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Taylorology Issue 55
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* T A Y L O R O L O G Y *
* A Continuing Exploration of the Life and Death of William Desmond Taylor *
* *
* Issue 55 -- July 1977 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu *
* TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed *
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
Interviews with Mary Pickford
Taylor Case Errors in "Forbidden Lovers"
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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.
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Some TAYLOROLOGY graphic image files are available for viewing in Acrobat
format (.pdf) at http://www.public.asu.edu/~bruce . The files presently
include photos of Taylor acting and directing, a map of Alvarado court,
Taylor's birth and death certificates, a sketch of the murder scene, photos
of Taylor and Minter autographed to each other, letters written from Minter
to Taylor, etc.
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Interviews with Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford ("America's Sweetheart") was the biggest star directed by
William Desmond Taylor. The three films in which he directed her--"Johanna
Enlists," "Captain Kidd, Jr.," "How Could You, Jean"--were the last three she
made for Famous Players-Lasky before beginning independent production. Below
are 11 interviews with Mary Pickford, from 1913-1922. Also included is her
1923 testimony which revealed that Adolph Zukor had once offered her $250,000
if she would retire from the screen. As a star and as a producer, Mary
Pickford was the most important woman of the silent film era, and the
interviews below give glimpses of her personality, intelligence, and sense of
values. Hopefully someday someone will make a serious effort to find
the hundreds of interviews given by Mary Pickford during the silent film era,
and make them freely available on the Internet.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
January 19, 1913
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Mary Pickford, Recent Recruit to the Footlights,
Was Known to Millions in the "Movies"
When a pretty young woman first sees herself on the screen, after she
has been "filmed," she seeks a secluded spot and weeps. "Do I really look as
bad as that?" she sobs. The sight of herself is almost too much.
"I suspect," said Miss Pickford, when discussing her experience
recently, "that a man will gravitate toward strong drink. I remember well
the first time Lionel Barrymore saw himself as others see him.
"'I've got a grouch on with myself for being so fat,' he observed.
'Anyhow, I wonder what right I've got to be going around and posing as a
leading man. Back to the stage for mine!'"
Very seldom, though, is it "back to the stage." Much more often it is
from the stage to the "movies." That is why it has been such a source of
comment that a woman like Miss Pickford should give up one line of work, in
which she has a reputation that is second to none, for another that is, in
many respects, more strenuous and exacting.
Not since she was a very little girl with a company playing "The Warrens
of Virginia" has Miss Pickford essayed a speaking part, until recently she
blossomed out as a real Juliet in "The Good Little Devil," the play with
which Mme. Rostand and her son proved that the author of "Cyrano" and
"Chantecler" was not the only one of the family who could turn out dramatic
novelties.
And for the very reason that Miss Pickford has been away so short a time
from the clicking cameras and shouting stage managers of the "movies," her
views on the styles of acting which go best in, the photoplays and the real
thing are of particular interest, because her own work has forced her to
bring the contrasts into vivid relief.
"As a matter of fact," she declared, "one does not have to resort to
more pantomime before the camera than behind the footlights. Some actors
have spoiled themselves for returning to the stage by doing so; but it really
isn't necessary.
"Would you believe it? One has to be very much more real for a film
play than for an audience. You can't fool the camera. It catches every
little thing--many things that, ordinarily, the eyes never see.
"I soon discovered, when studying myself on the screen, that I couldn't
pretend to cry in front of the lens. If a scene demanded sobs, I had to
weep, or turn my head away from the camera.
"Now, on the stage it is perfectly easy to counterfeit sobs. There the
voice helps in the deception. The same holds true in many ways--all emotions
may be simulated by the voice; but when one is deprived of its aid, one must
make up for it by keener attention to facial expression.
"Often, when acting for the 'movies,' I have been greatly disconcerted
when the man playing opposite to me would speak a line that should have been
impassioned in an ordinary tone of voice. Imagine some one declaring, 'I
love you,' as if he were asking you to 'Please pass the butter.' Sometimes I
feared that I might lose control of myself altogether, and I knew that after
such a thing happened, I could never finish my part as well as I had begun
it."
There is, indeed, a special technique required for the photoplays--a
technique that has been evolved in a few years. It has been but a matter of
half a decade, or thereabouts, that Miss Pickford became a Juliet of the
gelatine films. She had finished her engagement with "The Warrens of
Virginia," and realized that it was time for her to be thinking of giving up
juvenile parts.
An opportunity to act before the camera presented itself, and she took
advantage of it. Since then she has played all sorts of parts--has seen
herself on the screen as wild western heroines, as women from the classics,
as poor little innocent girls and as very well-dressed rich ones--in fact,
has gone pretty well through the dramatic scale.
"When I went into moving-picture plays," said Miss Pickford, "they were
paying $5 a day at the highest. I believe I was the first woman to get $10.
Now they are paying hundreds a week.
"Naturally, it was strange work at first, and I found that I had to
acquire a special facility for it. In the first place, do you realize that
all the indoor scenes occupy a space not larger than a good-sized rug? That
will be crowded up with furniture of various kinds. To get around naturally,
without bumping against tables or knocking down chairs, is no easy matter.
It takes months to learn to dart about without betraying the fact that one is
steering a serpentine course around sideboards and things. The slightest
awkward move, you know, will show on the screen, to the exclusion of
everything else.
"One the other hand, when I went back to the stage, I felt that I could
never get across it. The distances were vast--terrible to me. At times I
felt as if I were crossing a desert.
"Still another thing that one must get accustomed to on the picture
stage is the shouts of the stage managers. There is always a terrible hubbub
when a play is being produced. When one or more are put on in a week there
is no time for such careful rehearsal as theatrical companies receive.
"Consequently, the stage managers are always on the alert. 'A little
more life there! Don't make a funeral out of this scene,' a man will yell at
you, and if you have not properly schooled yourself, you will took toward the
person who is yelling. Be sure that glance will show on the screen and will
spoil a scene."
In a sense, it was this "slap-dash" rehearsing that cause Miss Pickford
to desert the "movies," which have given her the most familiarly known face
in the nation. She wanted to get back to David Belasco--he is her idol--
because she felt that his coaching is a liberal education in stagecraft. "He
rehearses so wonderfully," she said. "He always knows just the effects he
wants, and how to get them; is never at a loss, and never out of patience.
I can't imagine how some people can go through a rehearsal under him in a
matter-of-fact humor. I drink in everything he says, remember it and study
it out."
"And now that you no longer have the screen to study, do you practice
before the mirror?" she was asked.
She laughed merrily.
"Booth did it; Mansfield did it; most of the great actors have done it,"
she replied; "but somehow I can't imagine myself doing it. I should feel so
foolish if I tried it. Besides, I should be so constrained and self-
conscious that I wouldn't know how to control my face.
"When I'm playing Juliet, the blind girl, I know just what muscles to
'wiggle'"--and she laughed again--"because I've studied my expressions so
long on the screens that I can call on any one I want."
Literally, she has acquired a complete repertory of her own expressions
by seeing herself in so many photoplays. Whether she wants to portray joy or
grief, anger or amusement--in fact, almost any emotion one can name--she can
mold her facial muscles to it with as much certainty as one would pull the
strings of a marionette.
"I can't imagine anything that is of as much benefit to an actress," she
said, "as studying herself on the screen. It's so different from practicing
before a mirror. When one is acting, one should feel the emotions that are
being imitated. That is not possible--at least, would not be for me--if one
is in front of a mirror. But after one has acted in a photoplay, the results
can be seen in cold blood long after the impressions of the moment have
vanished.
"It is possible then to judge the effect of every expression as it is
flashed on the screen. The part the eyebrows play, whether one has frowned
too much or not enough, how one appears when sobbing--all these and many
other things can be seen, just as if one were criticizing another person.
"In time it is but natural that one should be able to call upon an
expression with practical certainty. I feel the advantage of this,
particularly when I am playing the blind girl. My eyes are open, but I am
not supposed to see. Were I to appear at all conscious of the manner in
which I am expressing various emotions, the illusion would be lost. The
audience would not feel that I was blind, but would be keenly alive to the
fact that I was merely playing blind."
It may be noted that, for the reasons Miss Pickford stated, there are
few persons who can take "blind" roles. Generally there is nothing sightless
but the "lines" of the part.
Similarly, the schooling of the photoplays, in being seemingly
unconscious of all sights and sounds except those which should influence the
acting, has stood Miss Pickford in good stead. A blind girl is never
expected to see anything that goes on about her--and Miss Pickford never
does, so far as the eye can judge.
"On the whole," she said, "I feel that my experience before the camera
has been of great benefit; but I can easily see how it might have done great
harm. I always had in mind the fact that I might want to become a real
actress, and so never allowed myself to indulge in more gestures than if I
had a speaking part. I don't believe it is necessary, and a great many
actors ruin themselves for stagework by assuming exaggerated manners and
expressions.
"If one were acting in a French or Italian company, it would be
different. Those people are more given to gestures than we are. Why, the
French companies laugh at our 'movies.' They say they can see no acting in
them. Just the same, we often laugh back at theirs, because they go through
so many antics. In either case, the actors are right. An American who
worked his face and thrashed the air like a Frenchman would appear just as
ridiculous as a Frenchman who talked only with his mouth."
From all this it can be realized that Miss Pickford has been no dilatory
student of her art. People who have admired her, week after week, for a
matter of five years or so, may be sure that they have liked her acting
because she has studied every little detail of her work until she is able to
gauge the effect of every movement she makes.
