Eileen understood the junior market well. She had helped style the cover for the very first issue of Seventeen in 1944. After that, she went to work as a model booker for Bill Becker’s photographic studio, the biggest commercial photography studio in the United States. Next she’d worked for the Arnold Constable department store, hiring models for their advertisements and catalogs, negotiating fiercely with the major agencies like Conover and Powers. She knew the business from every angle.
She was also protective.
“No girl on my books will ever be allowed to model lingerie, or appear in cheesecake or bathtub shots,” Eileen declared.
Carolyn felt sure that with Eileen, she would be in excellent hands. Eileen was aware that the teenage market was growing and that she needed more junior models on the books. Carolyn was fresh-faced and petite and had the exact attributes that Eileen was looking for in any girl: wide eyes that photographed well in any kind of light; a straight nose, narrow at the bridge; a physique that was naturally slender; a small waist. Before Eileen would book Carolyn for a job, however, they needed to make one tweak. The problem was her last name. Schaffner was “too ethnic,” too Steubenville, Eileen explained. Carolyn needed something more sophisticated. “Scott” was perfect—short and to the point. And so Carolyn Schaffner became Carolyn Scott.
One of the first jobs Eileen secured for Carolyn Scott was a cover shoot for McCall’s, a glossy monthly women’s magazine with a readership of nearly 4 million. The photographer was Richard Avedon, a young New Yorker with dark thick-rimmed glasses, whom Eileen referred to fondly as “Dickie.” Dickie was twenty-five at the time, and an up-and-comer. The previous year, he’d photographed Natálie Nickerson for his first Harper’s Bazaar cover. Since then, he had gained a reputation around the agency for treating the models better than any other photographer in town. While most of the photographers treated the girls like cattle, to be prodded around, Avedon made the girls feel appreciated. He played music during the shoots, letting the models pick out albums from his collection; he ordered the girls their favorite food to eat. He saw models as his collaborators as much as his subjects, and they loved him for it.
In the cover photograph Avedon took for McCall’s, Carolyn’s outfit and pose are demure, but the look in her eyes is more complex—provocative and questioning. Avedon saw in Carolyn something that no one had noticed before in the girl from Steubenville: her intelligence.
With Eileen’s representation, Carolyn began securing more and more jobs, her fees went up, and she was finally getting paid on time. She had done it. She had secured a place for herself in the city. With the money from her modeling jobs, she knew she could stay on at the Barbizon for the indefinite future.
There was so little she missed about Steubenville, but that didn’t mean she didn’t often think of her mother, Dorothy, still at home in the clapboard house on Pennsylvania Avenue. Dorothy’s days were filled with the labors of taking care of a husband and two children, now without her older daughter to help her. Carolyn decided to take some of her newfound money and send her mother something to help make her life just a little easier. Back home, Dorothy still cooled the milk and butter with an ice block in the larder—and the milk often soured and went to waste. So Carolyn arranged for the latest model of refrigerator to be sent home to Ohio.
* * *
AS THE WEEKS went on, Grace started to see something in Carolyn’s growing financial independence that she coveted. Yes, Grace was fortunate to have a father who paid her way and took care of all her needs, sending checks to the Barbizon and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts to cover her room and tuition each month. But there was a downside to Grace’s family support. Jack Kelly was determined to control and dominate his daughter’s every decision. It was Jack who had insisted that Grace stay at the Barbizon; Jack who had pointed out that she never succeeded at anything and would likely return home again after three weeks in New York. Jack was paying her way, but this meant that he maintained the power, and this put Grace’s ambitions at risk. She knew that if for any reason her father decided to withdraw funding for her studies, she’d be forced to return to Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Carolyn paid her own way and answered to no one.
It was Carolyn who suggested Grace try modeling. She had seen Grace at the hotel, coming back from the shared bathrooms along the hallway, her face wiped clean each evening. She saw the perfect symmetry of her features, the beauty behind the glasses and the headscarves that Grace wore during the day to her classes at the Academy. She felt Grace had potential as a model, so she sent her to see Eileen. Like Carolyn before her, Grace climbed the two flights of stairs to Eileen’s offices and sat on the red sofa, waiting to be appraised. But Eileen wasn’t impressed. Eileen felt Grace wasn’t slender enough, was too commercial for her stable. “Too much meat on the bones,” Eileen later explained. In years to come, Eileen would admit that saying no to the young Grace Kelly was the biggest mistake of her career.
Fortunately, Grace had other connections. Her mother had once modeled for the John Robert Powers Agency, and after being turned down by Eileen, Grace went directly to Powers, who took her on right away. Her first modeling job was a television commercial for Bridgeport Brass pesticide, requiring her to run around the room spraying at imaginary insects. More jobs quickly followed.
* * *
WITH THEIR HARD-EARNED money in their pockets,
