Actresses: Housewife in Houriland

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Ready to Go. There is something wrong, though. The harsh truth is that no one—not even Joe Levine or the greatest possible Volta—could turn Carroll Baker into the luscious figurehead of sex that she is advertised to be. She is simply not the type. In The Carpetbaggers, she wears all sorts of skin-fitting slacks and radioactive underclothes, but she always looks like a suburban mother who is not quite well. The suggestion of Mann Act joy that she achieved in Baby Doll has been rinsed away. Capping her head with platinum has cheapened but not ripened her.

It is not her fault. At 33, she is an uneccentric star, who is only—as always in her life—trying to do what is expected of her, rather than what she herself might prefer. At the moment she is gamely making personal appearances in transparent dresses to plug the cardboard coquettes of her present and future films. She sends her children, Blanche and Herschel, to Beverly Hills' public school, and methodically charts her career with her husband, Director Jack Garfein. Her one unusual hobby is eating ice cream cones for breakfast every day.

Preparing herself for Harlow, she is dutifully smoking through a cigarette holder, dropping a shoulder strap, seeing all of Harlow's movies, and reading everything that has been written about her. "I'm going to try to capture her importance—her image on the screen," says Carroll Baker. "And as far as the insides go, I don't think it will be that hard. There's not much difference in women who suffer."