And, as her appearance is universally known not only in America, but in
Europe as well, the natural question is:
"What is she like off the stage?" That's asked of every actress.
A New York girl wanted to know one time, and followed Miss Pickford and
her mother for a number of blocks when they were walking home from a moving-
picture studio. Finally, the younger woman began to suspect they were being
shadowed, and turned to see who was behind them.
"Did you want to see me?" she asked the hesitating girl.
"Oh, Miss Pickford!" the latter exclaimed, "I'm so glad you have a
pretty voice, because if you hadn't I wouldn't enjoy you so much in the
moving pictures next week, and I hoped you had because I see you every week,
and I made up my mind that I just had to know what you are like."
Aside from a pretty voice, Miss Pickford has golden hair, the eyes that
best go with it, and a pleasant manner, altogether free from constraint of
affectation. What she has so far done has never gone to her head. It is
what she wants to do in the future that she is bothering most about.
As to size, she is slightly below medium; and as to age, she is still in
her early twenties. From Canada she has come, and she retains her love for
the open and the genial sympathy with mankind that goes with it. Perhaps as
good an index to her character as any is to be found in a remark she made of
her acting:
"I always like to think of 'the poor little man in the gallery,' and
make my voice carry to him. He has paid over his good money, just as well as
those in the expensive front seats, and he is just as much entitled to the
worth of it as they are."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
August 1913
Estelle Kegler
PHOTOPLAY
The Charm of Wistfulness
A captious critic once offered a reward of a thousand dollars for any
one of his ilk who had written about the art of Mary Pickford without using
the word "wistful."
Up to now no one has come to claim the reward. The critic knew he was
safe.
The morning New York awoke to place the laurel wreath of a new fame on
the childish brow of its "good little devil," you might have read of Mary's
wistful eyes, her wistful smile, her wistful voice. That solemn group of
folks who sit in aisle seats and sharpen their pencils over the trembling
forms of terrified authors, behaved quite as if they had discovered Mary.
As a matter of fact, Mary had been "discovered" long before these
reviewers of plays, who never speak of the "movies" without a shudder, ever
suspected anything artistic could come from pictures. Out in Manhattan,
Kansas, or Moose Jaw, they knew all about little Mary long before Mr.
Belasco, dealer in highbrow drama, ever considered offering her a prominent
place in a Broadway production. And she burst upon the "Big Way" with the
acclaim of more than a million picture fans trailing her right up to the
stage door. The acclaim has now turned to clamor--clamor for the return of
Mary to the world of photoplays.
"When I think of that great big generous world out there really wanting
me to come out on the screen and play with its fancy, it makes me so homesick
I could weep," is the confession of Miss Pickford.
It was in Shanleys, after one of the best performances the lady, late of
the silent drama, had ever given in "The Good Little Devil." Around in front
of the Republic theatre playgoers lingering for their carriages, were still
discussing the appeal of the blind "Juliet." The newest star in
Mr. Belasco's constellation looked as weary as the bouquet of violets
drooping in her nervous fingers.
"Of course I love the spoken drama, too," she hastened to add,
brightening at the contemplation of her established success. "When I left
the motion picture field it was not necessarily a final farewell. I believe
people in my profession should know how to do a great many things and do them
well.
"When the pictures are peopled with actors and actresses who have the
solid foundation of experience beneath them they will be infinitely better
than they have been under the regime of amateurs whose only claim to being
cast is that they photograph well. There must be something more than mere
photography. There must be technique, ease, versatility, and seriousness of
intent."
It seemed so incongruous to have this child creature sit there and
deliver judgments on subject so serious as the future of a national
amusement. One must constantly revert to the kingdom of careers where it is
written that Mary began wielding the grease paint and hare's foot when she
was a mere baby, and that she has been building up fame and a bank account
ever since.
"It is a long way from the glamour of face to face applause to the heaps
of admiration and approval that come to the picture favorite through the
mails," said Mary. "For the one there are invitations to sip tea, to dine,
to sup, to go here and there and everywhere, to meet this celebrity and that
man and the other woman.
"For the other there is the peace, the security, the privacy of the
woman whose circle of admirers is limited to her family and her friends. The
actress finds it difficult to draw a definite line between her professional
and her home lives. The picture actress slips off her screen identity with
her screen wardrobe, and the minute she leaves the studio she is just like
any other private citizeness. It is all a matter of preference. Oh yes, and
of dollars."
Mary didn't tell me, but I happen to know she is a bit of a home-body
herself. In a cozy little, rosy little apartment not very far from the
Hudson river, she is the daintiest chatelaine that ever presided over the
destiny of a happy home and an adoring, awfully good looking husband.
Yes, Lovey Mary has fallen victim to the wiles of Danny, the boy with
the bow and arrow. If you should call at the apartment and inquire for Mrs.
Owen Moore, who do you think, would be the answer? Why none other than the
girl with the sunny curls, the blue violet eyes, the pouting lips of the
"good little devil."
Perhaps curls would be twisted up into a grown-up knot as becomes one
who deals with the servant problem and other items of house-wifely lore, but
the wistful smile would be there to greet you.
Will little Mary return to delight the hearts of her nickel-a-half-a-
dime public? Perhaps so. You know she promised "maybe."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
August 23, 1913
Mabel Condon
MOTOGRAPHY
Mary Pickford's dark eyebrows and hazel eyes were quite as I had
imagined them, but the blonde curls that bobbed from under her straw hat were
a distinct shock, as I had always believed Mary to be a brunette. Not that
anybody had ever told me she was; I just imagined it from my acquaintance
with her one the screen and the screen, you know, has the faculty of
converting blondes into brunettes with neither excuse nor warning to the
blonde so converted nor the picture patrons so deceived. So Mary is a
blonde.
"Have a chair," invited Mr. Schulberg, he of the publicity department
and the scenario editorship of the Famous Players' Company; also the
Mr. Schulberg of the honeymoon flat over in Jersey, and who is so new a groom
that he still brings unexpected company home to dinner. "When Mary is
through with this scene she'll take you to her dressing room," continued
Mr. Schulberg, and with that promise I accepted the chair and sat back to
watch Mary's debut at boarding school and to forgive picture screens in
general their deception as to Mary's curls.
The scene being rehearsed was one from the story, "Caprice." Six times
did Mary bob and smile her little "love-me" smile in introduction to the
stylish young ladies who were to be her schoolmates and who had lots of fun
at the expense of Mary's pathetic jacket, her rustic hat that tied under her
chin and the beruffled skirts that dipped five or more inches at the back;
six times did Mary lovingly brush her father's carpet bag with the front gore
of her skirt and six times did he throw her arms about his neck and caress
the sleeve of his coat in a brave farewell.
Then, but not until then, did the brow of Director J. Searle Dawley rid
itself of four or more superfluous lines and he bellowed the signal, "Go!"
Three clangs of a bell brought carpenters and everybody else in the studio,
but not in the scene, to a full stop. Mr. Dawley poised himself on the
outside edge of the stage setting in readiness to hurl forth instructions and
the camera man loomed up as "the man of the hour."
It was all over in one and one-third minutes and eighty feet of film,
and Mary walked from under the blue-green lights to where a plump, dark-
haired lady was sitting. As we approached, I heard Mary say, "Hello, Mother
dear." The dark-haired lady answered, "Hello, Mary darling," and then I
experienced the full wonder of a Mary smile as Mr. Schulberg introduced us.
"If you don't mind, we can talk while I dress for the next scene,"
suggested Mary. I didn't mind, and in a few minutes Mary was seated in front
of her dressing table brushing her thick curls over her left forefinger and
telling me that she had been working hard--just as I had seen her--since nine
o'clock that morning, but that she didn't get tired--not very tired, anyway--
because she likes picture work so well.
"While I was playing in his 'Good Little Devil,' Mr. Belasco used to
read interviews in which I'd say I liked pictures better than the stage,"
laughed Mary. "But I do like them better--though I'm going back with
Mr. Belasco's company in the fall; meanwhile, I'm doing the work I like
best."
"And what do you do when you're not working?" I asked from the depths of
the most comfortable chair I've ever seen in a dressing room.
"Live in a bathing suit," replied Mary, putting down her white-backed
brush and beginning to pin up her curls. "We have a house at Beechhurst,
Long Island, and I stay in my bathing suit all day; that is, the one day of
the week that I'm there," she amended, as she applied a second amber pin by
way of a reprimand to the little curl over her left ear. The little curl
promptly slid back into its original position, and Mary continued:
"It's glorious out there in the evening, too--only for the mosquitoes!
I don't believe they eat a bite until I arrive and then they all pick on
me--"
"Why, Mary, what's that?" came the alarmed voice of Mary's mother, as
she appeared in the doorway.
"Mosquitoes," answered Mary demurely, and Mary's mother breathed a
relieved "Oh" as she took possession of the rocker under the electric fan.
"And it's so dreadfully quiet there nights that it's spookey. Last
night--" Mary paused to insert a final pin where she thought it would do the
most good, then turned around and continued--"I was sure somebody had broken
into the house--"
"For what?" Mary's mother wanted to know in a calm voice.
"Oh, for--I don't know what for," Mary went on, "but, anyway I was sure
somebody had broken in; I could even hear him walking around downstairs and I
wanted a drink so badly, but I was afraid to get up and get it, so I just
waited until it was daylight and then I got two."
