Grace, who had been at the hotel since September by now, had happily already proved her mother’s prediction wrong.
Before long, Carolyn and Grace were knocking on each other’s doors, sitting on each other’s beds, sharing the day. Outside it was one of the coldest New York winters on record, but in their rooms, it was cozy. With Grace’s help, Carolyn began learning the city, venturing out in temperatures so sharp they made your temples ache. There was Central Park, the hotel’s unofficial backyard, which you reached by walking west, entering through the gates nearest to the children’s zoo. Along Fifth Avenue, the city’s wealthiest residents stepped in and out of gleaming storefronts. If you kept walking east, beyond Lexington to Third Avenue, you entered another universe filled with antiques shops and old-world restaurants opened by refugees from the war.
Carolyn loved the way that when you returned to the hotel Oscar, the smiling doorman, would always be waiting in his smart blue uniform and cap to welcome you home. He was bald and jowly under the hat that he tipped to each one of the guests as they passed. Legend had it that he had arrived at the Barbizon the year after it opened in 1927 and had been standing under the awning at Sixty-third Street ever since. Nothing seemed to make Oscar happier than saluting the hotel’s residents as they left the building, handing them into taxicabs as if they were princesses or movie stars, waving them on their way, then welcoming them back as if he hadn’t seen them in years. For Carolyn, Oscar was the opposite of her stepfather, welcoming her home with bolts across the door.
* * *
IN THE COMING WEEKS, Carolyn left the Barbizon in the mornings with new conviction. She had taken the young photographer’s advice and had signed with the Harry Conover agency on Vanderbilt Avenue, twenty blocks from the hotel. Conover was a former male model, with slicked-back jet-black hair and a salesman’s smile, whose agency supplied girls to photographers, advertising agencies, department stores, fashion shows, movie scouts, and publicity agents.
Carolyn was petite at five feet four, not tall enough for high fashion, but Conover could see her potential as a junior model. “Junior” clothing lines aimed specifically at teenagers were a relatively new phenomenon. Before the war, young women had worn the same clothing and read the same magazines as their mothers. But now that clothing rationing was finally over, manufacturers had discovered a new and lucrative youth market. Magazines like Seventeen, Charm, and Junior Bazaar showed their teenage readers a world of sweaters and skirts, bobby socks and loafers, boyfriends, slumber parties, and the hit parade. Carolyn’s prettiness, so effortless, relatable, and girl-next-door, fit with this vision.
Conover was going to show Carolyn’s photographs to interested clients, and in return, he’d keep 10 percent of her fee when she booked a job. Starting out, her hourly rate would be five dollars; the rest was up to her. If she was serious about becoming a successful model, she was going to have to work for it. There were plenty of beautiful young girls in New York, Conover warned. What separated you from the pack was determination. You had to go door to door and office to office, receptionist to receptionist, introducing yourself to photographers and advertising clients, campaigning as you went.
Each day, Conover would send Carolyn a new list of appointments, with the addresses of photographers and agencies looking for junior girls. Then Carolyn took out her map of New York and started walking. She entered unfamiliar lobbies, ascended into darkened stairwells, or took elevators into unknown buildings, never knowing exactly where she was going and what would be waiting for her there. It took a lot of pluck to keep walking into those lobbies and stairwells and elevators, but Carolyn knew she either succeeded as a model or she went back to Steubenville.
More often than not, there would be a gaggle of pretty girls waiting in the reception area by the time she arrived. Soon enough, small groups of girls were called into a room where the clients were waiting. The clients were almost always men, sometimes as many as four of them sitting wordlessly at a desk. After the girls handed over their test shots, they stood in a line in the middle of the room, positioning themselves at different angles, while the men behind the desk looked them up and down.
Then the critique would begin, with the clients discussing each girl’s merits and flaws among themselves. Carolyn got to know her body and its shortcomings very quickly—and all the other girls’ imperfections, too. One model, Eleanor, had ears that stuck out, and she had them pinned back. Another had freckles and had to have an abrasive treatment to remove them. Carolyn had circles under her eyes, which she soon learned to cover with makeup.
After the assessment was over, either Carolyn would get booked for the job or she wouldn’t, and there was no way of knowing why she had or hadn’t been chosen. Much of it seemed to depend on the mood of the clients—whether one of them had had an argument with his wife or girlfriend and somehow you reminded him of her.
At the end of the day, Carolyn went back to the hotel and waited for the phone by her bed to ring.
And it did. Her first modeling job was a two-page spread, for Junior Bazaar, a magazine aimed at the twelve-to-twenty-year-old set. The theme
