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Taylorology Issue 53
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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 53 -- May 1997 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu *
* TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed *
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
Louella Parsons Interviews with Actors:
Monte Blue, Douglas Fairbanks, George Fawcett, Robert Harron,
Sessue Hayakawa, Houdini, Harold Lloyd, Tom Mix,
Wallace Reid, Ben Turpin, Rudolph Valentino
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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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Louella Parsons Interviews with Actors:
During the years that William Desmond Taylor was in Hollywood, Louella
Parsons had not yet been enthroned by Hearst as Queen of the Hollywood Gossip
Columnists. From 1918 to 1923 she was Motion Picture Editor of the NEW YORK
MORNING TELEGRAPH. The following interviews with male actors of the time are
presented as background into the silent film era in which Taylor worked.
[Other interviews by Louella Parsons can be found in TAYLOROLOGY 28 (Roscoe
Arbuckle), 31 (Douglas MacLean), 33 (Olive Thomas), 46 (Charlie Chaplin), and
51 (Anita Loos).]
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Monte Blue
February 19, 1922
Louella Parsons
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
I had to go to Albany to meet Monte Blue, the intrepid Danton of D. W.
Griffith's "Orphans of the Storm." In New York, Mr. Blue has been making
personal appearances here, there and everywhere, sometimes with the Griffith
picture and then again as the feature attraction in the Marcus Loew circuit.
During such time as he was out shaking hands or smiling at the women who make
no secret of their interest in this young man, he has been finishing scenes
for Pyramid's "My Old Kentucky Home" and getting in readiness for "The Queen
of the Moulin Rouge," the next picture promised by Walter Green of the above-
named company.
So you can readily see why Mr. Blue and I have never met. He has been
very busy since he left the Golden West flat and came to New York to seek
adventure. An exhibitors' convention may not be the most desirable place in
the world to hold an interview, but at least it furnishes plenty of good
color.
While we tried to find a nook where the theatre owners were not
discussing the 33 1/2 per cent discount on films, we were faced with the
difficult problem of keeping away from the delegation of girls and women who
arrived at the Ten Eyck Hotel to welcome the New York stars with whom
Mr. Blue arrived to be a guest of honor at the ball.
We would get nicely started on a subject, and some Albany flapper would
step up, take a long look at Mr. Blue, and shriek with delight:
"It is Monte Blue! I knew it, he looks just like his pictures."
In between the spasmodic convulsions of delight, Mr. Blue managed to
tell of his entrance into motion pictures, which is dramatic enough to
furnish a plot in the story of some boy's book written to inspire courage and
perseverance in the hearts of our American youths.
Monte Blue was working with pick and shovel when D. W. Griffith saw him
and beckoned for him to come into a scene in "The Absentee" he was
supervising for Triangle. Yes, actually, Monte Blue was a day laborer, and
the beautiful part of the whole thing, he is proud of it. He feels no
embarrassment in having risen from the ranks; in fact, I suspect he rather
glories in the fact he is one of the people. He had come down from Canada,
where he was, to use his own expression, "cow punching," and had taken a job
at the Triangle studios, when a beckon of D. W. Griffith's finger settled his
fate. And if you think he does not appreciate what Mr. Griffith has done for
him, you should hear the paeans of praise he bestows on his teacher.
"Mr. Griffith is the sort of man," said Mr. Blue, "who is not too big to
accept ideas from the humblest worker on his staff. I have heard him say to
Tony, the property boy:
"'What was that idea you had yesterday, Tony? Sounded pretty good to
me. We will try it.'
"This day when I was singled out from a group of my fellow-workmen,"
went on Mr. Blue, "Mr. Griffith had sent for all the workers in the studio to
stage a scene of striking miners. He said: 'Now, how do you think these men
would feel, fired with the thought that grave injustice had been done to them
and to their families?'
"I had an idea how a man in that state of mind would feel and I
proceeded to illustrate it to the best of my ability. Mr. Griffith saw me
and said: 'Come down here, and do that scene for me alone.' I did, and he
cast me as one of the extras. After that," went on Mr. Blue, "I wanted to
continue my experience as an actor, and I set out to find work."
A dramatic story would lift young Mr. Blue immediately into stardom.
But such was not the case. For many weary months he served as a double for
actors who did not care to risk their lives in performing stunts. He thought
he was never to get his name on the screen. When the chance did come, he was
given villain roles, and could never play the hero parts his soul craved.
When he was reciting how his ambition was sidetracked for so many months
I could not help smiling at the thought of this tall lad, with the pleasant
smile and ragged Abraham Lincoln type of features, figuring as a villain.
My first recollection of him is in "Pettigrew's Girl," where he played
the buck private whose adventures in the army camp were amusing. I remember
at the time Ethel Clayton spoke to me of young Blue. She said she had been
particularly anxious that Famous Players-Lasky keep his part intact and not
sacrifice a line of the boy's part to build up her role. After seeing the
picture I realized how sensible Miss Clayton had been, for Monte Blue gave a
performance that still lingers in my mind.
