***************************************************************************** * T A Y L O R O L O G Y * * A Continuing Exploration of the Life and Death of William Desmond Taylor * * * * Issue 63 -- March 1998 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu * * TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed * ***************************************************************************** CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE: Louella Parsons Interviews with Actresses: Beverly Bayne, Betty Blythe, Clara Bow, Marguerite Clark, Elsie Ferguson, Dorothy Gish, Juanita Hansen, Osa Johnson, Alice Joyce, Mae Marsh, Violet Mersereau, Alma Rubens, Gloria Swanson, Blanche Sweet, Alice Terry ***************************************************************************** What is TAYLOROLOGY? TAYLOROLOGY is a newsletter focusing on the life and death of William Desmond Taylor, a top Paramount film director in early Hollywood who was shot to death on February 1, 1922. His unsolved murder was one of Hollywood's major scandals. This newsletter will deal with: (a) The facts of Taylor's life; (b) The facts and rumors of Taylor's murder; (c) The impact of the Taylor murder on Hollywood and the nation; (d) Taylor's associates and the Hollywood silent film industry in which Taylor worked. Primary emphasis will be given toward reprinting, referencing and analyzing source material, and sifting it for accuracy. ***************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************** Louella Parsons Interviews with Actresses TAYLOROLOGY 53 contained a selection of Louella Parsons' interviews with silent film actors. Now it's the ladies' turn. The following interviews with actresses were conducted by Louella Parsons between 1918 and 1923. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Beverly Bayne February 23, 1919 Louella Parsons NEW YORK TELEGRAPH It was seven years ago, a beautiful Autumn day, with the leaves turning a russet brown and a rosy red. A little girl with a tan-colored suit and a hat gay with pink roses shading a pair of very dark eyes walked up to the front door of the Essanay studios and in a shy, half-frightened voice asked for a job. The girl at the switchboard, used to coldly turning away dozens of just such girls every day, paused in the gentle art of telling our heroine it was no use, and then took a second look at the big brown eyes, the soft dark hair which fell so softly over the forehead of this child, and said, "Wait a moment." This scant word of encouragement brought forth a smile and the little girl with the rose-garlanded hat sat down to wait. The wait brought Harry McRae Webster to the front office. "Well," he said, looking at the girl, "what do you want?" "I thought--that is, I hoped--you might use me in pictures." "Ever had any experience?" "Oh, yes; I have acted lots in school plays," was the naive and entirely unexpected answer. "Come around tomorrow at 9 o'clock," said Harry Webster, who was at that time director general of the Essanay productions. The girl--and she was none other, as they say in the thrilling melodramas--was Beverly Bayne, a truant from school, screen struck and dying to get into pictures. Harry Webster came into my office and told me of the little girl who looked about 16 and gave promise of being a raving beauty. Suddenly, as if struck by an inspiration, he said to me: "You know, I have half a notion to give her a chance in 'The Loan Shark.' You know the story." I did, for at that time I was scenario editor and a part of my work consisted in buying scripts for the directors to produce; there were only four other directors besides Harry Webster. "But she hasn't any experience," I said, "and won't Miss B. (the leading woman in Essanay stock) expect to have this story?" "Yes, yes, I know--but Miss B. is too old; this girl is young and fresh and the type I need." And so it came about that Beverly Bayne's first appearance in pictures was not as an extra girl, but as the featured player. All the directors at once wanted Beverly Bayne in their productions--pardon, pictures, for one- reel dramas and one-reel comedies were the best Essanay or any of the other companies gave at that time, and were not productions. There was a real Beverly Bayne craze on at the studios with all of the directors clamoring for the new leading lady. Francis X. Bushman was the leading man. Every one liked Frank in those days, he was such a boy, alternately teasing the girls and wrestling with the men. We were all much like one family--there was only one studio, and actors, directors and writers would congregate in my office to discuss the plays. Finally Beverly was cast in a Bushman picture. There was great rivalry among the women players to play with Francis Bushman. Beverly took it all as a matter of course, and confided in me she didn't much like Mr. Bushman; he was too big a tease. But Mr. Bushman liked her, and found he could work with her better than with any other actress. He asked for her, until she gradually became associated in the mind of the public as Francis X. Bushman's leading lady. A better understanding sprang up, but still Beverly was neither infatuated nor especially interested in her leading man. This went on for several years, with the Bushman and Bayne combination growing stronger and more popular, but with no thought of love on either side. It was after they joined the Metro Company that Beverly suddenly woke to a realization the hero of her screen romance was her real hero. And then, as every one knows, came the marriage of the two who had worked side by side, studying, reading and doing their best to find the art in motion pictures. This sounds like a history or a biography but it is meant for an interview. But, borrowing Miss Baird Leonard's phrase, it was a mental cross section dancing through the brain waves of my mind as Beverly and I sat and chatted over our tea. She and Francis came in last Sunday to see me and have a cup of tea with me, in my apartment; strange as it seems we are now almost next door neighbors. The promise Beverly's exquisite girlhood held for beautiful womanhood has been kept. She is one of the best groomed, most attractive, charming young women I know. The influence of her home, for Beverly was gently reared and one of the girls who might have stayed home and had the tender care of a devoted mother if she had not wanted to set out for herself, is always present in her every movement. She is a gentlewoman, well poised and exceptionally entertaining. Naturally we three reminisced, and chatted over the days when pictures were crude, unfinished affairs. "Sometimes," said Mr. Bushman, "I smile to myself when I see on the screen little things I did a long time ago. If I should now take one of the copyrighted acts, I should be branded an imitator--when frequently they are the very things we tried out at Essanay." The two Bushmans are very congenial. They both like riding; they are each passionately fond of dogs, horses and other pets, and they are each students. Francis Bushman is one of the best read men I know. He hasn't the superficial knowledge, which, veneered, suffices to pass as mentality, but he has the real knowledge acquired from much delving into books and constant studying. Beverly is also a brilliant woman, having with the years added to her retentive mind the things worth knowing. "When I get back to the city from Bushmanor," said Beverly, "I feel stifled. You see, we live outdoors there, ride in the open country and lead a simple, next-to-nature life." "You like that way of living now?" I asked her. "I have never cared for the bright lights nor for the night life in a big city. The cafes, the cabarets and the parties in these places never hold an attraction for me, perhaps because I know so little about them. We lead such a quiet life. I want only a few good friends, my books, my horses and dogs. This is my idea of contentment: I love my home, and am what Frank calls an old-fashioned girl." "What about your painting?" I asked her, for in the old days Beverly had considerable talent, and her mother always cherished a secret hope that some day the name Beverly Bayne would become associated with the world of art instead of with the plebian motion picture. "I still love to sketch, and to dabble in water colors, but I have never done more than visit the art galleries, and wish I could create some of the paintings I see there. Art will always be an idealistic longing with me, and one of the things I shall always regret I was unable to accomplish." The Bushmans were both greatly interested in the Westminster dog show, where Mr. Bushman had entered twelve beautiful Danes, and carried off a motor truck full of ribbons and cups and badges. "You should see Frank," said Beverly. "He fusses over those dogs, doctors them, bathes them, and sees to it that they have just the right amount of food. Such a barking when he appears; they all know him, and one is jealous of the other in trying to claim his attention." Francis Bushman loves the country as well as his wife does. It is no affectation, either, for I can remember when he used to tell me the height of his ambition was to make enough money to buy a country estate. Many of the things he hoped for have come to pass--but they have made no change in "Bush," as his friends call him. The years have improved him, and the Francis Bushman of today, older, graver, but with the same almost foolish desire to have every one like him, is a great improvement over the boy I knew so well at Essanay. He has learned to be less impulsive and less apt to judge other people. I could not help thinking how much his association with gentle Beverly has helped him. One thing he has retained, and that is his generous spirit. No friend in need ever went to Francis Bushman in vain. He recently took an old director of his, broken in health, to Bushmanor, gave him a home and a chance to earn some money raising chickens. He does not tell these things, and it was only with the greatest reluctance I coaxed the story from Beverly--and then only when this man whom we all knew was mentioned. Our tea chat reached way into the evening--to the time when they had to hurry home to greet some dinner guests--but we did have such a pleasant afternoon, and I hope they will run in again and have tea with me. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Betty Blythe May 1, 1921 Louella Parsons NEW YORK TELEGRAPH After seeing Betty Blythe on the screen with a few draperies and a couple of beads it was somewhat of a shock to see a young woman step into the lobby of the Gotham Hotel dressed in a modishly tailored suit, with nothing to suggest the gorgeous raiment of the queen. Whatever was missing in the queenly robes was very much present in the beauty of the young woman. She is as handsome as she looked when Solomon was vamped by her on the screen at the Lyric Theatre. I had no reason to believe she would appear in ancient garb, but some way the name of Betty Blythe ever since she made such an impression as the Queen of Sheba has been synonymous with this enchantress of long ago. The hour was half after twelve o'clock and since Miss Blythe had eaten no breakfast she ushered me into the dining room. Even queens must eat. Her royal highness managed eggs and bacon, toast, marmalade, prunes and tea, proving as well as being beautiful she has a hearty and healthy appetite. Any one who could drive the chariot with the skill and strength of Miss Blythe would need to keep herself in proper physical form. "How did you manage all those prancing horses," I asked her. "I suppose I should say it was easy, but I am going to be truthful and tell you it was the most difficult thing I have ever been called upon to do in pictures. I knew if we rehearsed the scene once more I should never have been able to endure the strain. Nell Craig, who drove the other chariot, was so overcome that she fell and broke three ribs just as we were finishing the last scene. There was terrific excitement, with the extras yelling and all of us frightened and trembling with fear that Miss Craig was seriously injured. "My arms, you see," she said, holding out a pair of shapely hands, "are long, and I am strong. Miss Craig is weaker and she simply could not hold those wild animals a moment longer. Fortunately it was the very last scene. I am sure neither Miss Craig nor myself would be willing to go around those sharp curves again." Miss Blythe is here to consult with William Fox about going to Europe with J. Gordon Edwards. He is to make "Mary, Queen of Scots," and since "The Queen of Sheba" was such a howling success Mr. Edwards does not wish to change queens. There is no denying Miss Blythe does look like the mythical queens of our childhood days. She is tall, stately, dignified and beautiful. An ideal combination of what queens should be and seldom are. Contracts are stubborn things and up to now Mr. Fox and Miss Blythe have not come to any definite agreement. She wants to go abroad, but there are many things to be considered. Until she came to New York Mrs. Sheba had not seen herself on the screen. The print of "The Queen of Sheba" was rushed to New York before any of the players had a chance to see the picture. Naturally the first thing Miss Blythe did was to rush to the Lyric and take a look at herself. "I haven't been East for two years, so I have spent much of my time in the shops and at the theatres. If I should return to the Coast without going to Europe," she said, "I want to see enough good plays to last me for a time." The stories that Miss Blythe left New York after nearly starving to death, she says, are very poetic but absolutely without foundation. "I worked with World and Vitagraph and had a very good salary before I went West to make a Goldwyn picture. I had been on the stage in a Morris Gest production, but I never did the starving in the garret act. I wonder why," she said, "every one always thinks any girl who achieves any degree of fame must have had a miserable hungry time. The chorus is always used to illustrate how far she has advanced." If Miss Blythe does not go to Europe with the J. Gordon Edwards company she will return to Los Angeles in another week. She says there is only one thing she wishes to have every one know and that is, she is not temperamental. "I shouldn't like to have any one accuse me of being a creature of moods. I am not a great actress and no one unless she be as famous as Bernhardt or Duse should indulge in temperament. It is unbecoming and foolish." Miss Blythe admits she is ambitious. She has aspirations and she wants to do something worth while. "I am grateful," she said, "to the Fox company and Mr. Edwards for the chance to play in 'The Queen of Sheba.' It has inspired me to do other pictures of a similar nature." The queen, you see, is a mortal, even as you and I. So she finished her breakfast and departed for the dressmaker's for a fitting, for styles do change and one cannot wear beads and draperies outside of a studio. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Clara Bow July 22, 1922 Louella Parsons NEW YORK TELEGRAPH I wish Booth Tarkington could meet Clara Bow. If he has never heard Clara tell of her romances, her ideas on life and the way she manages her "dad," he has missed getting material for a great juvenile story. Clara is a combination of the Tarkington type of small town girl, and the flapper who now flaps in up-to-date juvenile society. She is the unconscious flapper. She doesn't hail form Podunk or Cedarville, Iowa, the towns where girls wear the fraternity pins of their best beaus, and consider a high school picnic the essence of hilarity. Clara was born and brought up in Brooklyn, but someway neither our neighboring city nor the big town of New York has ever touched her. She has remained Clara Bow, high school girl, whose beauty somehow brought her into the fillums, but never made her a part of them. Clara, who is eighteen this month, and who as naively says she was so "smart" she graduated when she was fifteen, has kept all her old school friends. Her class mates are her beaus, although her father, she says, is very strict and makes her send her company home long before midnight. Her mother died at Christmas time last year, leaving her alone with her father who has tried to mother her as best he could--perhaps spoiling her a little. Everyone does. Morrie Ryskind insisted that I meet the new Preferred star and take a look at her just to see if I had ever met anything like Miss Bow in motion pictures. I never have. "What paper do you write on," asked Clara, slipping her hand into mine. "Shsh"--whispered Morrie, "she is the lady who wrote the nice things about you." "Oh, I know you are on the Telegram." "Just having a little joke," groaned Morrie. But Clara hadn't been rehearsed, she said. "Honest, Mr. Ryskind, I didn't hear her name--" "Where shall we have luncheon," sighed Morrie, thinking the sooner the affair was over the better for his peace of mind. "Shall we go to the Astor, the Biltmore or the Chatham?" "Let's go to a chop suey place," said Clara. "I know a wonderful restaurant here on Broadway where they dance at noon--don't you love to dance?" So Morrie, hoping the din of the Chinese orchestra would drown any additional faux pas lead us to Clara's choice, and in the middle of the day when most of us eat salad or a poached egg, this youngster ate soup, chow mein, salad, ice cream and rice--and with a relish. So far motion pictures haven't affected her one iota. She is as refreshingly unaffected as if she had never faced a means to pretend. She hasn't any secrets from the world--she trusts everyone, and doesn't believe that any one would be unkind enough to print any of the romances that she loves to tell about. Almost any mascaro firm would pay her a big salary for the use of her name. She came into pictures after winning a beauty contest. She screens in the vernacular of the studio like a million dollars, and when Elmer Clifton had a look at her big brown eyes, and her round little face, almost like the girl in a picture book, he gave her one of the leading roles in "Down to the Sea in Ships." "This chance, Clara" said Mr. Clifton (every one calls her Clara), "will either make or break you--it depends upon the success of the picture. Every one knows of the phenomenal success of Mr. Clifton's great whaling picture. It made him, and it made Clara, and led to her getting an offer from J. G. Bachmann to play one of the leading roles in "May Time" for Preferred Pictures. She has just finished "Grit," with Glenn Hunter. She says she just loves Glenn. "I went down to see 'Merton of the Movies' the other night and I sat in the front row. Glenn said something about Clara Bow, the motion picture actress, and I was so embarrassed. Mr. and Mrs. Harold Lloyd were in the audience, too, but Glenn didn't see them in time to put them in the play. "Glenn thinks I could act on the stage. He said maybe sometime he will give me a part in one of his plays." She thinks Mr. Hunter is a fine actor and dares any one to deny it. In fact, she rather hopes someone will, so she can prove her loyalty to young Merton by having a battle. Our conversation was mostly about whom Clara adores and whom she does not adore, and what she is going to do in California and the ideal man she expects to marry. "You know," she said, confidentially, leaning over a dish of chow mein almost as big as she is, "I have had six proposals of marriage; but I didn't love one of them. My daddy says I am too young to marry, anyhow." "What about the fraternity pin, does that belong to one of the loves?" she was asked. "No," she explained, "I traded a piece of jewelry I had with a boy because I thought it was pretty. A girl gave it to him--some boy had given it to her--and now it's mine!" Shades of Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Cornell and any other college where the Greek letter fraternities are in vogue! "I think you better go back to the office," said Morris, interrupting Clara's rhapsody. "Mr. Beatty wants to see you." "No, he doesn't, I have to have my picture taken," answered the incorrigible Clara. But the pictures were as good an excuse as any, and Mr. Ryskind piloted her from the chop suey palace where she pranced across the floor, keeping time to the music like a delighted child. I thought afterward if the little girl who lives at my house had not been so frightfully grown up she and Clara might have had a good time. We hope some one will tell Mr. Tarkington about Clara so that he will put her in a story. She is almost too good to be true. And to think she is going to Hollywood to play in the "fillums." We only wish some reformer who believes the screen contaminates all who associate with it could meet this child. Still on second thought it might not be safe: Clara uses a dangerous pair of eyes. And as for eyelashes, almost any mascaro would pay her a big salary for the use of her name. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Marguerite Clark April 10, 1921 Louella Parsons NEW YORK TELEGRAPH After she makes two or three more pictures, Marguerite Clark expects to retire to her plantation in the South and raise--flowers. It wouldn't give her much of a pang to exit now, only she feels she would like to make one more big picture and then kiss her fingers good-by to her public. As far as the stage is concerned, Miss Clark has already sung her swan song--but deep in her heart there is such a warm place for the screen she doesn't want to retire until she has departed in the manner she has planned. Marguerite's whole life has been arranged in this picturesque fashion, with each event being patterned and fashioned to suit her fastidious little self. "Do you know," she said, "if I had the forming of my life I would have chosen to marry Harry, and retire from the screen after I had found the man I love, and the home that I enjoy so thoroughly. I love my home, my flowers, my little chickens, and the freedom the country gives me. I am never lonely. Sometimes we go to town for a dinner party or the theatre; often we come to New York for a good time; but when it is over we love going back to our house. It is two miles from New Orleans, and such a great big rambling old place, Harry and I ramble around like two little peanuts." Harry is H. Palmerston Williams, the attractive husband of Marguerite. They are desperately in love with each other. So much so, Harry wasn't above taking Marguerite's little hand and holding it at Delmonico's when he thought the rest of the luncheon party was too engrossed in talking shop to see him. Marguerite, on the other hand, had to stop talking every few moments to lean over and whisper something in her husband's ear. The correct waiter coughed discreetly whenever he approached, and tried not to show his interest. He was more polite than some of the guests, who stared with frank interest at Mr. and Mrs. H. Palmerston Williams. In the luncheon party were Mrs. J. Gordon Edwards, wife of the Fox director; their young son Jack, home from Cornell for his Spring vacation; Miss Cora Clark and Miss Wilson. Mr. Edwards acted as stage director for Marguerite at one time and the two families have kept up their close friendship. "The first time I saw that young man," said Marguerite, nodding at the good-looking young Jack, "was after he had received a terrific bump on his head in the elevator. I was so incensed at the unsympathetic manner in which the elevator man ejected him from the lift I said I would leave the hotel. Mr. Edwards spoke up and said: 'Oh, I wouldn't distress myself; it was probably my son. He is a terror, and he undoubtedly deserved everything he got.'" "You didn't know how nice I was going to grow up, did you?" said young Edwards, who graduated from Cornell this Summer, and who hasn't decided whether to be an assistant to his father or a business man. He says he is afraid his dad will make a general utility man out of him, and he wouldn't be doing right by Cornell to accept such a menial job. "You know the day Marguerite speaks about," said Miss Cora, "was her first performance of 'Peter Pan.' Mr. Edwards was her stage director, and I always remember how upset she was over Jack's argument with the elevator boy. We didn't want her to get excited." "She loves children," said her husband, whereupon young Jack made a grimace. "Children love her, too," said Mr. Williams. "My niece and nephew gave a party, and a youngster said, 'See that pretty little girl there, I am going to have a dance with her.' "'That,' said another boy, 'is no little girl, it is Marguerite Clark.' "'I don't care, she looks like a little girl,' he said." "Speaking of 'Peter Pan,' who do you think should play Peter in the Famous Players-Lasky screen version?" asked Mrs. Edwards. "I refuse to answer," said Mr. Williams, "on advice of counsel. I am too prejudiced." "I read with interest the Morning Telegraph series on the choice for Peter Pan," said Miss Cora. "That reminds me," said young Jack, "we have dozens of letters recommending Marguerite." "That is because I played the