It was the stuff of legend; a young ingenue nervously sitting at the counter of Schwab’s Pharmacy could go from a nobody to a somebody in the blink of an eye. “Discovered”, she (or he) could be whisked onto a soundstage at MGM and become a star in the blink of an eye. After all, isn’t that what happened to Lana Turner?
Well, not exactly. Aside from the fact that Lana Turner was NOT discovered at Schwab’s Pharmacy, she certainly wasn’t immediately whisked off to the MGM Backlot to get ready for her closeup. The studios usually liked to groom their talent before unleashing them on the public. Most of the time a new “discovery” would spend months taking singing and dancing classes. They would learn how to comport themselves in high society and even get elaborate makeovers. Along the way, the studio might outfit them in wigs to hide them in plain sight in B Films, which gave the studio chiefs a chance to see how they looked on the big screen without prematurely exposing them to the public. The majority of the prospective stars wouldn’t make it out of this process.
If they made it to the next phase of their ascension, the up and coming star was supposed to pretend that nothing that happened after they were “discovered” had actually taken place. The studio would then craft an elaborate story about how their latest and greatest star had barely been off the bus for a few minutes before getting the opportunity of a lifetime. Apparently the idea of getting plucked from obscurity and instantly thrust into stardom sold more tickets than showing the reality of a professionally trained actor.