"And the man who 'broke in?' I suggested expectantly.
"Well, he wasn't there this morning," Mary's muffled voice informed from
the wardrobe bag into which her head was poked in the effort to choose a
costume for the next scene.
"No, not last night either," said Mary's mother, and that settled it.
Mary emerged from the bag with a pearl-gray suit and a sheer white waist
with a quantity of ruffles on the collar and down the front.
"Hope this won't make me look fat," she remarked, as she studied the
effect of the ruffles in the glass and arranged the waist line of the gray
skirt with its white silk drop. "I wouldn't be 'little Mary' any more if I
got fat," she smiled. "I try not to look any littler than I can help--though
I like that title the people gave me, 'little Mary,' because I feel they call
me it through liking, and I love to please the people. There--" donning her
coat and turning around for her mother's inspection, "am I all right,
mother?"
"Yes, you look very nice," her mother answered. "What hat are you going
to wear?"
"Mercy! I didn't bring a hat with me," wailed Mary.
"Try mine," Mary's mother advised, removing her small white hat. Mary
sat it jauntily upon her curls. It looked as though it belonged there, and
Mary said: "Now, I'm ready. Will you come out and watch this scene and come
back with me again?"
"Delighted," I answered, and Mary hurried away to the blue-green lights
of the stage setting and Mary's mother and I found chairs where we could see
everything, and I asked Mary's mother how and when Mary started her stage
work.
"In the Valentine Stock Company when she was five years old," said
Mary's mother, who really looks every much like Mary, or Mary looks like her,
rather. Mary's mouth is distinctively her own, however; it's the only one of
its kind in the world, I'm sure.
"The man who owned the company saw Mary and asked to have her for a part
he had in mind. He said, 'I think you could do it, Mary,' and Mary said,
'I'm sure I could.' So she did and has played every stock child part since
then."
"Do you want to tell me how old Mary is?" I asked, and she replied:
"Yes; Mary doesn't mind. She is nineteen and was born in Toronto, Canada."
A roomful of girls burst into the set and rehearsals were one. It was
the closing of the school year and everybody was saying good-bye to everybody
else, and parents and guardians were calling for their girls. And Mary
offered a big contrast to the Mary of the preceding scene. Only two
rehearsals were necessary this time and when the camera man had taken two
"stills" and some of the girls were wondering if that would be all for the
day, Mr. Dawley announced in a voice that could be heard on Broadway
(almost): "Get ready for the dormitory scene. Get your nightgowns on--and
remember, girls, no street clothes underneath!"
There was a dismayed "Oh-h-h-h-h!" from a group of "extras," but Mr.
Dawley paid no attention to it, and Mary, her mother and I returned to Mary's
dressing room, where Mary had to take her hair down and make ready to carry a
girl through the hall and down the stairs of the dormitory, which was to be
set on fire.
"I hope you don't get your hair burned, Mary," worried her mother.
"If I were you, I'd pin it up."
"No, that wouldn't look like really and truly night time," said Mary,
and then: "Gracious! I've lost my stockings--my white ones! I simply must
have stockings--" as she hurriedly went through a suit case and traveling bag
and her mother investigated the hooks on the north wall. "And I have only a
few minutes--"
There was a violent rap at the door and a man's voice called: "Mary,
I want to borrow your nightgown."
"All right," answered Mary, and handed it out through a crack in the
door. "That's the property man. I have to have another exactly like it for
the next scene and he bought that one yesterday, so he knows where to get the
other. But if I don't find my stockings--"
"Here they are," and Mary's mother advanced triumphantly from the
vicinity of the north wall hooks.
"Oh, thank you, mother. Yes, I remember now that I hung them just
there."
During the wait for the property man to return her gown Mary asked if I
thought she resembled Mary Fuller. She had been told repeatedly that she
did. There is a resemblance, but it is more striking in the pictures of the
two Marys, as then their hair looks to be the same color.
"I admire Mary Fuller very much. I've never met her, though I tried to
on Edison night at the Exposition, but she had gone home. Sometimes--"
The knuckles of the property man sounded on the door and when the gown
had been admitted and donned, Mary resumed her position on the sofa, and
continued: "Sometimes I stop and think of all the motion picture people who
are working at that very minute, and I wonder just what Alice Joyce is doing
and what parts are being played by the people of the Western companies.
I think it's wonderful, the bigness of it all." I admitted it was wonderful
and was sorry Marry happened to glance at the clock just then, as it reminded
her that it was about time for the next scene.
"Maybe I'll see you in Chicago this winter," she said, slipping a long
coat over her dishabille. "I'm going to play there for a month, you know."
"Everybody ready?" called Mr. Dawley. I wasn't going to stay for the
dormitory scene, so said good-bye to Mary outside her dressing room door.
With a handshake and a smile, Mary joined the groups of white-robed figures
that came from the various dressing rooms and I returned to my hotel feeling
much the richer by virtue of having met "little Mary," received two of her
very latest photographs and known the fascination of Mary's "love-me" smile
which makes everybody do just that.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
August 29, 1914
Mabel Condon
MOTOGRAPHY
An informal visit with Mary Pickford one afternoon last week, furnishes
me with a timely topic and you, if you read far enough, with the information
first hand--or second, if you wish--for Mary told me and I'm telling you--
that Mary is not particularly overjoyed with the sudden burst of publicity
which has come her way with the reissuing of old time "Mary" films. I'll
tell it to you just as Mary told it to me.
It was the day in the Famous Players studio that Jim Kirkwood hesitated
over the history of his life and then sat for that picture that didn't
justify his raw-boned manliness a bit. And it was while he was hesitating
that Mary Pickford emerged from an "extra" dressing-room, in a pink silk
negligee and pink rose-budded boudoir cap. And her arms were about a round
little white-robed body, which nestled into the silky softness of the
negligee, and looked out at us from round, blue eyes that bespoke the
satisfied contentment of the four-months old owner.
But it was the shade of the four-months old's head that caught and held
the attention of Mr. Kirkwood. At one time in Mr. Kirkwood's life, the
covering of his own head had been just so, and of the same color, so of
course Mr. Kirkwood was interested and broke forth in rosy predictions of
what the future held for one so proud as was the four-months old.
"To think," regretted Mary, "that that sweet little face will some-time
grow a horrid beard."
"And to think," enlightened Mr. Kirkwood, "that those sweet little legs
will, on Saturday nights presumably, bring their owner home this way." Let
your imagination draw a zig-zag across this page and you will have the
demonstration supplied by Mr. Kirkwood.
"Jimmie!" expostulated Mary, turning her armful of man-baby away from
the maker of such a suggestion, "just look at his round little feet--he's all
round--and so good! His mother says I may mind him for a while, so, when
Jimmie's through talking, come over to my dressing-room--will you?"
So when I thought "Jimmie" was through, I went.
But Jimmie was by no means through, as, with his "Grease Paint" chat
over, he became much more talkative and bobbed in and out of Mary's dressing-
room every few minutes.
"He's an awful tease," said Mary as, after discovering by an
investigation of the infant's bib that he shared the initial "J" with him,
Mr. Kirkwood set out to find the mother to learn if the baby's name wasn't
Jim.
"But everybody likes him," added Mary, "and it's really fun and not like
work at all, making pictures with him. The cast of 'The Eagle's Mate' was so
congenial that we had the nicest time imaginable making the exterior scenes.
I went to the Strand to see the film on its second night there." She paused
and patted the round little body of the four-months old. The caress must
have been a soothing one, for the round one's round eyes promptly closed and
Mary smiled down at him and whispered "asleep," whereupon the round one's
round eyes opened and surveyed Mary and her blue-grey ones.
And Mary smiled back and continued:--
"I really ought not to go to see any of my own pictures." Her upper lip
expressed her sorrow at something and I asked why.
"Because it's such an ordeal for me," she answered, "I sit tight on the
edge of the seat and keep thinking 'Will they like it?' and I criticize every
move I make and, really, I don't have a bit of a good time! If others were
as critical as I, I'm afraid people wouldn't like my work at all."
"But they do like you," I insisted and suggested, "I wonder if you have
any idea of just how much you are liked?" Mary looked thoughtful and said
hesitatingly, "I can't realize they like me that well, but look," she smiled
eagerly and with her right hand swept aside a newspaper on the table beside
her. The act disclosed countless letters as yet unopened and there was a
package loosely done up in tissue-paper.
"I got this one this morning from a girl in a hospital in Baltimore,"
she passed me the tissue-paper package. It contained a sewing apron of
daintiest lawn and was embroidered in artistic blue and white butterflies.
A note attached explained that the donor had made it while lying ill for
weeks and assured Mary that it betokened much love and admiration. Could the
ill little girl have witnessed Mary's joy over its possession, I'm sure she
would be repaid for her work of love.
It was then that the subject of the re-issuing of the Mary films was
reached and Mary declared indignantly that she did not like it very well.
"For many of those early films were made when I was not as happy as I am
now--and condition always affects one's work," rocking the round one, now
really asleep, gently in the low rocker Mary occupied out of regard for the
infant's comfort.
"But of course," Mary began philosophically--but I never knew what it
was that she had intended to say, for Mr. Kirkwood entered with the disgusted
information that the little chap's name was "Joe" instead of "Jim."
"Joseph Porter Riley," practically announced Joe's little mother,
appearing from behind Mr. Kirkwood's shoulder. "I named him for Director
Porter," she finished, still more proudly.