part on the stage," said Miss Clark. "Would you like to play it?" "I would love to," she said. "I have always wanted to make 'Peter Pan' in pictures, and I must admit nothing would make me happier." We asked Marguerite if she didn't sometimes have a hankering for New York and the theatres. "I never expected to be as contented in my life as I am now," she said. "Do you know what I bought here?" "Clothes," said young Jack. "Oh, that goes without saying, but I mean we have bought seeds of all sorts, garden trowels, and everything to make my Southern garden beautiful. Harry raises chickens," she said. "He has his part of the garden and I have my part, and if his chickens run into my flowers there will be an instant annihilation of one part of the farm's product, and it will not be my posies." This threat amused Miss Clark's husband so much he had to give her hand one more surreptitious squeeze. He seems to think everything she says is amusing; in fact, he appreciates all her merry little witticisms. I wondered if he didn't get jealous of the attention she attracts. Apparently not, for he seems to enjoy having her admired, and beamed when people pointed to her admiringly. Happiness has certainly been a great tonic, for she looks younger and prettier than ever. Her husband wishes she would not consider it necessary to make other pictures, but he says if she feels she wants to make one or two before she retires, he will not interfere. "What about the stage?" "That is different," promptly answered Marguerite. "I wouldn't be willing to stay away from my beau that long." As we were leaving, Marguerite spied Wesley Barry and tried to attract his attention. "He only cares for me," she said, "when he is trying to raise money. When he came South he invited me to give to the Near-East fund, and seemed to like me when I helped him." Mr. and Mrs. Williams return home today after having spent a brief week in New York. She is one of the best arguments I know against the old- fashioned theory that no actress is content away from the stage. Marguerite Clark says she is happier than she has ever been in her life, and she certainly looks it. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Elsie Ferguson February 16, 1919 Louella Parsons NEW YORK TELEGRAPH The interview about to be transcribed on this crumpled piece of copy paper should have been written a week ago, for it was then I talked with Elsie Ferguson, and came back to my typewriter, my office and my Roget's Thesaurus with a feeling of exaltation. Elsie Ferguson has that effect, she is stimulating, constantly buoying one up by her mentality, and by her human outlook on life's tangled problems. Now there comes to me a vision of her beauty, and a remembrance of the pleasant hour I spent with her in her apartment on Park avenue, but with no definite recollection of all we said--and we said much after the fashion of two women who are left alone to talk for a solid hour. The interview took place on a Friday morning very early, at the time the world likes to picture actresses and women who lead leisure lives just opening their eyes, having their breakfasts served on a silver salver, by a neat maid, in a shell pink boudoir, with its curtains, its rugs and its furnishings all harmonizing in color. Yes, dear readers, that is the way this story should be written, I know according to the Hoyle of fiction. But that isn't the way it happened. I arrived at Miss Ferguson's apartment bright and early and was met at the door by the young woman herself in a street frock of dark green velvet, looking as if she had been up for several hours at least. From this most matter of fact beginning you can readily see Miss Ferguson is not idle, and neither has she acquired the habits of the leisure class who, before the war made people realize there was work to be done, never gazed upon the morning sun. It didn't take me long after Miss Ferguson started to talk to decide she refutes the old axiom that beauty and brains seldom go hand in hand. She has a liberal share of both, a thing which has elevated her to an enviable place of esteem in the hearts of the picture world. We spoke about the screen as a medium of describing emotion, and what improvements might be expected to come within the next few years in the art of the motion picture. "If we are to advance," said Miss Ferguson, "I believe it will be a technical advancement. Some one will invent a camera powerful enough to take distances and close-ups at one time. I always feel after a scene has been taken, and I have to pose again for a close-up, how sorry I am that my face cannot be photographed when I am actually engaged in a big dramatic scene. It is difficult to get back to the place where the camera caught me a few moments previous. Usually my feet must be kept on a spot marked for them, and I am conscious of being cramped and forced to stay in a small place." By this Miss Ferguson does not mean she dislikes motion pictures. She merely, like all folk who study the needs of the screen, is constantly groping about for a better way of doing things. Elsie Ferguson is not bound to pictures commercially, though she does make $1,000 every day she works, and has a maid, car and other accessories furnished her by the Famous Players- Lasky Company, whose treasury she enriches. "I cannot truthfully say I do not miss the stage," was the answer given by Miss Ferguson to a tactless question as to whether or not sometimes there did not come a longing to get back before the footlights. "Quoting from 'Dear Brutus,' where the man says the woman is so fluid, I would say the stage is so fluid. That is what I miss--not so much the audience, though it is pleasing to get recognition for one's art, but the something the stage possesses that is not possible to get on the screen." Elsie Ferguson is responsible for a vogue in pictures for which many of us are grateful. Up to the time she brought her youth, her good looks and her stage experience to the screen, we were overwhelmed with curls, and short- frocked little girls, whose only claim to picture fame was a mop or tangled hair and babyish star. Elsie Ferguson, by her graciousness, by her well-bred manner of doing things, and her knowledge of what to wear and what not to wear, gave [those] ambitious to be motion picture stars a new ideal to copy. This conservative, gentle breeding is not a camouflage adapted as a screen disguise; it is as much a part of the real Elsie Ferguson as her hand or her foot. Her whole bearing, from the top of her golden head to the toe of her tiny shoe (it is small--I noticed it) is that of a gentlewoman. One wouldn't have to be in Miss Ferguson's presence or her home many minutes to get this as a first impression. Her home, who was it that said, "Show me the home and I will tell you the character of the people who live there"? Elsie Ferguson's home is the sort of livable place you would associate with that. There is nothing ornate, garish or over-decorative. The lamps, the grand piano, the table with its magazines and books, the vases here and there, all bespeak refinement, good taste and breeding. Miss Ferguson, besides having a place in the picture and theatrical world, has a very definite social position given her by her marriage with Major T. B. Clarke. I might have said, primarily given her, for she has kept this place, and has by her charm, her beauty and her intelligence, made many friends in the social world. In speaking of Elsie Ferguson and the high regard in which she is held, a woman well known in literary circles spoke of seeing Miss Ferguson at the opera. At the conclusion of the last act Miss Ferguson rose, and walked out. "It was," said this woman, "as if a princess were leaving. The audience unconsciously stood still and looked at the slender, graceful figure wrapped in a chinchilla coat, and then as if unconsciously walked out after her." Ask her about suffrage, and about the uplift of the shop girl, said some one. It seemed absurd to ask Elsie Ferguson about suffrage. A woman with her mentality, her poise and her conception of life could not help believing in suffrage. "I have believed in woman's equality for many years," she said. "The old belief that a woman's place is in her home is all very well. We all like our homes, and need them; but why spend the time in the manual labor of a home, when we can get people who can do it much better than we can." "Shall I say you would love to have a rose-covered cottage, with plenty of house-work?" I asked. "The cottage sounds all right, but I am not so sure I would add the plenty of hard work," she said, smiling. Elsie Ferguson in a cottage in the kitchen takes a strength and a depth of imagination which I do not possess. I could better picture her on a throne giving orders and receiving messages from an assembled multitude. As for the shop girl. This question was born of the knowledge that Elsie Ferguson does many little kindnesses quietly, and without ostentation for some of the girls less fortunate than her gorgeous self. "The average shop girl of today seems well able to cope with the world," said Miss Ferguson. "She is taught this necessity in moving pictures, and in books. The girl of today is taught to face the world, and the salaries these girls get are usually sufficient to keep them until they can get something better. The woman who starts out to make a living will keep advancing if she has the right stuff in her. If she doesn't it is her own fault. I am not putting this down as a hard and fast rule. There are exceptions, and these cases should, of course, be helped." Right now Miss Ferguson is in Palm Beach--no, not vacationing, but working on a new production. She hasn't, she said, had a vacation in so long she feels her nerves are on edge and her mind weary for the need of some recreation. Will Elsie Ferguson return to the stage? It is possible, though such a move would not necessarily interfere with her screen work. She could do both. It is a well-known fact Miss Ferguson has had several plays submitted to her by theatrical managers within the past few months, but up to last week she had made no decision. She has a contract with the Famous Players-Lasky Company, and she has expressed herself on several occasions as being satisfied with the treatment she has received and of being eager to make other pictures, and better ones. "We need better stories," she said, "and we need them badly." There were many more things we discussed, but as I said above, Elsie Ferguson and I, like Alice and the Walrus, found the time had come to talk of many things, and, being women, we talked them, and no one could ever record everything a woman said. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Dorothy Gish November 9, 1919 Louella Parsons NEW YORK TELEGRAPH The younger daughter of the Gish family arrived in New York three weeks later than her mother and sister. Lillian and her mother brought three birds, a canary and a parrot and eight hat boxes. Dorothy worried along without any birds but she made up for this oversight by getting in Chicago with five suitcases. She lost one there somewhere between the New York Central station and the Blackstone, and landed in New York with only four. "It was either the fault of the hotel clerk or the taxi driver," she said. "Hotel clerks and taxi drivers are my pet aversion, and I hate them more than anything in the world." Dorothy, standing about five feet, very young, very slender and looking not a day over seventeen, had given her denunciation of the race of hotel clerks and taxi drivers in such a fierce tone we all laughed. "You needn't laugh," said Dorothy. "That clerk at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago acted as if I were a stray dog. I asked him if I could get a room and bath. "He said, 'Certainly not; there isn't an empty room in the house.' "'Will you please tell me where I can go,' I pleaded "'No where,' he said. 