Two Cats of Hollywood (1932) 🇺🇸
Not rival film beauties but two regular felines who found fame and fortunes in Hollywood and brought stardom by proxy to their mistress.
by Joan Tracy
This is the story of the two most famous in Hollywood and of their mistress, to whom they brought stardom by proxy...
When Nadine Dennis was a little girl, she dreamed of the day when she would go to Hollywood and become a motion picture actress. A leading lady and even, perhaps, a star!
It was not new, the dream. All over the world, in cities, in the country, in towns both and small, other girls were living and dreaming the same sort of youthful, schoolgirl dreams...
Hollywood was not big enough for all of them. Its starry firmament could not hold so many luminaries... Nadine Dennis became just another one of the eager, striving girls who were jutting their youth and their glorious fresh beauty against the cold cruelty of the cameras — pitting their all and losing. And Nadine Dennis might have been just like most of those others— lost and forgotten in the struggle. But because of a gentle, kindly deed, performed several years ago, she remains in Hollywood today, comfortably, happily, and with an income that is tar from negligible...
In 1926, during the cold grey hours of an October dawn, Nadine Dennis was awakened by wails and moans that came from somewhere in the fields near her window. At first she thought it was a trapped rat, but when she investigated she found a newly born kitten, half frozen from the cold, almost dead from starvation.
Picking up the poor, pitiful little animal, she carried it to her home and gave it into the keeping of her highly-prized Persian cat, which only a few days before had had kittens of her own.
(if high pedigree and royal lineage, the Persian frowned upon the mongrel kitten, and refused to allow it among her brood. But Nadine cared for it tenderly, feeding it from a bottle, until it was old enough to lap up milk by itself.
One of the Persian’s kittens, Ko-Fan, began to play with the little waif, which Nadine had named Puzzums, and the two cats became inseparable. In fact, Nadine could not leave them even to go to the studios in her daily search for work.
Occasionally her efforts were rewarded, and she obtained an obscure bit in some production. And while she was performing before the cameras, the two cats would sit on the sidelines, waiting quietly for her to finish.
And then, one day, an assistant director noticed them, and suggested that she show them to Mack Sennett, who could use them in his comedies.
At first she did not give the suggestion much consideration. After all, she was in Hollywood to get in pictures herself, not to train cats for movies. But the more she thought of it, the more she was inclined to give the idea a trial.
Acting on a hunch one day, she made the long trip out to the Sennett studio, where she was immediately offered a contract for Puzzums at the stupendous salary of $50 a week for the first week, graduating to $250 a week by the end of three years, the term of the agreement.
Today, Nadine Dennis has given up all intention of striving for stardom for herself. She has a comfortable home — a nice car — pretty clothes and pleasant friends. Her life is very full. She has no financial worries.
And her days are occupied in managing the business affairs of two of the most beautiful stars in Hollywood — The two cats!
Miss Nadine Dennis, with Puzzums, the kitten that repaid a debt.
Puzzums and Ko-Fan, mongrel and aristocrat, well received in the cinema capital.
Collection: The New Movie Magazine, July 1932