"Really," explained Mary delightedly, giving Joe an extra joy pat.
Then, as she passed the little round one to its mother, she whispered softly,
"I'd rather own him than--than fifty thousand dollars!" And little Joe's
mother smiled contentedly as she bore the little man away for a waiting scene
and Mary, when he had gone, took off her boudoir cap and arranged her curls
in preparation for going before the camera in the production of "Behind the
Scenes" which Mr. Kirkwood was to direct.
As I said at the beginning it was just an informal visit so I've told it
to you just as it occurred.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
September 1914
Katherine Synon
PHOTOPLAY
The Unspoiled Mary Pickford
A flash of sunlight across a dark room, a white moth glimmering in the
dusk, a lily swaying at the edge of a pool--these were the first phrases that
flashed across one's mind as Mary Pickford crossed the big stock room of the
Famous Players' studio in West Twenty-sixth street, New York.
The day was one of those period of gray fog that the ocean flings upon
New York in the summer. Outer Twenty-sixth street sagged under the burden of
its gloom. The studio, denied of activity by the darkness of the skies, sank
into apathy. Around the stock room actors and actresses, in groups of twos
and threes and fours, talked listlessly, mostly of the intruding weather that
forced upon them the undesired idleness. Then the door opened to reveal a
girl standing on the threshold, a girl whose rioting golden curls seemed to
have caught all the sunlight that should have been gladdening Manhattan, and
whose eyes held the deep blues of the hidden skies. An ultra-fashionable
little straw hat topped the curls, and a costume that matched the smartness
of the headgear emphasized the slender beauty of one of the best known and
best loved of all the motion picture actresses. For the girl of the golden
curls was Mary Pickford, and there is only one Mary Pickford in the universe.
Reams have already been written about Mary Pickford, whose sensational
success in motion pictures has made her more conspicuous on Broadway than any
of the newer actresses of the legitimate drama. Cornell University graduates
voted her the most popular actress of the year. She is getting a salary of
$26,000 a year, and Daniel Frohman, who has the authority, says that her new
contract will give her $50,000 next year. She has been called repeatedly the
most beautiful woman in the world. When she appears at a public place,
crowds throng for a glimpse of her. Her pictures on the films draw the same
enthusiastic crowds that used to go to Maude Adams' performances of "The
Little Minister" and "Peter Pan." And--Mary Pickford is only twenty years
old. Think of it!
"What is she really like?" was the question that followed my first
impressions. Adulation such as she has received at her age must have its
effect upon her manner and her character. It would seem impossible that any
girl of twenty could go through the triumphs, social, financial and artistic,
that this girl of the golden curls had won without acquiring all sorts of
affectations or that haughtiness that excludes the rest of the world.
The test of an artist's innate greatness is his attitude toward his
fellow workers. The greatness of Sir Henry Irving is remembered today quite
as much for his kindness toward the subordinate players in his companies as
for his presentation of Shylock. Mary Pickford stood the test. For, as she
entered the room, listless men and women looked up to give her the greeting
of a smile or a wave or a word that she returned without any self-conscious
"star" superiority, but with the gracious gracefulness of a charming girl.
Her naturalness, unforced good humor, and her youth lighted the studio as
effectively as if the lost sun had come out over the roofs of New York.
Trailed by a studio satellite, one of those "boarding-school crushes"
which are the inevitable result of such popularity, Mary Pickford went here
and there among the groups. As she came nearer, one might see that her eyes
held deep shadows strangely at variance with the brightness of her smile.
When she spoke, her voice seconded her eyes. A voice to go with such golden
hair as hers should be liltingly joyous. Mary Pickford's voice fell into
cadences that suggested, fleetingly, the minor notes of a violin.
What she said, however, was so far from sad that it was almost
impossible, after having talked with her, to go back to that first impression
of sadness. She talked about New York, about books, about plays, about
clothes, about styles, about everything that a girl of twenty usually talks
about. After a while, a much longer while than it usually takes to drop from
general social conversation into a personal interview, she was led into talk
about herself and her work. The talk about herself she made brief. From
others one has to learn that Mary Pickford has been on the stage since she
was five years old, that she made an instantaneous success when she went into
film posing five years ago, and that she is about to receive a salary equal
to that which our United States of America gives to its President. From her
one may gather--but only by implication--that she is a thoughtful, ambitious
studious artist, who does her best in every task and who is never satisfied
with that best.
"Have you seen 'Tess of the Storm Country?'" she asked with the artist's
instinctive desire to make her work speak for her. In the miniature theater
of the studio the operator ran off the films at her request, showing her in
the role of Tess, which her most enthusiastic admirers declare is her
greatest triumph and which she herself likes best of all her work. "The more
ragged and dirty I look, the better I can play," she declared. Ragged and
dirty she certainly looked in the pictures, but in all of them glowed that
special and peculiar loveliness that makes her beauty so wonderful. Hers is
a beauty of pathos, and plays like "Tess of the Storm Country" reveal it in
its most appealing phases. The wistfulness of the pictures found a mirror in
her eyes that grew shadowy again as she watched the flashing scenes until
there came the one where the woman in the village doused Tess's golden-topped
head in a tub of water to give it a thorough washing. With the scene Mary
Pickford was all girl again. "I was awfully glad that was in the story," she
said. "Now everybody who sees that knows that my hair is my own."
"Was that why you went through it?"
"Oh, no," she denied. "The story called for that, but I was tired of
getting letters asking me if I wore a wig, or if part of my hair was mine, or
if it was naturally curly, or if I had to curl it on an iron."
"Well, it looks too wonderful to be true, Mary," chimed in the
satellite, after the manner of satellites.
"If you had to do it every morning, you'd know it's too true," Mary
Pickford assured her in that patience with satellites that only the youthful
stars have. Just then there shone on the screen the scene in which Tess
fondles the dead rabbit. Mary Pickford covered her eyes with her hands.
"Ugh!" she shuddered. "That was the hardest thing I ever had to do," she
confessed. "Once I had to run a car at fifty-four miles an hour. I'd rather
try one at a hundred than touch a dead rabbit again."
"Would you like to do 'Tess' on the regular stage?" some one asked her
when the reel was ended. (She had experience on the stage with "A Good
Little Devil.") She considered the idea thoughtfully. "No," she decided.
"Acting on the regular stage is too often a question of voice, rather than of
the combination of elements that make motion picture work." She pushed back
her curls from her ears as if to get them out of the way while she talked
about the problem of the difference of the two kinds of acting.
"On the regular stage," she said, "an actress has to have, for emotional
scenes, a certain quality of voice. A good stage director knows just exactly
the tone that will produce the effect he wishes. Sometimes he will, if he
thinks it necessary, make an actress hysterical just to achieve that tone of
voice. Once she gets it, she can hold it for a certain number of
performances. Now, in the movies, an actress has practically no use for her
voice--although I speak the lines all through the part--but instead of
putting the work into acquiring a tone, she uses her brain to express the
emotions in pantomime."
"Which is the harder work?"
"I think," she said, "that the movie work is harder because it requires
so much more consideration. In the regular drama an actress who makes a
success in her part stays in that sometimes season after season. After she
has once grasped her role, it may become mechanical with her. She seldom
feels the necessity of thinking out variations for it. It is a piece of
sculpture that she presents night after night, seldom varying from her
original performance. But in the movies, the success of a role never keeps
the actress at it. Once done, it is done for all time and she goes on to
something else. For instance," she elucidated, "'In the Bishop's Carriage'
and 'Tess of the Storm Country' and all the other plays I've had, are
scattered all over, some of them are almost forgotten, while Mr. Kirkwood is
rehearsing me in my new play, 'Behind the Scenes.'"
"Behind the Scenes" is Margaret Mayo's comedy that the Famous Players
Company brought James Kirkwood on from California to produce. James Kirkwood
is a young director who has done wonderful work in film productions. By one
of the strange coincidences that seem to happen oftener in theatrical
business than outside of it, he is a childhood friend of Mary Pickford,
having come from Toronto, Canada, where she also was born.
"I've known Jimmie since I can remember anybody," she said. "It's
queer," she went on, "that all of us who used to play together away off in
Ontario are here together in the studio now. There's my brother Jack.
Haven't you seen him?" Her sensitive face glowed with sisterly pride.
"Jack's just come to the work," she said. "They say that he looks just like
me, and I think that it would be awfully good fun if we could play in some
film as twins. Do you know any story about twins?" She made inquiry for
Jack, but the younger Pickford had been assigned to outdoor work somewhere on
the Jersey side. "Oh, I'm so sorry you won't see him," said his famous
sister, "but you'll look for his pictures on the films, won't you? Jack's
really wonderful.
"Jack's the third of the family to come into the studio," she continued.
"My sister Lottie is here, too, but she's on a vacation this week. She's
doing lovely work." Mary Pickford declared with enthusiasm that had never
once revealed itself about her own finished work. "But nothing like yours,"
amended the satellite. Mary Pickford flashed her blue-gray eyes upon her
with something like anger. "Well, she hasn't been at it nearly as long," she
said with the conviction that if Lottie had her sister's experience, she
would far outshine her sister.