'There is a convention in town and the hotels are full.' "Then he called a boy and I fully expected to be kicked down the steps. Instead he had the boy take me to a wash room to wait, saying he would see what he could do. I waited three hours and I never heard from him until train time. I always have been afraid of hotel clerks, and now I am in abject terror of them. If one says boo to me here at the Commodore I shall make for cover." The young lady who is afraid of hotel clerks just a moment before had spoken nonchalantly of her own company. Another incongruous remark which made me smile. "Why do you smile?" she asked. "When you speak of your own company," I told her, "it sounds so important. And then in the next breath you say you fear the very people you might be expected to wither with a look." "That's the way I am," she said. "Do you know New York stifles me? It makes me so unhappy. There are so many things I want, and so many things I cannot afford to have. I don't see how people ever have money enough to live here." "Dorothy is right about being unhappy," said her mother. "She hasn't smiled since she came here. We went to a fortune-teller in Los Angeles, and he told me I would be surrounded with great hustle and bustle. And there would appear constantly in this great commotion an figure with a scornful expression." "I am it," explained Dorothy, "but I am no longer scornful; merely bewildered at the high cost of living." "Do what Marie Doro suggests in New York," advised the gentle Lillian-- "wear your old clothes and be dowdy with good grace." "What a blow all this high price of living sorrow would give the public," I thought. "All the world believes motion picture stars wear sables on Monday, mink on Tuesday, ermine on Wednesday, and other furs the rest of the week. The dear public believes to be a motion picture star means to have every whim granted at the drop of a hat." "I thought motion picture stars--" I began. "You thought like all the world," interrupted Dorothy, "that we were in the millionaire class. We do not get paid the exorbitant salaries folk believe, but because of our wealthy reputation we are made to suffer by dentists, doctors, lawyers, milliners, modistes and all down the line. I had two tiny cavities filled, and what do you think my dentist charged me--$350 for less than an hour's work!" "You didn't pay him?" "No, I left town, but I cannot always leave town when a bill is sent to me three or four times in excess of what I ought to pay. I shall have mother send him $100, which is enough for the work he has done--and then if he insists I shall tell my troubles to a judge and let him decide the issue." This interview was really to be with Dorothy, and I went over to the Commodore Hotel to have luncheon with her. Lillian and Mrs. Gish, whom I know better than the younger Gish, were also invited to Dorothy's party. The two sisters are entirely unlike--Lillian, fair and stately; Dorothy, brown- haired, less stately and with a sense of humor that is infectious. I expected to see the black bobbed wig, and looked in surprise at the light brown hair coiled so neatly on her head. "Everyone looks for my wig," said Dorothy. "I am glad to stop playing for a few weeks to get rid of wearing it. My hair is a surprise and a disappointment to everyone." "Not a disappointment," I corrected: "I like it better." In the interval while we waited for Lillian to get her mother, Dorothy told me she thought "Broken Blossoms" the best picture she had ever seen. "When I see Lillian in that picture, I make up my mind never to make another picture," she said. Which was a fine tribute from one sister to another. I understood this remark later, when Dorothy, almost in tears over her picture at the Rialto this past week said: "Comedy is the most unsatisfactory thing in the world. You never know how it's going to turn out. I started to make a drama a few weeks ago and it turned out a comedy. And we all work so hard. That's all I do--work work work. "Everyone who makes a success has to work," her mother said. "Look at Mr. Griffith, how hard he works." "And what does it get him," was Dorothy's reply. "Why, Dorothy," interrupted Lillian, "that is a strange remark." "O you know what I mean," Dorothy hastened to explain. "I mean what good does it do anyone to kill themselves working, because the worms will get you in the end." After which philosophy Mrs. Gish, youthful and pretty enough to be a sister to the girls, gently reproved her younger daughter for this outburst. The Gish girls would surprise many of these reformers who think monopoly of the world's iniquity is embodied in motion picture stars. They are sort of girls you would like to have your own daughters associate with--wholesome, clean, gently bred, and testifying to American womanhood at its best. Dorothy is the comedienne of the family, and when she ceases to smile there is a general cause for alarm. Her mother fussed over her, worried about her unhappiness and tried her best to make her youngest born forget the disadvantages of living in a big city. Mothers are pretty much alike the world over, whether they belong to famous stars or just ordinary folk. And Mrs. Gish is very much a real mother. Her girls will tell you that. They give her credit for most of their accomplishments. After luncheon in their apartment, where they insisted I go to make the acquaintance of John, the parrot, who creaks out in a funny little voice, "Mother, Lillian and Dot," they spoke of the farm they hope to buy, a nine- acre place in the country near the studio, where New York and its wicked allurement of frocks and frills will not be so distressingly near. Where Dorothy can keep a red cow that gives a quart of milk at twenty cents per each day, and where nice white chickens lay dollar a dozen eggs. It's the life for Dorothy, according to her own confession. One the way to my office Mrs. Gish walked back from the hotel with me. She said Dorothy had seven more pictures to make for Paramount, and Lillian's picture making with the other stars and Griffith players for United Artists would not affect Dorothy, who remains with Adolph Zukor at least during the term of her contract. And in conversation with this wise little mother I learned the real reason why Dorothy does not buy out the Fifth Avenue shops. Her mother insists that the girls each save a part of their salaries. "For," she said in explanation, "when they grown older their earning capacity may grown less, and you know girls seldom think this can happen. They believe their salary is a fixed income for life." And I went back to my desk, thinking of all the good fortune fate had put in the path of the Gishes, the best of all was the mother they had chosen for themselves. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Juanita Hansen May 2, 1920 Louella Parsons NEW YORK TELEGRAPH Juanita Hansen says she supposes she should have given her parents their wish and been a brunette. She was named Juanita before she was born after the song which had played a part in her parents' courting days. Juanita, suggesting Spanish, Oriental and dark-eyed, was a misnomer so far as the flaxen-haired Hansen baby was concerned. But then how could parents of Swedish ancestry expect a child with Spanish characteristics. "The name Hansen never seemed to belong to the Juanita," said the young lady herself, "but I refused to change it for Imogene Winthrop or Gladys Dewdrop, because I wanted to keep my own identity and I had a peculiar feeling the loss of my name meant a metamorphis of my personality--and that's one thing I prefer to keep always. "And there," went on this young lady, "my name has brought me many adventures. The other night a party of us went to see a burlesque show--" "Sh-sh," put in Don Meaney, supervising director, manager and adviser of Miss Hansen. "I don't believe I would mention going in a burlesque show." "Why not?" demanded Miss Hansen, "I went, didn't I?" Resuming the interrupted thread and quite undaunted by the thought passed on to her that she should mention symphony concerts, the opera and Shakespearean plays, but leave the word burlesque out of the conversation, she proceeded. "In the dressing room at the burlesque theatre was a woman of rather superior bearing. I smiled unconsciously at her and she smiled back. 'Professional?' she asked me. I replied in the affirmative and then she said, 'What is your name?' 'Juanita Hansen,' I answered. "'Juanita,' she repeated. 'Juanita. I was an actress twenty years ago and I made my greatest hit singing "Juanita."' "She sang for me, and I have never heard a clearer, sweeter voice. I was touched at her present plight and it made a deeper impression on me than any sermon I ever heard. Here she was, old and unknown, and at one time she had been the toast of the town. It made me do some thinking. "And so after all the name may be a talisman," Miss Hansen said. Miss Hansen, whose pet diversion, according to Don Meaney, is taming lions, modified the lion statement somewhat. I expected it would be modified. You see, I knew Don Meaney when he was inventing tales for Essanay as director of publicity and advertising and, if I do say it, there were few better on original ideas. In most cases he had the cooperation of his subject but in the case of Juanita Hansen this reversal to its press agent days was nipped promptly in the bud. Apropos of lions and household pets, Don had a good one up his sleeve. He told of Miss Hansen doing a regular Daniel in the lions' den scene, with snarling, growling, ferocious beasts. An aeroplane passed the cage and Juanita, the lion tamer, looked up and naively remarked. "Isn't he brave. I don't see how he dares to do those stunts in midair." But, alas, the lady should have been rehearsed. Before Don finished she said: "Why, I don't remember that." Somehow one unconsciously associates Juanita Hansen with the Mack Sennett girls. Mr. Sennett, like Flo Ziegfeld, always picks the good looking ones and to say, "Oh she is a Sennett girl" is a recommendation such as being listed in Bradstreet and Dun gives one in the financial world. It was during these pie-throwing hectic days that the name Juanita Hansen first became known in motion pictures. She had played in other pictures, but until she was lined up with the Sennett bevy of loveliness she did not register with such a bang. And yet, despite all this remembrance of her Keystone days, it is interesting to know she only made actually three pictures for the Sennett company. "I never could understand," she said, "why people continually refer to me as a Keystone girl. I served a very brief period throwing pies. I did not like comedy, and slap-stick comedy I loathed. I hated it so much I left the Keystone company with only $200 to my name and no job in sight. Mr. Sennett had always been so kind to me I made my getaway while he was out of the city. I was afraid I would be overpersuaded by him, and I knew that pie-throwing was not my forte." Miss Hansen's desire for serious roles were answered in serials. She played a few features, but her intrepid spirit, her absolute fearlessness in riding, climbing and swimming made her the ideal serial type. Her greatest success has been won in these continued next week films. She is now making a serial for Pathe, which both Mr. Meaney and Pathe do not hesitate to say has every thrill yet invented in the mind of men. Curious enough, she is something of the type of Pearl White, whose serial episodes and escapades have been household words. Like Pearl White, she photographs exceptionally well. Not only do her moving pictures give credit to her good looks, but her still pictures are exceptionally attractive. She is one of the women who look as well in pictures as she does off the screen. "I have a chance to make five-reel features when my present contract expires," said Miss Hansen, "but I love serials. You are sure of having your pictures shown for eighteen weeks consecutively in the theatre where it is booked, and if you have any claim for fame or for the affection of the public I think you are more apt to win their affection by keeping in constant touch with them." But one thing Miss Hansen regrets about her present contract is the necessity for her leaving the Coast. "You see, I was born and brought up in California," she said. "All my life I had a horse to ride, a garden and plenty of room to breathe. I feel like a lost soul in this city where every one lives so close together and there is no opportunity for real fresh air." "New York cramps her style," put in Don Meaney, feeling he had been neglected long enough. "It's a wonderful city," she said. "I adore the shops; I love Fifth avenue, and as for the theater I never had a chance to see so many plays at one time." "You do not come here often?" "It's my first visit here," she admitted. "You see, I have always lived in the West, and there was never any occasion for my coming East." And then Don Meaney, who had been chafing at his bit for the last fifteen minutes, proceeded to tell the things Miss Hansen mapped out to see in the big city. After her very simple admission of never having seen New York before one feels decided admiration for her truth and simplicity. She makes no pretense of being traveled, learned or wise. She is as she is. If you like her, she is glad; if you don't, well that is your privilege. As for the chance to make a big salary, it's like a fairy tale in her life. To have all she wants to spend is as if she had stepped into some other girl's shoes. It is said one finds this simplicity more in the West. If true, Juanita Hansen is the very spirit of the West in her mannerisms, her hail fellow well met attitude and her absence from affectation. She is not blase. She has not burned the candle at both ends. Life holds much for her, and it isn't going to be her fault if she doesn't get all that is coming to her. She said frankly she came to New York alone. "Why shouldn't I?" she asked. "I had Mr. and Mrs. Meaney, and I am not afraid. I have taken care of myself alone ever since I was fourteen. I have taken care of my mother, too. She has depended upon me, and if I had been a coward what would have become of us? We would have been swallowed up, and I would probably be clerking in a store or working in a factory." So 'tis plain to be seen Miss Hansen has more in that small head of hers than her light, fluffy hair, and she will manage to take care of herself. Yes, we think she will without the slightest difficulty. