Garnett Lucille Ryman Carroll, stage name Jane Starr (born Garnett Lucille Ryman; June 10, 1906 – October 23, 2002) was an American Broadway actress and the first female studio executive in Hollywood. Early life Garnett Lucille Ryman was born in Macon County, Illinois, to Dr. Herbert D. Ryman and Cora Ryman. while he was at Kansas State Medical College. He died in France while a field surgeon during World War I when Carroll was 12 years old. Carroll graduated from Decatur High School in Decatur, Illinois, and in 1926 she graduated from Millikin University, where she was a member of the Delta Delta Delta sorority and acted in plays. During the following five years, she taught at Assumption High School and Roosevelt Junior High, acting in plays staged by Decatur's Town and Gown Players, a community theater company. Carroll quit her teaching job "to go adventuring into the land of the theater". Moving to California, she studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse, doing well enough in its summer session that she received a $1,000 scholarship (free tuition) for the winter session. Carroll's brother, Herbert Ryman was an artist for MGM and the Walt Disney Company. She also had a sister, Christine. Career Using the stage name Jane Starr, she worked with movie producer Louis O. Macloon at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, demonstrating how motion pictures were made. Macloon, who had recently given an actor named Clark Gable some of his first parts, chose her to star in the Broadway play It Pays to Sin. When the play received scathing reviews and closed, Carroll sought consolation by visiting backstage with Katharine Hepburn, who had also received terrible reviews while acting in a nearby theater. Hepburn was characteristically blunt. "Then you're not an actress", Hepburn told Carroll. "I don't care what the critics say about me. I know what I am." Carroll moved to San Francisco, where she and Macloon opened an experimental theater and produced several plays. She married Macloon in 1936. They divorced within a few years. During the 1930s, she traveled throughout the nation as talent scout for Universal Pictures, rising to become head of that studio's talent department in New York. Carroll headed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's talent department from 1941 to 1954 and helped sign a young actress named Lana Turner, helped arrange a key screen test for Marilyn Monroe and played a role in bringing June Allyson and