Broadway Bound

Hopkins first Broadway job is as a chorus girl in Irving Berlin’s The Music Box Revue. She goes between vaudeville shows until she lands Little Jessie James, where she receives good notices. After that, she receives small parts in Broadway plays, working consistently but relatively unnoticed, and picks up a husband, actor Brandon Peters. Finally, she catches a break and lands a role in the successful Broadway production of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. Just before the play premieres, she dumps Peters and, within weeks, begins an affair with neophyte publisher Bennett Cerf, following that with a passionate relationship with playwright Patrick Kearny. He opens another world for her, introducing her to the literary greats. Kearny, an alcoholic, is more serious about a relationship than Hopkins is. When Hopkins refuses his marriage proposal one too many times, he chases her through the streets of Greenwich Village with a knife, threatening to cut her throat. Hopkins goes to Rochester for the summer, working in stock with George Cukor.