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * [The following woman is not really an "actress", but she did appear in her husband's documentary films, and the interview is interesting enough that it is included here.] Osa Johnson March 23, 1919 Louella Parsons NEW YORK TELEGRAPH Tomorrow Mr. and Mrs. Martin Johnson put behind them for three long years every comfort of civilization. They start on the first lap of a journey which will take them into the depths of tropical forests, and into the wilds of the South Sea Islands, where natives roam about in their birthday clothes and choose as their special desert a compote made of man's flesh. A woman who has lived in a palm-thatched hut, away from the electric lights, the pavements and the luxury of hot and cold showers, has had adventures the rest of us in our civilized life have been denied. Mrs. Johnson, therefore, appealed to me as a woman whom I should like to meet. I had pictured her as reflecting some of the color of her South Sea Island existence, and was surprised to see standing before me a fair-haired, slender young woman who looked as if she has never been away from Broadway and its alluring atmosphere. The Johnson apartment was filled with trunks, bags and suitcases containing, Mrs. Johnson told me, the most precious belongings of these two wanderers, who were storing all of their best-loved treasures. There was no suggestion of the South Sea Islands in this New Yorky apartment fitted out with all the up-to-date necessities, with the exception of a chatter of speaking birds, which floated from the dining-room into the living room, and gave out the shrill sound of the far-away tropics. There are three of the birds left out of the nine Mrs. Johnson brought with her from the islands. One of them, a rare specimen of parrot, brilliant in plumage and gorgeous in color. Two of them are white birds, pink-tinted and noisier than the parrot. Such a commotion and chattering. They answered in squeaky tones the voice of their mistress, showing almost uncanny intelligence in recognizing her. "Weren't you afraid," I asked Mrs. Johnson, "to live among those wild bushmen on the islands?" "I was frightened," she said, "of course, though I loved the free outdoor life. I spent my time swimming, hunting and fishing; I lived in my bathing suit or in silk pajamas; it is so hot you simply cannot dress. The British Government begged Mr. Johnson not to risk his life, but ever since he took a trip on the schooner Snark with Jack London he has longed to continue his exploration and to get pictures of this 'great unfilmed' country." The Johnsons have been married nine years, although Mrs. Johnson might easily pass for a girl of eighteen. She and her husband have never been separated for a day, and when he announced to her it was the ambition of his life to film these savages of the South Sea Islands and put into motion pictures the bushmen of the back country of the Malista, she insisted upon facing all of the dangers with him. "We were saved," Mrs. Johnson said, "by the timely arrival of a British man-of-war, lying in a nearby harbor. The natives are terrified by the machine guns. One time some of the sailors landed and were immediately killed by the savages. The machine gun on the ship was turned on them and they were mowed down like so many stalks of grain. Ever since that time they have had a wholesome fear of the man-of-war, and we owe our deliverance and our safety to its power." An adventurous part of the Johnson journey will be a visit to old Chief Nagapate, the cruel chieftain of the South Island, who finds the flesh of human beings the most tempting dish obtainable for his dinner. The chief was the hero in a film taken by Mr. Johnson, and upon his return he hopes to pay his respects to this unwilling star by projecting this picture on a screen. "This," said Mrs. Johnson, "will be the first picture ever shown on the island, and if the picture does not frighten the life out of Nagapate, it will at least make him treat us with more respect than he did on our last visit." Mr. and Mrs. Johnson will go alone on their expedition. They are accustomed to the life on the islands and Mr. Johnson feels they can get better results with the natives by approaching them alone. Aside from the photographic equipment, containing special lenses for microscopic work, special metals made to resist the heat of the tropics, long-distance lenses, five different kinds of cameras and a complete developing and printing apparatus, there will be gifts for the natives. "We are taking gay beads, jumping jacks, tobacco, knives, hatchets, bolts of calico, old hats, fancy dress costumes, and things which will appeal to the simple souls of these untamed children of nature. "Speaking of calico," said Mrs. Johnson, "they love it. They will disappear and wrap themselves in yards of it, showing they have instinctive modesty as well as a love of color. People have laughed at me when I say the South Sea Islanders have more morals than the average white man. In all the three years we spent with these people I never saw them do one thing out of the way--they are cruel, but so far as their morals are concerned I might say they are unblemished." Mrs. Jack London visited the Johnsons in the Fall, and it is the intention of Mrs. Johnson to return the visit when they get to San Francisco. "You know Jack London was my husband's dearest friend," she said. "It seems hard that the Londons had to be separated, they were so well mated and so happy. Charmain and he were so congenial. She would rough it and live close to nature the way he liked, forgetting the luxuries at home. The first Mrs. London adored society and liked to have Mr. London appear every evening in dinner clothes and live in the correct manner in which she was accustomed. He hated all that sham, and they didn't get along well together." Mr. Johnson, his wife explained, was a member of the original crew that sailed from the Golden Gate harbor on the schooner Snark for the South Sea Islands. It is Mr. Johnson's intention to send his completed film to the traders at Sydney, Australia, to deliver it to Robertson-Cole here in New York, so all the time this intrepid pair are facing the fascinating experience of perhaps being cooked for dinner, the world will be seeing their pictures. One of their expeditions will take them among a class of people who place a stone[...] substitute will have to do. They live on canned foods. Don't you think, girls, all the things so dear to the feminine heart and regarded as so altogether necessary, is a lot to give up for art and one's husband? * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Alice Joyce January 5, 1919 Louella Parsons NEW YORK TELEGRAPH Alice Joyce is shy. She is self-conscious, frightened to the point of tears at crowds, dislikes to meet new people, and constantly bemoans the fact that she lacks the necessary poise and savoir faire for attractive, well balanced womanhood. The above description is exactly what Miss Joyce thinks of herself, and a very accurate analysis of the mental picture she carries of her own importance. It is not the way the world measures her, nor the impression I gained after a delightful two hours spent over the luncheon table with her. In fact, the mental picture I carried away was the direct opposite from her own frank declaration of her short-comings. My meeting Alice Joyce was the climax of a long desired opportunity to speak and to have a chance to converse with a young woman whose name I have probably written some five hundred times in my life. Since those days in 1910 and 1911, when Kalem, as one of the foremost film producing companies, and Alice Joyce as the star of one-reel dramas, were in the picture ascendant, Miss Joyce has had a tremendous hold on the public. Even during the days when she returned to give her undivided attention to her little daughter, there were always requests for Alice Joyce stories and questions as to when she would come back to the waiting public. Therefore when her secretary called me on the phone, I felt Miss Joyce must have realized how much I wanted to know her. Our appointment was at the Claridge, and we were both on time. She was nice enough to say this desire to have a chat was mutual. If Miss Joyce had told me of her extreme shyness before we walked into the dining room I might have believed her, but after seeing her queenly quiet unconsciousness of all the stares and nods in her direction, I knew she was nothing she thought and everything she didn't think; which, after all, is rather nice, especially when one hasn't even a bowing acquaintance with the word conceit. Miss Joyce acknowledges she owes a very great debt of gratitude to the Kalem Company for taking her when she was a novice and for steering her safely by all the camera pitfalls. "In those days," she said, "I didn't even know I must not look into the camera. I didn't know the first thing about picture acting, and I don't mind telling you it took patience and perseverance to teach me what to do and what not to do." One does not have to have a key to the book on human-nature to get a keen insight into the character of Alice Joyce. She breathes a veritable atmosphere of real womanhood. One man said, in speaking of Miss Joyce, a woman with eyes like hers could never be anything but sweet and kind. If the eyes are the windows of the soul, Alice Joyce must have a Madonna-like quality in her nature, for she has the most perfect Madonna eyes I have ever seen. They are a replica of the painting of the Madonnas of every country. One couldn't name any special picture, for her eyes are like them all, and she instinctively gives one a feeling she is everything her eyes claim for her. It was while Miss Joyce was playing in Kalem pictures that she was wooed and won by Tom Moore, one of the stalwart Moore boys. This romance, which started out so auspiciously, was blasted by mutual consent. Ordinarily one stays religiously away from the subject when there is a domestic breach, but Miss Joyce herself introduced Mr. Moore into the conversation so easily and so gracefully we felt no restraint in speaking of him. "Mr. Moore deserves the great success he has made with the Goldwyn Company, for he has brains and ability, and is one of the best juvenile actors in the country today. I was so pleased to have one of the Goldwyn executives tell me how well his pictures are going throughout the country," is the way she commented upon Tom Moore. This was said with a ring of sincerity, too, for although Miss Joyce and Mr. Moore are separated they are still good friends and have never reached the point of stabbing each other with unprintable words for weapons. I couldn't help thinking what Owen Moore had said to me at the Sixty Club. Alice Joyce was there dancing and looking particularly lovely in a pale yellow satin frock. "Alice Joyce, in my opinion," said her one-time brother-in-law, "is the most beautiful woman here tonight." This was after the separation, and was said after Owen Moore had commented several times on how much he liked Alice Joyce. The brown tones in the smart street suit Miss Joyce wore harmonized most amazingly with the dark brown of her eyes. I accused her of planning her costume to match her eyes. She disclaimed all such intention, by declaring colors were the bane of her existence. "I never know what colors are becoming to me," she said. "I seem to have no faculty for getting the right shades to wear. The one thing I have admired, especially about Blanche Sweet is her judgment in knowing what colors suit her, and planning all her frocks and hats with those certain tones in mind." We spoke of art and music and gossiped a little as two women who have the screen at heart are bound to do. Alice Joyce makes no pretension of being a high brow, but she has an innate liking for things fine and real. To associate her with anything common and ordinary would be to depreciate the value of a fine bit of statuary or to lower the worth of a choice engraving. She is a woman who has a set standard for herself, and whatever obstacles lie in her path she seems bent on following out her own idealism. Usually women who give out this impression create the idea of painful prudery and forced goodness. One cannot accuse Alice Joyce of trying to set herself up on a pedestal. She does not criticize other people nor does she loudly cry out her own virtues. She merely lives as she believes is right, permitting the rest of the world to follow its own sweet will. Only Alice Joyce is not shy, she is not self-conscious, and she does not lack poise. These are the bugbears that worry her, but they are needless causes for fear, for only to herself does Miss Joyce give out the impression of being anything but extremely well poised and entirely able to meet folk and cope with them in conversation, and match with them her own wit and repartee. