Girls of Summer: In Their Own League by Lois Browne Read Free Book Online Page B

the publicity mill was working overtime . The writer of a Muskegon Chronicle article celebrating Arleene Johnson, another player from small-town Saskatchewan, was baffled when told that she liked curling, an activity many Americans had never heard of.
    The writer felt compelled to explain the game’s mysteries: “The sport where the players wear kilts and make with the brooms on an ice rink, pushing little black pots that largely resemble cuspidors . The game is a sort of cross between shuffleboard, bowling, ice hockey and floor sweeping.”
    Press releases centered on domesticity at every turn .
    Ann Harnett was presented as “an accomplished coffee maker .”
    Clara Schillace “enjoyed nothing better than to whip up a spaghetti dinner, work with her father in the Victory Garden and wash dishes with her pretty niece .”
    Shirley Jameson was distinguished by “roguish eyes that refuse to behave, a saucy, turned-up little Irish pug nose, and enough concentrated personality to lend oomph to a carload of Hollywood starlets, all wrapped up in a four-foot, 11-inch chassis.”
    A League questionnaire, distributed to every player, sought to elicit human-interest data by means of questions such as “Do you get many mash notes from the fans?”
    Extracurricular interests were blown out of all proportion.
    If someone had taken flying lessons, she became an accomplished aviatrix . Anyone who’d posed for a department store snapshot was described as a former model. Choo Choo Hickson, who had just once donned boxing gloves as part of a publicity stunt in Tennessee, was labeled “Chattanooga’s Only Girl Pugilist.”
    The pity is that Wrigley and Co. didn’t highlight the players’ real achievements.
    Lib Mahon had a university degree and taught school, as did Shirley Jameson, who had also won speed-skating awards nationwide . Oddly, even the players’ wide-ranging athletic interests received relatively little attention.
    Schillace (in-between bouts of dish-washing) had competed in national track-and-field meets .
    Dorothy Ferguson was Manitoba’s top-ranked speed-skater, and Betsy Jochum was the Amateur Softball Association’s throwing champion .
    The League preferred to feature more “womanly” activities – housework or piano playing, pasting pictures into scrapbooks and writing letters home.
    Perhaps the strangest aspect of the 1943 spring training was its “Charm School,” actually a mandatory course in good grooming and ladylike behavior.
    No one remembers who first came up with this bright idea, but Arthur Meyerhoff was an avid supporter . His conversion took place while visiting the summer home of Patricia Stevens, who owned a well-known Chicago modeling studio.
    “We spent the day there and everyone was in swimming ,” he said. “I remember looking around and these were all girls from her school, and I said to myself, ‘What a bunch of homely-looking mugs.’ When they left for their rooms and got ready for dinner, out came the most beautiful group of girls you’ve ever seen.”
    Thus inspired, Meyerhoff arranged for none other than Helena Rubinstein, whose chain of beauty salons had made her name synonymous with the feminine ideal, to coach the players in elegant deportment.
    Players were issued loose-leaf binders in which to record “Notes of a Star To Be.”  The idea of farm girls and small-town rowdies being given lessons in how to walk, sit, apply make-up, put on coats and introduce themselves at social functions was public relations gold. The Charm School session was the obligatory lead paragraph in every subsequent magazine article.
    Some of the players were grateful – to a degree . Because Dorothy Kamenshek’s family never ate out in restaurants, she “didn’t know what all those forks were for,” and was mildly interested to learn.
    Even the stylish Bonnie Baker, who could have conducted the seminars herself, was appreciative: “It was important, because everybody was watching you all the