Jane Wyman & Marie Wilson Among Warner Bros. Hopefuls
The Charge of The Powder Puff Brigade
These Warner starlets (L. to R.) Jane Wyman, Shirley Lloyd, Ann Nagel, Marie Wilson, Linda Perry, Jane Bryan, Rosalind Marquis and Carol Hughes, prepare to “fire” from their portable outdoor dressing table. photo: Warner Bros. Pictures Inc. 1937
The headline here is a spoof of the 1936 film The Charge of The Light Brigade starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland.
Putting aside the corny headline and silly news slug blurb that follows, any assemblage of Hollywood beauty was always fodder for newspapers.
Warner Bros. and the other movie studios would release an abundant amount of publicity photos of their attractive male and female stars hoping for free publicity.
An newspaper editor might find something “newsworthy” in these publicity shots. Usually the photos would run for one of two reasons; readers liked seeing Hollywood’s beautiful people; and more often than not, photographs like these would wind up running in papers on slow news days with needing space to fill those pages.
The two women to have substantial substantial motion picture careers in this photo are Jane Wyman and Marie Wilson.
Jane Wyman (1917-2007) would get four Oscar nominations for Best Actress, and would win one time for Johnny Belinda (1949). Wyman was married to Ronald Reagan from 1940 -1949. Her long career in Hollywood would last from 1932-1993.
Marie Wilson (1916-1972) will have lasting fame starring as the title character, a not very bright blonde secretary in the 1949 film My Friend Irma. A television series based upon the movie would star Wilson and run from 1952-1954. Wilson’s career would have gone on a different trajectory had she not lost out to Judy Holliday for the role of Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday (1950). Instead she would appear in a lot of forgettable films like A Girl In Every Port with Groucho Marx and William Bendix.
The rest of the starlets all would appear in a variety of films in supporting parts, without achieving a breakout role.