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Mae Marsh April 15, 1923 Louella Parsons NEW YORK TELEGRAPH Mae Marsh, who returns to the Griffith fold in "The White Rose" after an absence of six years, comes back in an unexpected fashion. The little sister of "the Birth of a Nation," the pathetic little wife of "Intolerance," and the sweet and heroine of numberless Griffith dramas, plays an up-to-date "flapper." "Instead of having the hero court me," said Mae, "I run after him, decking myself in the garb of the up-to-date flapper and pursuing him relentlessly. I had to study the psychology of the flapper, because she is a rare avis to me. In the past I have played the ingenue variety--the girl who wears a white dress and blue sash and who peers shyly upon the world through a mass of tangled curls. In "The White Rose" my hair is bobbed and I forgo all my former earmarks of girlish sweetness. I become a brazen overdressed girl whose world is clothes." Be this as it may, the "flapper" must have her moments of pathos, because every one in the Griffith office who saw "The White Rose" shed buckets of tears. "Jack" Lloyd, who says he has a stony heart that never melts, cried all over his new monogrammed handkerchief. "How did it seem to be working again for Mr. Griffith?" Mae was asked. "Very strange," she replied. "I have had so many poor directors during the six years' interval since I left him--it took me several weeks to get used to his way of directing me. "Do you know," she said earnestly, "I never realized how wonderful Mr. Griffith is. Up to the time I left the Griffith company to go with Goldwyn I had never worked for anyone else. I came to the old Biograph studios as a child and I thought all directors were like Mr. Griffith, but I hadn't been away from him very long before I knew why his pictures were better. There is as much difference between Mr. Griffith and the average director as there is between a genuine Corot painting and a badly executed imitation. "In Florida," said Miss Marsh, "the people could not believe Mr. Griffith was a real director. They had seen directors wearing knee breeches and puttees, dressed in the height of fashion, going in swimming every day and creating a great deal of attention, and here was a man whose first thought was his picture. We worked like slaves and so did he. He didn't have time for any nonsense. As for dressing the part--he always wears the oldest clothes he owns when he is making a picture. His recreation was dining with the McLeans on the Pioneer, the houseboat where President and Mrs. Harding were guests and he had dinner with William Jennings Bryan several times." Miss Marsh herself dined with Mr. Bryan and visited the McLeans. Now that she has finished her picture with Mr. Griffith she is formulating new plans for making pictures. She says these plans are too vague to be made public yet, but she knows what she wants to do and if she is able to get the right story she will be ready in a month to tell her secrets. Before she does anything she is going to her home in California with her husband and daughter and take a rest. One of Miss Marsh's most recent pictures is "Paddy the Next Best Thing." This is based on a play that ran in London for three years with Peggy O'Neil in the leading role. Lee Arms, who is Miss Marsh's husband, says he doesn't wish to be prejudiced, but he thinks it is about the best English-made film he has ever seen and he says his wife does some work that reminds him of the old-time Griffith pictures. Meanwhile, every one is waiting to see "The White Rose." In addition to Miss Marsh, Carol Dempster, Ivor Novello and Neil Hamilton, the Griffith find, are in the cast. It is said every Griffith picture brings some heretofore unknown player into notice and at the Griffith office they are saying that Neil Hamilton is this discovery. With Mae the day I had luncheon with her was her mother, Mrs. Marsh, who has kept her figure and who has masses of red gold hair that made her look as if she might be a sister, but never old enough to be the mother of Mae and the grandmother of little Mary Marsh Arms. Mrs. Marsh, with two actresses in the family and a son, who is considered one of the best cameramen in the field, knows all about motion pictures, and she was particularly eager to have Mae make a picture with Mr. Griffith. Marguerite Marsh is in vaudeville doing, her mother says, very well and so happy she hasn't thought of returning to the screen. I asked Mae if Mr. Griffith found her any different from the girl he trained in the ways of the screen. "Some older," she said, "but just as eager to please him and get my scenes the way he thought they should be played. "The sad part," said Mae, "is after playing with him I am going to be very hard to please in the matter of a director. He always knows exactly what he wants--and some of the directors I have worked for have made it necessary for me to go ahead and do most of picture myself." "The interest Mr. Griffith keeps in his former players," Mae says, "is one of the finest things about him. "He talked of Mary Pickford, Lillian and Dorothy Gish and expressed interest in their work and recalled the old days when they all worked in the old Biograph studios. "Days that were history-making because they were the beginning of better motion pictures. Days when one-reelers were the fashion and big salaries were unheard of. "Most of us," said Mae, "leave when we get big salaries, but most of us are willing to return for less money because we know the picture will be good and that is something no one can promise with other directors. Mr. Griffith has only made one poor picture." And because I refuse to admit that picture was poor I am not going to tell which one Mae considers beneath his art. Anyway, we all have a right to our opinions. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Violet Mersereau December 18, 1921 Louella Parsons NEW YORK TELEGRAPH Christmas in Rome is one thing to read about, but another thing to experience. Violet Mersereau took all this into consideration when the chance was given her to either stay in sunny Italy and Christmas with strangers or hurry to the steamer homeward bound and reach New York in time to hang up her stocking on U. S. soil. Being 100 per cent American, her choice was easy. She arrived home last week full of adventures abroad, but content with the land of her birth. These adventures were mostly staged in a motion picture studio where Miss Mersereau was playing the part of the fair-haired Christian girl in the great spectacular film drama "Nero" J. Gordon Edwards is making for the Fox Film Company. Accompanied by her mother and her sister Claire, Miss Violet sailed for Italy last July and has been there ever since with the exception of the few weeks she spent in Germany and Switzerland. Over the luncheon table Miss Mersereau told of her experiences abroad, many of them amusing, and all of them interesting. "Making pictures in Rome," she said, "has some advantages and many disadvantages. The climate is perfect, and the studios are fair, but none of them have the perfect equipment that make our American studios such a joy. "I might give as one of the greatest disadvantages my scenes with the players who spoke only Italian or French. I was the only American in the cast, and I found it somewhat disconcerting at times to have the director tell me to look tenderly at the leading man while I listened to his earnest protestations of love--disconcerting, I mean, when he would pour a perfect volley of Italian at me. I could not understand a word he was trying to say, and when I answered his passionate declarations in English he looked just as mystified. I felt sorry for him. He seemed to think I was discussing everything but my film affection. "I think I was a little disappointed in the Italian men," confessed Miss Violet. "I had thought all Romans must be tall and handsome and like greek Gods. I found the Italian men small, very timid and not at all like I had pictured them. Their spaghetti eating amazed me, and after seeing yards of this food crammed down their mouths I decided I never wanted to see or eat it again." "Tell about the lions," prompted Sister Claire, who had joined us at the luncheon. "The Italian climate is so balmy it affects even the beasts," went on Miss Violet. "The lions engaged to devour the Christians were so weary and so bored Mr. Edwards said it would be easier to pet them than to fear them. When my mother saw how harmless these gorgeous beasts of the jungle appeared she heaved a great sigh of relief, for she had expected to see me eaten alive before her very eyes. Just when we were all feeling the cruelty of the beast of the jungle had been greatly exaggerated Mr. Edwards said we will go to Germany and get some real lions." "Oh, those terrible, terrible beasts," interrupted Claire. Yes, they were terrible, shivered Violet. "The leading man took one look at the jowls of the lion which was supposed to feed on him and he said, 'you must get a substitute.' "Mr. Edwards," went on Miss Mersereau, "was very much upset. He had brought all this company to Cologne just to get the lions, and here was the leading man ready to leave us. "You won't desert me, will you, Violet?" "I told him no and laid me down to die. The leading man seeing me about to be put into the jaws of the lions thought he could do no more than die with me. We laid down and the lion saw us and made one dash. For the rehearsal we were separated from his majesty by a thin piece of glass. He broke the glass and made a dive for his victims. I was so terrified I took to my heels and ran out of the picture. There was a trainer near by with a gun, but the sight of that great beast licking his chops was enough to frighten any one. But we returned to the scene and let the camera catch us with the lions about to devour us. I was so glad when it was over I wanted to cry for joy." Miss Mersereau had one regret. She longed to go to Paris and shop on the Rue de Paix. "I needed clothes so badly," she said. "That frock is charming," I told her. "Oh, this is a Parisian product," she said, pointing to her gray velvet frock, with its had and boots to match. "A purchase made in Italy but imported to Rome. "We enjoyed Switzerland and Germany, but we felt we missed a great deal by not getting to Paris and London. I have not been in France since I was a little girl, and there is so much I want to see--not only the shops, but the galleries and the places of historical interest." "But you enjoyed Italy?" I asked her. "I enjoyed most of all working for Mr. Edwards. It was one of my happiest engagements. He doesn't rehearse you until you are ready to faint from fatigue. He gives you credit for a little intelligence, and after explaining the scene and the mechanics gives you an opportunity to play the situation in your own way. I firmly believe," went on Miss Violet, "first emotions are best, and by that token I can act a scene better when I do it as it comes to me first." "He let you do it your way," Miss Violet was told "because he knows you have had experience on the stage and screen and could interpret the scenes without a primer of instruction." "I suppose there is something to that," replied Miss Mersereau. "I have been on the stage since I was eight and in pictures since I was twelve. One would have to be very stupid not to learn something of the technique of the drama in that length of time." "Do you think you will return to Italy?" "Violet had several offers to make pictures for Italian companies," answered her sister, "but she wanted to get home." "Yes, and this ought to be our very happiest Christmas," said Violet. "Mr. Edwards said he could use me in other foreign pictures and I suppose I might have waited until he was ready for me, but I longed to hang my stocking up in New York, all I could think of was getting home by December 25." Miss Mersereau can go to Italy any time she chooses if one is to believe what one hears. The swarthy Latin race admired her golden hair, violet eyes and fair complexion. To them she was the personification of all that is young and beautiful, and the artistic Italians love beauty and worship it above everything else. But we are glad she decided to come home for Christmas because we agree with her the best place to greet the mistletoe and holly season is right in the U. S. A. