other two.

There’s Polly Ann, the eldest, under contract to Metro-Goldwyn. Polly Ann is nineteen, very slim, with dark hair and eyes, and a slight resemblance to Norma Talmadge. She is the shyest and quietest of the three sisters.

Sally Blane, who was christened Betty Jane Young, is seventeen. She is less of a beauty than her sisters — inclined, perhaps, to be almost too plump. But, if she is the least beautiful, she makes up for it by having the most personality. She is roly-poly, jolly, full of fun and pep; the friendliest of the three, the easiest to know. Sally is under contract to Paramount, and her career, so far, has been more extensive than that of her sisters.

Then there’s Loretta, nicknamed “Gretchen” by her family. Loretta is only fifteen, the youngest full-fledged ingenue on the screen, who still must apply herself to her schoolbooks, between scenes of a picture. Loretta is the coming pride of First National. There’s none of the giggly schoolgirl about her, despite her youth. Reserved, soft spoken, she has all the poise and dignity of a woman twice her age. Blonde, with gray eyes, and a mouth like Dolores Costello’s. Loretta and Sally are frequently mistaken for one another, though, seeing them together, you can’t imagine how they could be. Loretta is slim, almost to the point of thinness, weighing only ninety-eight pounds. She says scarcely a word, just smiles quietly, while Sally talks all the time. Loretta shows the most promise of a really spectacular success in the future.

All the girls were practically catapulted into the movies. Their first bit of luck — besides the fact that they were born beautiful — came when their mother and stepfather moved the family to Los Angeles. Apparently they were a migratory household, for each of the girls was born in a different place: Polly Ann, in Denver; Sally, in Salida, Colorado; Loretta, in Salt Lake City.

Sally was the first to take up a film career and her start constituted one of those lucky accidents which would never happen to any of us — you or me, dear reader. She met Wesley Ruggles, the director. Wesley said, “You’ve very good screen features. Why not come over to Universal and let me have screen tests taken of you?” Why not, indeed! What girl would turn down a chance like that?

Not Sally, at any rate. So she was given her first film work in one of The Collegians series. Scarcely had she finished her engagement with Universal when, at a party, she met an executive of Paramount. He said, “You’ve got good screen features. Why don’t you come to the studio and let me have tests taken?”

It might seem more logical, to you or to me, for the studio authorities to have seen what she looked like in The Collegians. But studios don’t work that way. Taking screen tests is the way they have their fun. Actors with years of experience are constantly dashing about having screen tests, just as if no one had any idea how they looked before a camera.

So Sally — at that time still Betty Jane — had her tests. She was given not only a contract, but a new name as well. “From now on,” they told her, “you’re Sally Blane.”

She doesn’t yet know why she became Sally Blane, when Betty Jane Young seemed, to her, a much better name. But one doesn’t quibble over a little thing like that, with a contract sitting around waiting to be signed.

She was given plenty to do — a role in Casey at the Bat, and another in Shootin’ Irons. In Wife Savers, Fools for Luck, and in The Vanishing Pioneer, Jack Holt’s new picture. Between times she was lent to F. B. O., and to Fox.

Sally obtained a good start for Polly Ann, her older sister, as well. Having made the Young family what an ad writer would call “movie minded,” Sally persuaded Polly Ann to try for extra work. She persuaded her to the extent of almost dragging her into casting offices. As I said, Polly Ann is shy; left to herself, she would never have had the aggressiveness to go about asking for jobs. But Sally would say, “Now come along,” and shove her before the casting director’s window. Polly Ann would stand there tongue-tied. “Well?” the casting man would ask impatiently, and Polly Ann would be forced to speak up.

It was good training, and Polly Ann had the looks, so she managed to get extra roles quite often. She was called upon frequently to double for stars, in long shots — Joan Crawford, the two Dolores: Costello and Del Rio [Dolores del Río].

“But how,” I demanded, “could she possibly look like both Del Rio and Costello?”