"I suppose," she explained, "that there's no work where experience
counts more than in the movies. I imagine from what I know of it that it's
very much like newspaper writing in the speed and certainty with which the
work has to be done. It's all set down 'on the jump.' If you make a
mistake, it's there. You haven't time to amend it. And so you have to get
in mind the entire character, thinking it all out before you register it, but
working with a speed that more than matches the writing of a story that has
to make a certain edition. Is that right?"
It was so closely right that it revealed a remarkable discernment in the
girl of twenty. There aren't very many trained workers either on newspapers
or in motion pictures who have so clear a psychological grasp of the needs of
their work than has this wistful-eyed girl. The Frohmans say that she has a
genius for expressing great emotion through the medium of pictures. There is
a general impression that this genius is facile rather than deeply
considered. But to see Mary Pickford work in Margaret Mayo's play is to come
to realize sharply that she plans her effects with the same mental precision
that Mrs. Fiske gives to her dramatic effects. She has a different medium of
expression, a more restricted and restrictive method, etching rather than
color painting, but the idea is the same, the ideal similar.
Through two hours she worked in scenes that required only the gray light
that the dark day afforded. She went over and over certain parts with a
patience no novice ever shows. She never lost her good temper. To the
crossfire of directions and counter-directions she was apparently
indifferent, coming to visible emotion only in her work. Before long her
quiet good nature was as oil on the troubled waters of studio work. Every
one in her vicinity was influenced by it.
When the work for the morning was over Mary Pickford donned again the
tip-tilted little straw hat and went out from the studio into Twenty-sixth
street. At the entrance were grouped a half-dozen children, ragged, dirty as
no heroine of the movies ever could have been. One of them leaned forward to
touch Mary Pickford's dress. Instantly the girl was down on her knees on the
pavement, talking with the youngsters with that camaraderie that only the
young of heart can show to childhood. Instantly they were her friends.
Wonder-eyed, they clustered around her till she looked like a good fairy
descended among the children of the streets of New York. One might have
expected her to fly off in a glittering chariot drawn by winged horses.
Instead she arose with the children clinging to the skirt of the costume that
was so patently "Fifth avenue." "I know a place," she said--and the
beginning sounded Shakespearean, but the rest came with the force of an
O. Henry tale, "around on Seventh avenue where they have the best ice cream
soda in New York. Who wants to come with me?"
Who didn't?
And she took them, ragged, dirty, and radiant, around the corner with
her. And with them she took the glinting sunshine that had shone for a
little while on the high-buildinged, gloomy street.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
January 8, 1915
CHICAGO DAILY NEWS
Mary Pickford Tells of Work in "Movies"
About six years ago a mite of a girl in short dresses approached Gilbert
M. Anderson ("Broncho Billy") in this city shortly after he had made his
profitable alliance with George K. Spoor in the formation of the Essanay Film
Company and applied for work as an "extra" in pictures. This child was
filling an unimportant part in "The Warrens of Virginia," which then was
playing in Chicago, and saw an opportunity to earn some extra money without
interfering with her regular engagement. But her application was rejected
and Essanay lost an opportunity to develop a brilliant star.
Such was the early experience of Mary Pickford with the "movies."
Shortly after this episode, or during the summer of the same year, following
the disbanding of the theatrical company, this screen favorite, who stands
foremost in popular favor with the film "fans" today, applied at the Biograph
company for a position and immediately was engaged by D. W. Griffith, then
producing director at that studio.
That was the beginning of the meteoric career of the diminutive star.
Under the careful tutelage and guidance of her director Miss Pickford showed
remarkable comprehension of pantomime art and her artistry manifested itself
quickly on the screen. Other producers soon competed for her services,
offering her what then appeared substantial increases in her salary, and she
was induced to leave the Biograph company. She returned to it shortly
afterward, when she realized her mistake.
"Necessity practically forced me into motion pictures," said Miss
Pickford to a reporter for The Daily News Wednesday, during her short stop in
this city. "Otherwise I might have been some obscure stage actress--possibly
a star. Who knows? And to necessity I attribute whatever success I may have
achieved on the screen. My mother is my sole inspiration and concern and has
been since childhood. To chase the wolf from our door prompted me to enter
the 'movies,' and to keep it away and give her comfort and every convenience
possible encourages me to work more diligently daily.
"We're inseparable--my mother and I--traveling everywhere together. You
cannot imagine how I miss her on this trip. But rest assured that her
inability to accompany me was due to exceptional circumstances."
Miss Pickford was en route for the Los Angeles studio of the Famous
Players Film company, where she will be engaged in producing several plays
under her new contract. Adolph Zukor, president of the concern employing
her, was one of her party.
The first production which will be "filmed" on the Pacific coast with
"Little Mary" in the leading role will be entitled "Rags."
"Strange," commented Miss Pickford, "I am usually cast in productions
where I interpret such a role as is suggested by the title of the play. The
producer insists that character is best suited to my talent. And, to be
perfectly candid with you, I feel more at ease in rags when engaged in
enacting a scene than in fashionable and attractive apparel."
"And to be equally candid," broke in the reporter, "you appear more
delightful and captivating as a poor little waif than when you are dressed up
as a fine lady."
Miss Pickford smiled. "That is the trouble with specializing in
anything, particularly for the stage or screen performer," she said. "The
public grows accustomed to see the artist in a certain kind of role, and when
he or she steps out of the familiar part to assume another it does not appear
to impress the public, however perfect the interpretation may be. I suppose
when I grow too old for hoyden parts I will be relegated to the discard.
"I love motion pictures. When I am not working in them I am attending
performances of photo plays. Frequently I hear comments of every description
on my performance from the spectators surrounding me, who are unconscious of
my presence. I welcome my criticisms as I do the praiseworthy comments and
profit by many of the critical remarks I chance to overhear. Occasionally I
am recognized.
"The love of the thousands of mothers and children, expressed to me in
person and through the numerous letters I receive, makes me the happiest girl
in the world and encourages me to do all I can to please them."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
September 1917
Frederick James Smith
MOTION PICTURE CLASSIC
Mary Had A Little Tear
"Little Mary's" blue eyes looked tired. "You want a really truly
serious interview," she said. "You shall have it." And she sighed.
"To begin with, I'm wondering just where the photoplay is drifting.
Surely it isn't moving forward. It lacks leaders fearless, progressive,
courageous enough to blaze the way. I'm wondering."
And "Little Mary" sighed again.
"Perhaps I am pessimistic. But the screen has given me more than money
and a name. It has been my world. I have watched the photoplay from the
first days. Its sweep upward was tremendous, unlike anything in history.
But today I feel that it isn't so popular as it was a year ago."
"This is going to be a serious interview," I said with conviction--to
myself. "Little Mary" is the one screen star I know who has seriously
studied the screen. Miss Pickford can and really does think. Popularity has
not turned her head. Three years ago I interviewed her when she was just
dashing into national popularity. She hasn't changed in personality in the
interim. No cynical note mars her gentle charm. But three years ago she was
a little, be-curled Mary, quite dazzled by the crowds that gathered about her
automobile. Today she has developed into an alert thinker.
"The whole thing has become a mad race--in a circle," continued Miss
Pickford. "Starring is a struggle indeed in these days. Perhaps, if things
do not change, I shall slip out of the race in a year and a half, when my
contracts expire. I can always go on the stage. Of course, the salaries
would be different. But I haven't been extravagant. I have saved a good
part of what I have earned for just such a possibility. I have developed no
expensive tastes."
"But you surely can't seriously consider such a thing?" I remonstrated.
"Imagine the wave of horror that will stir the army of film fans?"
Miss Pickford smiled a tired little smile. "Still, it is a possibility.
I feel that the photoplay is at a standstill. It can advance no further
without leadership. I know it is trite to say that the scenario is the weak
spot of the movie. The whole screen drama is in a complete rut of
conventionality.
"This is due to three things: men of brains aren't writing the
scenarios, producers fear originality and twist scripts into the hackneyed,
and most stories are made to fit a standard measure, five reels, or padded to
be special features. There are three standards plots in movieland and they
revolve around the vampire, the foundling and the slavey. Bedecked, twisted,
gilded, all the plots move around this trio.
"The producer lacks aggressiveness. He will not venture. Just one man
in the motion picture world will take a chance--David Griffith. He is the
one man who dares to risk everything to prove an idea. We owe the photoplay
of today to Griffith.
"Producers have been lax, extravagant and impractical. They have been
spending $50,000 for a production where half would suffice. They have been
spending thousands to build mimic cities, to reproduce a battlefield and burn
a steam yacht. They have wasted thousands in the studio, in advertising and
in the distribution of the photoplay. But they are standing still
artistically.
"This dramatic rut keeps me eternally playing the curly-headed girl.
And I hate curls, I loathe them--loathe them!" The Pickford eyes snapped
fire. "Imagine a producer giving me the role of a married woman with
children! True, I once was permitted a baby in 'Madam Butterfly.' But they
tell me that it was never very popular, judging from the financial returns.
"Now, I don't want to stand still. I would much rather fit the part
than have the part fit me. Of course, I can understand the problem of the
manufacturer. The quest of the good scenario is discouraging and
disheartening. It is practically impossible to get it. I can never
understand why authors do not seriously adopt scenario writing. Not because
of poor remuneration. That no longer holds good. An available script brings
a good price these days. But original ideas are so far apart that the
producer must adapt the novel or the play."
"Do you believe this to be advisable?" I interrupted.
"At the present time, yes. There is no other way to get a carefully
developed and consistently thought out plot. The fiction writer puts time
and care into his work. Hence the bit of fiction adapted to the screen has,
on the average, consistency and care, lacking in the script hastily turned
out for the films."