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Alma Rubens December 14, 1919 Louella Parsons NEW YORK TELEGRAPH Locating a face you have only seen on the screen is not as simple as it sounds. Alma Rubens in her street clothes is not like Alma Rubens in peasant costume or Alma Rubens in a white frock and sash. Unconsciously the girl I had mentally mirrored in my mind fitted in with this latter classification, hence we passed each other by without a sign of recognition. We were both fifteen minutes late, a feminine failing this time of the year, with Christmas shopping to be finished in odd moments. She looked frantically in every nook and cranny in the Commodore mezzanine and I did the same. After we had passed each other about twenty times I decided the only solution was to have her paged. The same idea must have come to her at exactly the same moment for our two names were shouted through the hotel corridors simultaneously. And we met, introduced by a page boy. After Miss Rubens removed her heavy fur coat with its huge collar shading her face I wondered I had not instantly recognized her. Off the screen there is, of course, that same Oriental type of beauty, dusky eyes and dark straight hair. Her coloring the screen fails to get. Alma Rubens is one of the girls whom David Griffith chose for a picture, and by his selection gave her an entree into motion pictures. Mr. Griffith's choice of film material is always distinctive and every girl whom he casts in a picture is given opportunities to make good. Some of these young women have justified the Griffith confidence in their beauty and talent, others have not lived up to his diagnosis. Alma Rubens in herself has justified the Griffith selection, but her vehicles have not always been so fortunate. The shortcomings of the Rubens pictures have in the past been not in any fault of acting but frequently in the story, its structure and its theme. Those days of anguish now Miss Rubens believes are in the past. She is to have congenial stories and no plays which are distasteful. Her first, "Humoresque," is a Fanny Hurst story picturing a girl whom Miss Rubens says she knows and understands. International, for whom she is to make the Cosmopolitan brand of pictures, believes in an actress's own intuition where film plays are concerned, and Miss Rubens is banking on this privilege of exerting her intuition to the utmost. "It's pleasant to be allowed to have a word in the selection of the plays I am to interpret. But I have been so frightened at the 'temperamental' reputation I have in the industry I let this suggestion come from International. I have been called the most difficult actress in pictures, when all I ask or have ever asked is to have stories suited to me. That isn't much to demand, now is it?" Temperament is the most used and misused word in the dictionary. It covers a multitude of other sins and frequently is used where it does not belong. Therefore, when Miss Rubens first said she had been accused of being temperamental I felt her own interpretation was needed. Some actresses feel it is a personal slight if you fail to agree with the world and do not call them temperamental, while to others it is the nastiest word in the lexicon of characteristics. To the latter class belongs Alma Rubens, and her genuine anxiety at clearing herself of this stigma would have been amusing had she been less in earnest. She has had a year of changes. Since leaving Triangle, the company with whom she has spent the most of her motion picture career, she has had several contracts, but they were of brief duration, caused, she said, by a multitude of reasons. Miss Rubens is a convent-bred girl, having graduated from the Mesdames of the Sacred Heart in San Francisco, and she admits her fondness for children and for lending a helping hand was instilled in her by the gentle sisters who taught her to not only preach but practice charity. "Those lessons cling to me," she said, "despite the disillusionments of the world outside a convent wall. For instance, I spend $100 a week sending photographs to the fans. I don't mind the money and I am glad to send my picture to any one who is sincere in wanting it--but I wish some one could have that money who needs it. I wonder if I couldn't sell my pictures through some orphanage and let this institution have the revenue? "Will you help me find such a place?" she asked. Miss Rubens's idea may be a brilliant gem. If all the stars sold their pictures in this way what a harvest these homes would make. And most of the people who write could afford 25 cents. They spend many times that in postage and stationary telling the world how much they love Mary Pickford or why Charlie Chaplin's feet are the funniest in captivity. The rest of our conversation was a discussion of this and those who compose the letter-writing world. We decided these folk who send letters to actresses are in a class by themselves and have a hobby just the same as any postage stamp collector. Being discovered by David Griffith and remaining on the screen in spite of an army of discouragements isn't sufficient for Miss Rubens. She has the stage hankering in an exaggerated form and it is our experience when a young woman of Alma Rubens's comeliness wants a thing bad enough she gets it. She admitted she had been given a play by a stage producer to read and if she liked it and he liked her in the part she might spread her wings stageward. "But I want to do a serious part. As much as I wish to go on the stage I will not accept a play or a part until I know I can do the sort of thing I am best fitted to play. I couldn't play light comedy. I would be a dismal failure, and as for bedroom farces I would get my notice at the end of the first week." We shall see what we shall see when Miss Alma does take that stage plunge, meanwhile she is enthusiastic over an opportunity to put Fanny Hurst on the screen or perhaps we should say over Fanny Hurst's opportunity to put her in pictures. It seems a mutual delight, and when two women of brains set their mind to the accomplishment of a deed no more need be said, especially when they have International back of them. And next time we meet Miss Rubens promises to know me and I am sure unless she wears a mask I shall know her. No one could miss her eyes. They are a combination of what Tennyson could have beautifully described and of what the twentieth century scribe would call a "come hither look." * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Gloria Swanson April 16, 1922 Louella Parsons NEW YORK TELEGRAPH If any one pictures Gloria Swanson as a blase young woman, bored with everything life has to offer, he has only to hear her on the subject of going to Europe. She is as pleased as a youngster at his first circus, and as thrilled as any girl in the world would be at an opportunity of getting her first glimpse of Paris. I had not expected to see Gloria this trip. She was only in town from Wednesday until Saturday, but an unexpected meeting at the Famous Players- Lasky offices presented a chance to talk to her, and hear something of her plans for Europe. "The one sad thing," Gloria confessed, "is leaving the baby for two months. Mr. Somborn has her with her nurse at his hotel. I thought it was a fair thing to do, but when I think how she will grow and how she will forget me in that time, I have a feeling I may be homesick. "We better not talk about that," she said. "I suppose all mothers feel that way. She is such a gorgeous baby, so pretty and so responsive." "Where are you going and what are your plans?" an interruption that brought the proud mother of the most beautiful baby in the world back to the subject at hand. "Seven days in Paris, four in London, two in Monte Carlo, two in Naples, one day in Florence and Venice, and four days in Berlin," answered Miss Swanson. "You see," she laughed, "I have our itinerary all down to a system. It's my very first visit to Europe and I do not want to miss a single thing. I am so thrilled I can hardly sleep at night. "I shall probably travel around with a Baedecker in one hand and a sandwich in the other because I want to see Versailles, Malmaison, Westminster Abbey, the Louvre, the London Tower and all those historical places of interest I have read so much about, and I shall try to get in the races at London and the Grand Prix at Paris, and of course the Casino at Monte Carlo." Shopping will be part of the program. Miss Swanson sailed yesterday morning on the Homeric with Mrs. Frank Urson, wife of Marshall Neilan's assistant director, and the two girls were planning where to shop in Paris, and how many Paris frocks they would bring home. "One person tells me to shop one place and another says, 'Oh, I wouldn't go there, you will not find any exclusive styles,' so I have decided," said Gloria, "to select my own shop, and do a little reconnoitering on my own hook." "You would," I said, and we both laughed. Gloria, the ambitious youngster who used to park her belongings outside my office door at the Essanay Film offices, when she was trying her wings in motion pictures for the first time, is not very different from the star of today. The young woman with everything at her feet. She is a little sadder, a little older, and has, of course, acquired more dignity and poise. But there is the same eagerness to learn and the same ambition to get to the tip top, and to leave no stone unturned to make her dreams come true. "I like New York," she said, looking out of the window down the crowded Fifth Avenue street. "I like all the busy people, and all the signs of energy and life. I get tired of California. There isn't much out there but work and home, no theatres and no scenes of activity like that. Of course I suppose if I lived here I should feel I have the two big things, my work and my child--that is all any one can ask for. We all have our disappointments, and mine are no more bitter than other peoples, only things do not always turn out as one expects." "But you have been very lucky?" "In some ways," she answered. Miss Swanson said all the girls who met her asked about Rudolph Valentino. "He played opposite me in my last picture, 'The Gilded Cage' [Beyond the Rocks], and if these questions concerning him are any criterion or indication of his popularity, they will all rush to see him when the picture is released. They asked me how he makes love and a few more equally interesting questions. I suppose 'The Sheik' had something to do with this interest." Gloria looked very well in a mink coat, a grey frock with hat and shoes to match, and some curious amber earrings and necklace. She always has the air of being perfectly groomed, and only in the Cecil De Mille pictures does she affect bizarre costumes and unusual hair dressing. She is and always was one of the best dressed women off the screen, which is saying something. Many a star might qualify for that distinction on the screen but not many in their regular street garb. As Gloria rushed to join her friends I could not help thinking Paris would not have anything on the Rue de la Paix any better gowned or smarter than Gloria. