Dear Miss Colbert:
I have finally been asked to join a club at school I have wanted to belong for a long time. One of my very best friends was invited to join, so she asked to have me initiated too. For initiation each girl has to do something difficult. One girl had to locate two eight-cent airmail stamps. She borrowed them from a stamp collector. Another girl had to have a deck of cards autographed by a minister. Luckily, her uncle is a minister, but the girls didn't know that.
Here is what I have to do: ask you to send me a black wig exactly like Hedy Lamarr's hair. If you can't do this I can't become a member of the club, so I know you won't let me down. --Ellie E.
Dear Ellie:
I feel there is something to be said on high school clubs of this sort and I might as well say it. In California, high school clubs are strictly forbidden unless they have a definite and clear-cut purpose approved by the faculty and supervised by them, such as collecting toys for underprivileged children, and in general contributing something constructive to the community. A club that forces new members to do humiliating and foolish things isn't a club to which I would want a younger sister or a niece of mine to join.
Besides, it would be impossible to find a wig as beautiful as Hedy Lamarr's hair; there isn't such a thing. -- Claudette Colbert
-- Photoplay magazine, 1952
Somehow I doubt Claudette was actually asked this question. Perhaps they found an intern with the same name so they weren't exactly lying.
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