Arizona republican., 1921-01-27

LOS ANGELES. Jan. 26.-In bare room, with a bare, unpainted floor, four mothers ss: with babies in thelr arms.
 No. this isn't a sob story. The bare room Is simply a front office Of the Moving Picture Service Bureau at 1OS6 South Hill street, Los Angeles, ana the mothers are women who have come to list the charms of their children for possible employment in the pictures. Each eyes the offspring of the others with critical gaze. Talented babies. or even pretty ones, make good money and are family assets.
 Los Angeles is not through talking yet of the case of PAby Marie Os- borne, who, as it was shown in the di- vorce proceedings of her parents earns the modest little sum of $75O a week in the pictures.
 Center of Fight
 Baby Marie is a lovable youngster, of course, but the fight for her pos session was entered into with an avid ity which rendered the Los Angeles public more or less suspicious. Not that they doubted the philoprogenitive veracity of the parents; but they knew that the legal right to the possession of Baby Marie on the part of either parent included the right to help Baby MdIl0 6QGHu AcI uCdl l4lll0 WSSh4g stipend.
 l Of course the Osborne child Is un- usual; when the family first came to Los Angeles she was baby and it was her father and mother, both stage peo- pie, who expected to go into pictures; neither made good in a way which kept the vell-known wolf a comfort able distance from the Osborne door, and it was not until their tiny daugh- ter was seen by a motion picture di- rector, tried out in child films and at once offered a contract at a dazzling figure that they began to know any thing approaching comfort. And when they did, new unhappiness was soon on them. Mrs. Osborne testified here in court that her husband used large part of Marie's earnings for the pur- pose of carousing with other women The case in court was sensational one. for in the evidence there figured a Kidnapping of the child by her father and various testimony concerning the manners and morals of the parents. Ii Is not yet decided who is to have a right to the baby and her salary.
 Example Is Not Taken
 It might be supposed that the ex- perience of the Osborne family would have proved a horrible example to al mothers of beautiful and talented chill dren, but it wasn't On the other hand. the morning after the first sto- ries concerning Baby Marie and her contending parents appeared in the papers the Service Bureau was throng- ed with mothers and babies. If only the babies could earn s750 a week thf mothers would engage to look out fol their own domestic happiness. The rush which followed immediate : ly on the news of Marie's salary ha6 : subsided when I visited the agency and the four mothers with their foul . babies made a fair average for ar
 afternoon. There was a great variet. shown. even in those four; one littl, girl was just a roly-poly chunk of fat her eyes and nose receded behind cush ions of fat. her wrists and ankles wer encircled with rolling bracelets of 1 and her knees were funny wrinkles . pink cushions of it; she was less thai years old and she weighed lift, T pounds. This baby was stared at wit q wide-open eyes by a wee kid in pin
 jumpers and & white sunbonnet, hell 8 by another mother who looked no 1 over IT, and was made up accordin c to the Los Angeles tradition The, 2 thNe was a handsome, dark-eyed bo c Of about 6. dressed to look very muc
 like shorn Fauntleroy, and a sophis
 ticated young person of about the sam l. age who was all white lace ruffle. Q brown curls, coy glances and self-con
 sciousness. Came, too. a mother wit l. a very young baby in her arms, whic if howled unremittingly at the prospec
 before it.
 l. Called, They File Tn
 One by one the mothers wer I, called Into an upper office for tn .s registration of their offerings. "Mayh $ they'll get a job for their kids, an s maybe they won't" said the nlisan n thropic manager of the bureau, WI 7 refused to give his name for an inter N view on the ground that he was we
 known in diplomatic circles of Er
 rope.
 You wouldn't believe" continue
 the misanthropic manager, gIowerir
 out through the bars of the cashier
 cage while he talked, 'the number .
 people who have registered here, n,
 the kinds. Today's record shows 3 X 900 men and 4,000 women and near
 thousand babies Everything com,
 to register here. We have dogs ret
 istered-blooded dogs. and cur do: E and trick dogs all hronCh4 hv