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Blanche Sweet December 29, 1918 Louella Parsons NEW YORK TELEGRAPH Just now Blanche Sweet is facing a very interesting moment in her career as a motion picture star. After having deliberately stepped out of the public eye, where she was reigning as one of the most popular stars in motion pictures, into private life, Miss Sweet is about to return to her former pedestal and take back her place in the affection of the public. How will she be received? Will the historical fickleness of the American audiences manifest itself, or will the love they have had for Blanche Sweet through all the years of her reign still predominate? Ah! here is a psychological question worth studying for future use? This was the thought I had in my mind when I went to the Knickerbocker Hotel to have luncheon with Miss Sweet. I had talked with her over the phone, but I had not had a glimpse of her for some months. After she greeted me and we walked into the dining room and were seated, I wondered how I could have ever given the fickleness of the public a thought. A dozen heads were turned in our direction, and full the same number of voices whispered in accents of interest: "Blanche Sweet." Blanche Sweet, to be sure, is as pretty a blonde and as well poised and charming as ever. Looking better than she looked in the days when the exhibitors fell all over each other to book her pictures, when she and Cecil De Mille were a combination of acknowledged strength. Another argument that Blanche Sweet still retains her hold on the affections of the motion picture audiences is the number of letters she has received since she made her last picture two years ago. We who snoop into the private affairs of these film stars have also been deluged with questions as to when and where Blanche Sweet would play a return engagements. She had made her two pictures, "The Hushed Hour" and "The Unpardonable Sin," and will be seen in both of these in Los Angeles in January. Just when they will be released outside of the motion picture city depends, we suppose, upon how they are distributed and by whom. To return to our luncheon. Miss Sweet was leaving that very night for the Coast. She was going to speed across the country to get back West in time to eat Christmas turkey. We talked of the shortage of good material, and the great difficulty that every star experiences in getting the right sort of scenarios. "The novelists and playwrights have boosted the price of every popular book and play so high, one has to hesitate before one can even consider buying them. I am too good a business woman," said Miss Sweet, "to pay $40,000 for a play without having given what the cost of production will be some consideration. Forty thousand dollars without anything but the scenario is a lot of money." We agree that $40,000 was so much we never expected to see that amount either in cash or on a check. We hoped we would never be tempted with that amount, for the scales which old dame Justice spends her life trying to balance would have a terrific jolt. "I am confident," went on Miss Sweet, "that the story is the thing, but it is going to be a problem to get it. For instance, I thought Miss Pickford's purchase of 'Daddy Long-Legs' and 'Pollyanna' was a wise stroke of showmanship. She had the good sense to see that no star is big enough to carry a picture alone." We chatted about the Coast and the stars, all of whom are working there. We gossiped a bit, though Blanche Sweet never seems to really gossip, for she never has anything but cheerful, pleasant things to day of her fellow workers. This trait in Miss Sweet is one of the things which attracted me toward her when I first met her a few years ago. She seems to have the happy faculty of always seeing things through rose colored glasses, of finding some gold among the dross. She spoke of the artistry of Charlie Chaplin, and how remarkable she thought it was that he had never yet recorded a failure in any of his productions. We spoke, of course, of Charlie's marriage, and Miss Sweet said when Mr. Chaplin did announce it they all refused to believe him. "We thought it was one of Charlie's pranks," she said. While we were having luncheon the discussion of proper publicity came up and Miss Sweet expressed her strong disapproval of the way the average picture is put on the market. "It annoys me," she said, "to have them advertise in big letters that my picture is the greatest one ever made. Besides being in bad taste it strikes me as a mistake for any company to make such a statement. I was speechless when I read that I was supposed to say all of those complimentary things about 'The Unpardonable Sin.' Why, I have had the most wonderful cooperation from the entire company, including the cast, the director, the cameraman, every one who had a part in making my picture, and they haven't even been mentioned." "But you do think 'The Unpardonable Sin' is a good picture, don't you?" "I think it is wonderful. It is Marshall Neilan at his best, and I feel I have never done better work--but see here," she said, looking at me suspiciously, "you aren't going to publish that?--I am telling you because we are friends." I am going back on Miss Sweet, however, and I am publishing it, because I believe it is a good thing for her admirers to know she really believes in the picture and feels she has a worthy vehicle to come back to her friends. As for advertising the fact she likes the picture, even that doesn't seem as flagrant a breach of good taste as she says, for if the world didn't have a chance to read of the merits of the picture, the exhibitors, the audiences and even the other manufacturers might never know all of these things about the production. Blanche Sweet is blessed with the rare combination of having an artistic mind and an excellent business judgment. I remember her telling me one time she had never yet made an error in her bank account. She said she knew to a penny just how much she had in her account and how much she spent. "In fact," she said, laughing, "I should have been a bookkeeper. Sometimes I think my brain was meant for bookkeeping and my soul for pictures." All of this greatly impressed me, for my mathematics is so wabbly, when the little girl who lives at our house comes to me for help, I immediately seek some way to escape. I have to trust my bank implicitly, for if they told me I didn't have a penny left I should probably take their word for it, and you can readily see what a dishonest bank could do to such an unmathematical person. P. S.--I hope my banker doesn't read this. I left Miss Sweet hurrying to keep a business engagement before she set sail on the Golden Limited. The last glimpse I had of her she was waving her hand smilingly, and again I said to myself: "Yes, Blanche Sweet will come back, and the dear public will forget for once to be disagreeable and fickle, for she has a charm about her, an elusive something that two years' absence will not make you or me forget." * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Alice Terry February 18, 1923 Louella Parsons NEW YORK TELEGRAPH Wherever Alice Terry dined, wherever she lunched or spent the evening she was received with the open-eyed admiration of our Manhattan, who, like Paris, can forgive a woman anything but ugliness. But Manhattan, in addition to loathing plainness in women, strikes such a high average of feminine beauty a woman has to be a combination of Helen of Troy and Cleopatra to get more than the flicker of an eyelash. So when every man in the Knickerbocker grill gazed with admiring eyes on Alice Terry I realized, if I needed anything further to convince me, that the wife of Rex Ingram is a very beautiful woman. But it was not this beauty that gave her a chance to play the leading feminine role in "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse." It was Rex Ingram's confidence in her ability. He had known her for some years when he brought her the offer to play Margaret in Ibanez's story. "I cannot do it," she told him. "Don't you like the part?" he asked. "I love it, but I haven't had sufficient experience to play in a picture of the importance of 'The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse'." And after Mr. Ingram had persuaded her to let him cast her, she worried for fear she might spoil the picture for him. The slim, blonde girl, who, with Rodolph Valentino, came in for world- wide praise, was made in that picture. Rex Ingram was right: the role was meant for her. Because Ibanez described Margaret as a blonde, Mr. Ingram, eager to follow the book as far as possible, insisted that Miss Terry cover her auburn locks and become a blonde. The effect was marvelous, so marvelous that she has never made a picture without the wig. People meeting her for the first time take one look at her auburn hair and look surprised. "Miss Terry!" they repeat, and, if they are impulsive and given to talking too much, they will say: "But your hair!" The complications, she says, of being a blonde on the screen and a brunette on the street are many, but now that her public is used to seeing her look like Margaret she has no intention of disappointing them. Just before Miss Terry went to the Coast she was called upon to make a momentous decision--whether to sign a contract with Metro and remain a Rex Ingram star or to go with another company where she would have to paddle her own canoe. "Mr. Loew is such a good boss," she said, "and I love working with my husband, but sometimes I feel it would be better for us both. Rex feels he must not play me up too much in any of his pictures, because people will say that he pushed his wife forward, and I would like to see what I can do without help. "Of course," said Miss Terry earnestly, "if Rex had any objection to my leaving Metro I wouldn't consider the other offer. But he is perfectly willing to have me do what I want in the matter. I haven't reached any decision yet, but the company that made me the offer is one of the largest ones in the business. Naturally Rex would not permit me to talk business with any other kind." If Miss Terry does sign the other contract she will make "Scaramouche" for Metro first. She says she loves the story and she is eager to play the woman's part. While she was in New York she had an offer to play "Scaramouche" on the stage with Sidney Blackmar. "Why didn't you accept the offer?" she was asked. "I should have died of fright. I know I could never go on the stage," she said. "I was cast for a part in a tableau on the stage in California, and if I had had anything to say I would have passed away then and there." The Ingrams returned to the Coast a week ago. Mrs. Ingram was not very eager to get back to sunny California. In New York she managed to get in the theatres, some parties and a good time. "In California," she said, "we never go anywhere. Rex studies all the time. He no more than finishes one picture than he starts planning sets and reading books for his next. I do not care to go without him, so we stay home on an average of seven nights a week. I like to stay at home, of course, but I do enjoy going out once in a while." So you see being the wife of a great director has its drawbacks. A sentiment that is honest and natural you will admit when it comes from a young woman not yet 23, who has been given more than her share of good looks and charm. But life for Alice Terry is not all dancing, attending the theatre and buying gowns. She is genuinely interested in her husband's work and watches with eager eyes every picture he creates. "However, Rex and I do not always agree on his picture," she said, laughing. "His favorite is 'Trifling Women' and mine is 'The Conquering Power.'" We are usually neutral in all matters that concern a husband and wife, but in this case we agree with Miss Terry. We like "Trifling Women" the least of anything Rex Ingram has ever made, and so we told her as we parted on the corner of Forty-Second Street and Broadway. ***************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************** Back issues of Taylorology are available on the Web at any of the following: http://www.angelfire.com/az/Taylorology/ http://www.etext.org/Zines/ASCII/Taylorology/ http://www.uno.edu/~drif/arbuckle/Taylorology/ Full text searches of back issues can be done at http://www.etext.org/Zines/ For more information about Taylor, see WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR: A DOSSIER (Scarecrow Press, 1991) *****************************************************************************