July 22, 2945
Being in the show business is an incurable malady, if one takes the case of Betty Wells, 20th-Century-Fox starlet who was in El Paso for the week and en route to Hollywood, as an example.
Betty had just come in the Hilton Hotel from Dallas, where she spent five months in a rest home recuperating from a nervous breakdown incurred by the strain of a lengthy tour of South America, Canada and Alaska, plus the unusual canteen and stage appearances people in show business have to go through.
“Even while I lay in bed, too sick to really get up and dance and sing,” the petite redhead said, “I could not resist the tantalizing music coming from my radio, and my toes would tingle with the desire to keep time with the music.”
Five months of just taking it easy in bed for a vivacious person whose dancing and singing career started at the age of three and a half was hard to take, but Betty, who has the determination that nothing will stop her from going on with her career, pulled through.
The 20-year-old star wants nothing else in this world but to keep on dancing and singing. Even her marriage to Claude Wilson of Yuma, Ariz. the day after Christmas, will not stop her. After the first of next year, she will be off to Mexico City to make personal appearances.
Betty is particularly anxious to visit our neighbors to the south because she already has managed to learn enough Spanish to know what is being said about her. Recently “Todo” magazine carried a picture of her which she autographed in her best – and correct – Spanish.
Betty was born Betty Jean Culwell in Dallas, Texas. She weighs 102 pounds and is “five feet, nothing” tall.
Although she has been in the public eye since she was named “Baby Queen” of the Texas Centennial in Fort Worth, it was probably her role in the second edition of “Meet the People” that brought her to the attention of movie producers and she was signed up with 20th-Century-Fox.
She has appeared in “Grand Central Murder,” and “Tortilla Flat” and will be starring with Dick Haines and Gene Kelley soon in “Born Bad.” “Pretty Girl,” which will appear eventually, was made under her joint contract with RKO
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