Miss Pickford discussed what she termed the ideal scenario. "It should
have a plot strong enough to take an observer's mind away from the star," she
said. "It should have, no matter how serious the theme, the element of
laughter. I am sure that people go to the theater to be entertained. They
have enough in every-day life to depress and weigh them down. The story must
be told sincerely. The little, human things must be injected.
"I believe that overplaying, too much facial pantomime, too much screen
ranting, ruin most of our present day productions. One little gesture can
tell a story in itself."
"Do you feel that the star system is losing in popular favor?"
I ventured.
"I am positive that audiences do not go to see the picture as a picture.
I base that opinion on my visits to the motion picture houses. And I do not
alone go to the big theaters. Film fans have been fooled too many times to
go without a reason.
"Four years ago the film fan said, 'Let's go to the movies?' Today he
says, 'What's playing tonight? Who's the star?' That is the reason the star
will continue in favor and high salaries. Possibly things may change when
the screen has developed its great writers and its screen technique. But as
things stand, the exhibitor will continue to demand the star and the star's
salary will continue to climb.
"I want to see more stars. I say that with sincerity, for I feel that
the more stars reach popularity, the more popular will grow the screen. The
more Charlie Chaplins, Douglas Fairbanks, Marguerite Clarks, Mae Marshs and
Anita Stewarts, the better it will be for all of us."
We talked of Mae Marsh. Only a week before Miss Marsh had told me that
"Little Mary" was her best beloved star.
Some of the tiredness disappeared from Miss Pickford's eyes. "That was
sweet. I think the world of Miss Marsh's ability. I saw 'Intolerance,' but
I do not vividly remember the trappings of Belshazzar's court or the
magnificent sweep of it all. I just remember Mae Marsh in that scene of the
modern story where she sits in the courtroom and forces a pitiful, trembly
smile to the boy." Miss Pickford gave a realistic little imitation of the
scene. "It made me weep," she confessed. "I wish I could do anything as
good."
I reminded Miss Pickford of a remark by Manager S. L. Rothapfel, of the
New York Rialto. Mr. Rothapfel told me that he believed Miss Pickford to be
our greatest actress--on or off the screen. "Her possibilities are as yet
untouched," was his comment.
"I have come to think I am not an emotional actress, although"--and
"Little Mary" laughed--"I am emotional enough in real life. But I have a
real dread of making faces."
Miss Pickford was serious again. "I'd give my string of pearls for a
good story--for another 'Tess of the Storm Country' or 'Hearts Adrift.'
I mean that, too. One story like that would be well worth a strong of
pearls. In these days one good vehicle means that a star can rest upon her
laurels for a little while. That one good
vehicle will win back all one's
wavering followers.
"Sometimes I think that I may be at fault. Do I spoil directors?
I have had some of the very best. But I either make them self-conscious or
afraid to displease film fans, or something. They simply won't let me break
the way to new things.
"Of course, I never wanted to play a role that would ever offend the
little girls who love me. Mothers bring their little children to see me, and
that means a lot. But, even if I wanted to, I couldn't play a vampire. In
the first place, the vampire is just a creature of the films, utterly foreign
to real life; just a mushy, maudlin appeal to the worst impulses."
"Little Mary" was departing for California the following day. Her
trunks were the conspicuous scenery in the room.
"Do you know, I hate to go away from New York. I love winter and the
snow. And California is far from the real heart of the movies. I shall be
returning as soon as I can, you may be sure.
"One thing will make my trip pleasant: I am going to visit the little
orphan girls of a Catholic convent near Los Angeles. They all know me;
indeed, one night I took my production, 'Cinderella,' to the convent and
showed it to the kiddies. It did touch my heart to hear their glee at seeing
the fairy story.
"Only a little while ago mother was very ill. The good sisters out
there heard of it and told the children to remember mother in their prayers.
The next morning during services a little childish treble spoke up: 'Don't
forget Mary Pickey's muvver!' Wasn't that dear?"
I am sure that film fans will never forget "Mary Pickey" as easy as she
seems to think. "Little Mary" is too deeply endeared to the hearts of
Americans--she is too much a part of ourselves.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
July 1918
Martha McKelvie
MOTION PICTURE CLASSIC
..."Isn't it a wonderful thing to be called 'America's Sweetheart'?"
I asked.
"It has always been difficult for me to realize my success," Mary
answered, modestly. "Sometimes, when it is brought to my attention by the
many kind things done for me, it quite overwhelms me.
"I do realize that my life, although short, has been mighty full.
I often think, 'If I should die today, my cup is quite full.' Surely, there
is little more kindness and love that could come my way. I've had a big
share, and I am so very grateful. Of course, I see so much that I can do in
my work. I live for it; but I mean, I have been so blessed and my life has
been so full."
Miss Pickford seems to be amazed that her public has let her stay so
long. As every one knows, many of the stars who shone brightly on the movie
horizon at the beginning have vanished. Some of them are remembered, some of
them are not; but Mary has LASTED. It seems to me, as I told Miss Pickford,
that her popularity cannot wane. Surely, a public that has loved so
sincerely cannot discard so easily. The stars who have died in popular favor
were bound to go. It's a clear case of the "survival of the fit."
Bernhardt has always been and always will be "The Divine Sarah." Mary
is and shall always be "America's Sweetheart."
"And now for a complete confession about this 'Stella Maris' make-up," I
ventured.
"All right," laughed Mary, "I'll fess. When I read the script of
'Stella Maris,' my heart went out to that little character, Unity Blake.
To me she seemed just a little mutt dog--one of the kind, you know, that
cringes and wags its tail at the same time, the kind that is just starved for
affection. I'm interested in an orphanage, and it has been evident to me
that where there are about fifteen women in charge and maybe two hundred or
more children, it is quite impossible to give them more than mere physical
needs.
"If the institution children are fed, clothed and, in a way, educated,
the women in charge have plenty to do. It's easy to see that they would have
little time to curl the kiddie's hair and fix them up in attractive way.
So, when I studied the character of Unity Blake, I braided my hair in two
pigtails, just as institution children must do."
"It wasn't so much what you did to your hair," I cut in; "it's what you
did to your face."
"Oh, that," smiled Mary. "Well, to get the mutt expression, I had to do
a lot of work. First, I pasted my hair down tight with a lot of grease.
This also made it look darker. Then, starting with the eyes, I rubbed in
white paint all around them, even on the lashes, This to make them look
smaller. Then I used rouge on my cheeks, to make hollows; black paint in my
nostrils; black on each side of my nose, to narrow the bridge; and darkened
my teeth.
"Next I combed my eyebrows down in a scraggly way, and, by a little
practice, learned to draw my mouth into crooked, hard line.
"You've noticed, perhaps, the little children in the poorest sections of
a city. They are seldom straight. The older girls of many working mothers
are forced to carry their little brothers or sisters around and care for them
while mother works, and you'll often see them with one side sort of drooping
from carrying children too heavy for them. So I gave Unity Blake a drooped
shoulder, and I tried to give her the loveless look of a little mutt dog."
Do you see, you folks out front, how carefully Mary thinks out the
characters she gives you!
"Oh, Martha McKelvie," she said, sadly, "you don't know how my heart
goes out to the ugly little ones in an orphanage! We all instinctively love
the beautiful. And if there's a stray bit of attention going around, it's
pretty apt to light on the sweet, attractive kiddies. The ugly ducklings are
apt to have a loveless lot."
Our Mary's face looked wistful as her thoughts went out into the slums,
orphanages and homes in loving sympathy.
"Do you like playing kiddie parts?" I asked.
"Oh, yes!" she replied. "Especially the ones like Unity Blake. It's
rather easy to play the nice, pretty ones. I feel that I've really
accomplished something if I can get the sympathy and love of my public for an
ugly one. I always study a part very carefully and try to get into the
spirit of the child I am to portray. The costume, dressing the character,
means a lot. You know, when I'm dressed as a child, I never walk. Always
skip or run. Funny how one feels a character when they are made up and
dressed for the part. You just naturally lose your own identity."
Just here Marshall Neilan called Mary's attention to the fact that the
pet hen they had been using in a scene for "M'liss" was to be taken out and
its tail-feathers plucked for her hat. You who see this play and watch the
proud M'liss after the feathers are jauntily perched on her head, because, as
she explained to weeping Theodore Roberts, who owns and loves the hen,
"Fashions is fashions," must not think that Mary did the dirty work.
A common, hard-hearted man did it and the picture lays it all to Mary.
She had to be assured and reassured that it wouldn't hurt before she
consented to let the play go on...
No star of today could be more modest, more lovable than Mary Pickford.
She's nice to every one. She likes criticism, if it is constructive
criticism; but it breaks her heart to give weeks of thought to a character
and then have a critic break down all that she has done by a sweep of the pen
and a few carelessly spoken words. She mentioned a criticism given her
"Little Princess."
"The critic said, 'Miss Pickford's Little Princess was too healthily
sophisticated'!" said Mary. "That really DID hurt me, for I gave ten weeks
to making that character, and I read and reread the story to make sure that I
fully understood. Surely no one can think that we make such characters over
to fit ourselves. I always try to make myself fit the character. I DID make
the Little Princess sophisticated, for the simple reason that the author of
the play made her that. I do so wish people wouldn't criticize carelessly."