It does seem amazing, Polly Ann being a brunette, but they say that with a blond wig one could scarcely tell her from Dolores Costello. She and Loretta have the Costello mouth.

Gradually Polly Ann got bigger and better bits, until she was given a good part in The Bellamy Trial, and a contract with Metro-Goldwyn.

Loretta, really just a child, had a movie career thrust upon her. A call came for Polly Ann for extra work, but she was away on location. I can almost hear Sally, the aggressive member of the family, urging Loretta, “Why don’t you take it instead?” So Loretta did. The picture was Naughty But Nice, and Colleen Moore noticed Loretta among the extras.

“That’s a cute girl,” Colleen told John McCormick, her husband and supervisor. Mr. McCormick arranged for a screen test, which came out beautifully. There was quite a little argument. After all, Loretta was only thirteen at the time, and that seemed really a bit too young for an ingénue, and too old for a child actress. But her screen tests were really lovely. “If we don’t sign her,” said John McCormick, “some one else will.” So Loretta was proffered a contract. Even though it was necessary for First National to wait several years before she grew up enough to be useful, the company decided she was worth it. Really, could a girl ask for better luck than that?

Apparently the Moore-McCormick judgment proved sound. Loretta played tiny parts from time to time, then a small role in “The Whip Woman,” and. then she was borrowed by Metro-Goldwyn for “Laugh, Clown, Laugh!” in which she created quite an impression. Now she is back on her home lot, and recently finished an ingenue lead in Charlie Murray’s new film, “The Head Man.” Loretta’s career seems most promising. Great things are expected of this little leading lady who is still a child in years, and who keeps her hair unbobbed so that she will seem older.

Her very first screen experience, however, dates back some years, when Loretta was only four or five years old. Her uncle was assistant director on a Mae Murray picture; he needed a child player, and Loretta was very cunning, so he used her in several sequences. Mae Murray took a fancy to the child.

“You see,” explained Sally, who does most of the talking for the family, and who is very proud of her younger sister, “Gretchen’s baby teeth protruded a little then, and she couldn’t close her mouth. It looked very cute — and it made her purse up her lips as if in imitation of Mae Murray. I really think that may be one reason why Mae was so taken with her.”

Loretta visited Mae for a year and a half, and was given dancing lessons and all the advantages wealth can bring, during that period. Mae wanted to adopt her until she was sixteen, but naturally enough, Mrs. Young did not wish to part with her child in such a permanent fashion. That year and a half of training with Mae Murray, and those expensive dancing lessons, obviously did a great deal for Loretta. It gave her grace, poise, a good carriage and distinction. She wears her clothes with all the smartness of a woman of the world, whereas her roly-poly sister, Sally, for example, looks a wee bit as if she stood off and threw clothes at herself.

As I said, all three sisters are different. Polly Ann is brunette. Sally and Loretta are both medium blonde, with the same coloring, and with features somewhat alike. But since one is plump, the other thin, one talkative, the other shy, they have personalities that are quite, quite different.

Each of the three seems to have found a definite place on the screen. Really a remarkably family, those Youngs. Beauties by wholesale. At home, besides mother and stepfather, there is a thirteen-year-old brother named Jack, and a baby sister, Georgianna, aged three. Perhaps Georgianna, too, will grow up to be a movie star.

If Sally is still around to get her started, I’m willing to bet she will!

[a]

Loretta, nicknamed “Gretchen” by her family, is the youngest, full fledged ingenue on the screen.

Photo by: Edwin Bower Hesser (1893–1962)

[b]

Sally Blane, christened Betty Jane Young, is not the most beautiful, but she has more personality than her two sisters.

Photo by: Edwin Bower Hesser (1893–1962)

Polly Ann Young is the shyest and quietest of the three sisters, and was practically pushed into pictures by Sally.

Photo by: Edwin Bower Hesser (1893–1962)

[c]

Collection: Picture Play Magazine, November 1928