"Which of your plays do you like best?"
"Well, I loved Tess, in 'Tess of the Storm Country.' I think my friends
liked that. But it is too bad to think that I did my best work in "Tess.'
I think I have done better pictures since. I am so sure of this and so sure
that we can give the public an even better 'Tess' that I am going to do it
over. In the five years since 'Tess' was produced pictures have taken great
strides. Photography, direction, everything is so much better.
"It will be interesting to revive 'Tess' and prove to the public the
great improvement in the art.
"Now, 'Hulda from Holland' I didn't like at all. I just begged the
company to suppress it. I went to see it twice to make sure and I liked it
less the second time than I did the first.
"I hope folks will like 'Stella Maris.' I do think that's one of the
best things I've done."
To you, who think that a star's life is all play and little work, let me
say that "Little Mary" had been sitting around almost all day, wearily
waiting for Marshall Neilan to put her scenes on.
A studio is rather a bleak affair, especially on a rainy day, and Mary
confided to me that brother Jack had visited her dressing-room while she had
gone to answer the phone and eaten all her luncheon.
"Not only that," wailed Mary; "he scolded me when I cam back for not
having MORE for him to eat!"
As Jack approached at this moment, I mentioned the fact that few men on
the globe today would have so much nerve.
Jack grinned, and Mary said, "Oh, well, brothers walk in where angels
fear to tread."
To smooth things over and keep the Queen of Movieland from becoming too
impatient at the long delay, Marshall Neilan offered a bribe of "one stick of
gum," and it was gratefully accepted, although unused, by Mary.
Miss Pickford calls the cameramen who do the stills, "snooper-snappers."
"Because," she explained, "they're always snooping round, snapping me."
Miss Pickford has plans completed for several pictures. After "M'liss"
comes "How Could You, Jean?" and then the revival of "Tess of the Storm
Country."
In the Pickford Company at present we find such artists as Theodore
Roberts, Tully Marshall and Tom Meighan. Mary is a great believer in a well-
balanced company, and sees no reason why any star should be surrounded by a
poor cast in order that they, themselves, may shine more brightly.
During my visit Miss Pickford received a mammoth cake from the "Green
Room Magazine" of Australia. Although the "Green Room" sends a cake to some
great star each month, this is the first time it has been sent out of
Australia.
As I left she was unpacking it and registering all the enthusiasm of a
child with a Christmas-box. But she took the time to waive me a cheery "Good-
by."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
December 8, 1918
Grace Kingsley
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Mary Pickford, Producer
"Here I am--all alone in the world, without an alibi!"
That's what Mary Pickford, now a producer for the First National
Exhibitors' Circuit, said, the other day, with her humorous little smile.
She meant there's nobody to lay the blame on if her pictures go wrong.
"I used to be able to say, when I was with Artcraft, and anything went
wrong, 'Well, now, if Mr. Zukor had let me do so and so--.' And now I
haven't a single person to blame if 'Daddy Long-Legs' and 'Pollyanna' don't
turn out to be the successes I of course hope they will be."
Mary looked very tiny, as she stood out in front of all those people who
were applying for jobs in "Daddy Long-Legs," at the Griffith studio. For,
you see, Mary is doing all the casting her very own self, and neither
Wellington Wales, her manager, nor Marshall Neilan, her director, can do
anything about it when Mary sets her tiny foot down.
But she's wonderfully sweet and kind with all those applicants. Even
after a weary session of four hours, she still told those she couldn't use
why she couldn't. In the kindest way imaginable, at the same time taking
down their names and addresses, and assuring them that if ever she could use
them in a picture she would do so.
She had such a wonderful little way, too, of putting those actors at
their ease. Which made it easier for her, too, as having lost their
nervousness, she could better judge their suitability and qualifications for
the various roles.
When I remarked that, she said: "Well, I remember when I used to go into
managers' offices to apply for jobs. I always was afraid I'd be either too
short or too tall for the role I was applying for. So I used to scrooch down
as little as I could, so that if they said I was too small I could suddenly
grow up right there before their eyes."
Oh, yes, and she helped Agnes Johnston write the screen version of
"Daddy Long-Legs," and she's going to make the little heroine commence at 12
years old, which will be delightful, I think, don't you?
There is going to be a little dramatic stuff, too.
Talking about dramatic stuff made Mary smile reminiscently.
"You know, in 'Stella Maris' they said in New York it wasn't I playing
the poor little miserable heroine at all! They said Artcraft had engaged a
real actress to play that part, and that she had skinned me to death."
That Miss Pickford is working at the old Griffith studio, along with the
Gish sisters, naturally leads one to reminiscences of other days, the old
Biograph days, when the three worked together as youngsters, and even further
back to their childhood days, when they all lived together.
"Mother used to say to me," said Mary, "that Lillian Gish was just too
good to live. She was the sweetest child and never made any trouble as
Dorothy and I did. And do you know, after I heard mother say that two or
three times, I never would stay alone in the room with Lillian any more--
I was afraid she was so good that she'd die right there."
Just then happened on the scene David Wark Griffith, who, you remember
used to direct Mary.
"What do you think of our young lady now?" said Mr. Griffith, glancing
at Mary with his whimsical smile, which carried a lot of pride and affection
in it, too, for he thinks Mary is a wonderful little artist. "Such a rich
girl! Do you know, I remember the awful time I had keeping Mary, in the old
Biograph days, because she wanted $30 a week! 'Thirty dollars!' exclaimed the
business head of that concern. 'Mary wants thirty dollars a week! Why, I
never heard of such a thing! There ain't no picture actor in the world worth
thirty dollars a week!'"
After all, the producing game isn't so new to Mary Pickford as it might
seem to be.
"Mr. Zukor used always to let me help with the writing, the casting and
directing," said Mary. "But at the same time, it's an awful responsibility,
and, as I said before, here I am all alone in the world without an alibi.
"You see, I always try to play up to the hardest part of my audiences--
the practical business men, to do such good work that when their wives say to
them, 'Oh, let's go down and see Mary Pickford,' they won't answer: 'Mary
Pickford! Oh, she always wears curls and acts foolish. I'd rather stay at
home and read my paper'"
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
September 18, 1921
Louella Parsons
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
New York is killing Mary Pickford with kindness. Everywhere she goes
crowds surround her and try to show their love of her by clasping her hands
or speaking her name. Now, Mary has a heart that success and fame have never
touched. She is as sweet and unaffected as she was in the long ago when she
was on the stage and earning a pitiful little weekly salary--barely enough to
keep the Smith family in food. Because she is Mary, and because she never
wants to seem unappreciative, she lets this mob come close to her, and she
tries to make that Mary smile carry itself into the hearts of all her
adorers.
Wednesday night I went over to the Ritz to see her. Douglas Fairbanks
was standing guard at the door.
"She is so worn out--I have to make her rest," he said.
Can you imagine the energetic Douglas, with a following of his own that
resembles the adulation given the President of the United States, acting as a
guard? Well, that was exactly what he was doing. Watching her door to see
she had a nap.
"You may go in," he said.
He opened the door, and this was what I saw--our Mary in one bed, and
Lillian Gish in the other. Lillian had worked every hour since Mary came to
town and this was the first moment she had had to see her childhood chum and
girlhood friend. The two girls had chattered and chattered like veritable
magpies.
"Come on in," called Mary. "We have talked and talked and talked."
They were just like any other two girls, these two world-famous stars.
They were discussing clothes, plays and Mary's trip abroad. The subject came
to mothers, as it always does with these two girls, who are the two most
devoted daughters I know.
"Did you see 'Over the Hill'?" Mary asked. "That is the finest mother
propaganda I ever saw. It should be compulsory for every girl to see that
picture. There is a lesson that no one should miss. The psychology of the
poorhouse is so real. Back in the mind of every human being is the fear that
some day when old age comes he will be forced into dire poverty."
Lillian Gish added her tribute by saying she thought every screen player
should see the performance of Mary Carr, which stands out as one of the most
finished portrayals of mother love ever shown on stage or screen.
"You know," said Mary, "it makes me sick when I hear some young girls
talk to their mothers. High school girls who speak as if their mothers
should get off the earth. I have heard them say:
"'What do you know about it?'
"That is the reason I think 'Over the Hill' will do good. It will open
the eyes of some of our young people."
Any one who knows anything about Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish will
realize this is not said for effect. They are daughters--both of them any
mother might rejoice to have--tender, thoughtful, and devoted. Douglas, who
had contented himself with remaining on guard, now came in and joined in the
conversation. It was the night before "Little Lord Fauntleroy" opened, and
he was giving the preparation for Mary's picture the same loving care she
gave "The Three Musketeers."
Any one who could peep behind the curtain and see Mary and Lillian and
Doug would feel the simple kindness of the three has never half been told.
As Mary is to the outside world, that way she is in the bosom of her family.
I say this after knowing her for seven years. She is one of the few real
people in the world--our Mary.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 7, 1922
LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
Mary Pickford Pays Tribute to Slain Picture Director
A gracious tribute to the memory of William D. Taylor, murdered
director, was paid yesterday, in an interview by Mary Pickford and Douglas
Fairbanks.
"The most patient man I ever knew," Mrs. Fairbanks said, and her husband
added. "We all knew him as a gentleman of whom the film industry might well
be proud."
"We were horribly shocked," Mrs. Fairbanks said, "to learn of his death
and we simply refuse to believe the innuendos against his character.
Neither of us were intimate friends of his, but he had directed me and we
naturally were well acquainted.
"Both as a gentleman and as an artist I respected him.
"He was ever courteous, considerate, and above all, patient. It's
pretty hard directing all sorts of people in big pictures, members of the
casts often being temperamental and even stubborn. He never had a harsh word
to say to anyone and would spend all sorts of time and energy to get just the
artistic results he wanted.
"To me and to everyone who ever mentioned him to me, he was always the
quiet, reserved, artistic gentleman. The films could not have lost a more
valuable or more beloved member and I cannot deplore too much the fact of the
tragedy or the attendant notoriety.
"We are hardly ever out and have our own small circle of friends, and so
about his private life we know nothing. But it seems a shame that these
girls should have to be linked up with such a ghastly crime. Although I know
none of them well, I have always heard of them as nice, well thought of
citizens."
To this statement Douglas Fairbanks added only that he had met Taylor a
few times and though not an intimate of his, knew of him as a man of the
highest caliber and a man who was ever trying to make of the films something
finer and better.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
November 11, 1923
LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
Mary, Doug on Stand in Federal Hearing
Los Angeles hearing of the Federal Trade Commission investigation into
the alleged motion picture trust came to a close yesterday afternoon with the
testimony of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks...
Mary Pickford was the first witness called by W. H. Fuller and H. A.
Cox, attorneys for the Commission...
Under questioning by Attorney Fuller, Miss Pickford related her motion
picture career and recounted the signing of a starring contract with Famous
Players-Lasky Corporation in 1914. This concern is named as principal
respondent in the Government's complaint against the alleged film combine.
"When I went with them," she stated, "it was with the guarantee that my
pictures would be sold solely upon their merits and not marketed to
exhibitors with a lot of other films they didn't want."
"For two years I constantly received complaints that exhibitors could
not purchase my films alone. I complained to Mr. Zukor and he promised to
remedy the matter but nothing was done," she continued. "I again went to him
and told him that I would walk out unless he lived up to the stipulation in
my contract.
"We compromised and I was given my own company with the Artcraft
Pictures. But the same thing happened all over again. I wanted to make less
pictures and spend more money on them to produce bigger and better films that
would have to be sold on their own merits.
"Finally conditions grew worse instead of better and I was compelled to
resign from the company. I simply could not get them to sell my pictures as
we had agreed.
"When Mr. Zukor found out that I was actually leaving him," Miss
Pickford declared, "he said to me 'Why don't you retire? I will give you
$250,000 if you will quit the screen!'"
"Did he give you any reason why he made the offer?" asked Attorney
Fuller.
"He did not," Mary answered. "He gave me no reason."...
When Mary left the stand, all the members of the hearing arose and bowed
as she passed from the room and returned to a nearby set where a corps of
actors awaited her appearance...
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Taylor Case Errors in "FORBIDDEN LOVERS"
Despite the fact that a few fairly accurate recaps of the Taylor case
have been published (e.g., Time-Life's UNSOLVED CRIMES), most new recaps
continue to perpetuate old errors and myths, or create new ones.
FORBIDDEN LOVERS by Axel Madsen is a recent "non-fiction" book which
devotes a few error-and-myth-filled pages to the Taylor case:
1. "When the Arbuckle scandal broke...[Taylor] was elected president
of the new Motion Picture Directors Association." NEW?? The Motion Picture
Director's Association was founded in 1915, six years prior to the Arbuckle
scandal. Taylor was then serving his third term as president of the
organization.
2. It is stated that Taylor was often photographed in his British Army
major's uniform. Taylor was a captain, not a major, and it is a captain's
uniform he is wearing in those photographs.
3. It is stated that Mabel Normand's adult film career owed much to
Taylor. Not really. Aside from recommending her cameraman, Homer Scott, it
does not appear that Taylor made any real contribution to Mabel's film
career. He never directed her and they never even worked at the same studio.
4. It is stated that at the time of the Taylor murder, Mabel Normand
was working for Sam Goldwyn. No, she had left Goldwyn a year earlier, and
since that time was again under contract to Mack Sennett. She was working
for Sennett at the time of the Taylor murder.
5. It is stated that at the time of the Taylor murder "Neilan was the
lover of newly divorced Paramount star Gloria Swanson." Actually it was
Neilan who was newly divorced from Gertrude Bambrick; Swanson was still
married to Herbert Somborn at that time.
6. The book mentions Mary Miles Minter as one of a group who would
"sail to Catalina Island on Sundays or go for spins to Lake Arrowhead or Palm
Springs in their fabulous roadsters"--in reality Mary's mother would never
have allowed her to make such trips alone or on a date. Mary's life was very
guarded and restricted until she finally moved out in late 1922.
7. It is stated "Mary sued her mother in 1926 for $1,345,000, but
curiously settled out of court for $25,000." The lawsuit was filed in 1925,
and the out-of-court settlement gave Mary $150,000 in bonds plus ownership of
Casa Margarita, which had considerable value.
8. "After a year at the Hollywood Health Club, the tony residence for
moneyed bachelors, Bill Taylor had moved to an apartment court at Alvarado
Street." Hollywood Health Club? Not hardly. Before entering the British
Army in 1918, Taylor had lived for several years at the Baltic Apartments,
1127 Orange St. (now Wilshire Blvd.); after he returned in 1919 he promptly
moved into the Alvarado apartment court.
9. It is stated that Edna Purivance occupied the other half of the
building that Taylor lived in. No, this is a common error--she lived in
the building immediately to the west of Taylor; she did not live in the same
building as Taylor.
10. It is stated that on the morning of the murder, Paramount
executives were burning papers in Taylor's fireplace. No, Taylor's apartment
had no fireplace.
11. Madsen evidently likes the rumors about ladies' underwear found in
Taylor's apartment, but he reports contradictory rumors as fact: that Taylor
wore some of it to "unmentionable drag parties," and; that it had been
"planted by the studio to cover Taylor's deep dark secret--his
homosexuality." Rumor, rumor, unconfirmed rumor. And the presence of any
underwear belonging to Minter was never confirmed, and strongly denied by
her. The same can be said of the rumored initialed nightgown--a nightgown
did exist, but seems not to have had initials. There were, however, some
handkerchiefs of Minter's which were found among Taylor's effects, and those
handkerchiefs were initialed.
12. It is reported as fact that Mary Miles Minter and Charlotte Shelby
had visited Taylor the night of the murder. But this is only dubious rumor,
and certainly not established as fact.
13. It is said that newspapers insinuated Taylor had been the cause of
the suicide of Zelda Crosby. Contemporary newspapers made no such
insinuation; Crosby killed herself in New York and Taylor worked in Los
Angeles.
14. It is stated that Charlotte Shelby killed Taylor and "paid off
successive Los Angeles district attorneys." Shelby may have killed Taylor,
though the case against her is far from proven and is rather doubtful. But
if Shelby "paid off" Asa Keyes, then why did she flee the country for three
years, and not return until Keyes was out of office and safely behind bars?
15. Taylor's life history, as presented in FORBIDDEN LOVERS, is very
scrambled. It is stated that Taylor "after the Great War, had gone to New
York, tried stage directing, married, fathered a child, and skipped out on
mother and daughter to try gold prospecting in the Yukon and Alaska." But
Taylor's marriage, desertion of family, and trips to the Yukon happened
BEFORE the Great War, not after. And Taylor had earlier been a stage actor,
but had never been a stage director prior to deserting his family.
16. It is stated that Allan Dwan gave Taylor his first break as a movie
actor. How? Taylor first acted for Ince, then for Vitagraph, and finally
for Balboa--thereafter he devoted all his time to directing. Dwan never
worked for Ince, Vitagraph or Balboa, so how could he have given Taylor his
first movie acting break?
17. It is stated that Edward Sands was actually Taylor's brother. No,
Sands was not Taylor's brother--there was a drastic difference in age, their
physical appearance was not similar, their handwriting and fingerprints were
different. Sands was actually Edward F. Snyder and was not Denis Deane
Tanner.
18. It is stated that at Taylor's funeral, Mary Miles Minter approached
the open casket and kissed Taylor on the lips. Mary Miles Minter did visit
Taylor's body in the mortuary, but she did not attend Taylor's funeral;
at the time the funeral was in progress she was making an official statement
to William Doran, in the office of the district attorney.
19. It is stated that "the presence of a black teenage boy at Taylor's
Alvarado Street home was never mentioned [in the press]." Huh? What is
Madsen talking about? Is this supposed to be a reference to his servant
Henry Peavey? Peavey was very much mentioned and interviewed in press
accounts of the murder, but he was certainly not a teenager--contemporary
press accounts state he was 40 years old at the time of the Taylor murder.
If the "black teenage boy" is supposed to be someone else, the statement
should be clarified, as this is something we have seen nowhere else.
Hopefully, someday newly-written recaps of the Taylor case will contain
mostly facts, and rumors will be identified as rumors. But as long as
new writers continue to rely on HOLLYWOOD BABYLON and A CAST OF KILLERS,
that day may never come.
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Back issues of Taylorology are available from the gopher server at
gopher.etext.org
in the directory Zines/Taylorology;
or on the Web at
http://www.angelfire.com/az/Taylorology
Full text searches of back issues of Taylorology can be done at
http://www.etext.org/Zines/
Some supplementary graphic images files are available at
http://www.public.asu.edu/~bruce
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