Just as Monte Blue has a friendly word for every one, so every one seems
to have a friendly word for him. He is a fine exponent of the idea we get
what we give. All the players who came down with him said:
"Isn't Monte Blue a nice boy?"
The exhibitor said: "Great lad."
The fans said: "Isn't he a dear?"
And with it all Monte goes along apparently unmoved by all these things.
He says he has an insatiable thirst for knowledge. The books that were
denied him in his boyhood are now being sought as the basis of a learning he
is trying to build for himself.
"When Mr. Griffith told me I could play Danton," said Mr. Blue,
"I searched the library for stories of his life in France. I read every line
I could find. I read the 'French Revolution' over and over again."
Mr. Blue said Mr. Griffith asked him to give an opinion of "Orphans of
the Storm."
"I could not do it the first time I saw the picture," he said. "I was
so overcome. I sat through it like some one in a trance. Please do not
think it was because I had a part; it was because I think the picture is so
wonderful. I had to go again and look at it all a second time.
"On the opening night," said Mr. Blue, "I was so embarrassed I went to
the box to tell Miss Lillian and Dorothy what I thought of their work, and
they didn't give me a chance. Dorothy said:
"'Come right here, Monte Blue. Oh, wait until I tell you what we think
of your work.'
"Then I started to tell her what I thought of her performance, and
before I could tell either one of the girls a word they had said all the
pretty things to me.
"But that's like the Gishes," he explained. They are so real and
sincere. It never occurred to either of them to think of their own
remarkable work.
"Miss Lillian is the greatest actress in the world," said Monte. "She
is an artist. She never thinks about getting in front of the camera or
trying to manage the scene. She is always determined to get the most out of
every part of her work."
Mr. Blue also paid a fine tribute to Mae Murray, and spoke of how much
he enjoyed playing in "Peacock Alley" with her.
We sat and talked until nearly seven. Time for both of us to be dressed
for dinner and the ball. And as we walked away, I heard a woman say:
"Yes, that is Monte Blue. I saw his Danton in New York. Isn't he
wonderful?"
I wondered if Monte had heard her. If so he never showed it in his
expression.
Later at the ball, when he was besieged by all the young girls in Albany
for his autograph, and they classified him as "sweet," I thought of the woman
who had called him wonderful. But then they had not yet seen his Danton.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Douglas Fairbanks
November 24, 1918
Louella Parsons
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
When you whisper the name of Douglas Fairbanks, you follow it with the
though of what more can be written and said about this star, who has been so
much written about and so widely quoted. But when the folk who read your
department and incidentally help fill that weekly pay envelope request an
interview, it's up to you to find something to write about, if it's only what
he eats for breakfast, and the name of his favorite breakfast food.
Mr. Fairbanks was in New York helping with the United War Drive, and
incidentally raising a small sum like $26,000,000 for the boys over there,
when I was asked to write a story about him. He was staying at the Biltmore
and spending every spare hour coaxing dollars away from the unsuspecting to
help our sailors and soldiers get the tobacco and goodies they so much need
and want.
Our appointment was for 11 o'clock in the morning. I made it by 11:30
and found Mr. Douglas pacing the floor, coat and hat on and patiently waiting
to get away.
"Will you go shopping with me?" he asked, before I had both feet well
over the threshold.
"Where?" I asked, wanting to be quite sure this was no trick to get the
$1 I had left that had not been pledged to the Liberty Loan or the War Drive.
"Oh, I need a few neckties and some trifles like that before I go back
to the Coast. Have to look New Yorky, you know, after having been here so
long."
So we went to a Fifth avenue shop and spent thirty whole minutes
selecting neckwear for the smile star of the world.
I said we, even editorial we is barred in this case, for it was I who
selected every last tie, and there were about three dozen in all.
"Do you like this one?" Mr. Fairbanks would ask.
If I said yes, into the waiting basket would go the tie, whether it was
green, blue, gray, or red.
It was a great temptation to pick up a terrible creation of orange, red
and purple and express my admiration just to see if Mr. Fairbanks would buy
it, but such trust as he had in my judgment of masculine neckwear was
entirely too complete to be upset by such a mean trick.
After the tie orgy, we joined Ted Reed and Bennie Zeidman and walked
down Fifth avenue. I felt very much like the circus rider in the grand
parade. Not because any one looked at me, because they ddidn't as much as
give me a fleeting glance, but about five hundred pairs of eyes in our march
down the avenue were all focused at Douglas.
"It's Douglas Fairbanks," said more than one well dressed woman to her
companion.
Even the occupants of the limousines stopping before the Fifth avenue
shops stared at the upright figure in the tan coat stalking down the avenue.
This reception was what might be called a well bred greeting. There were
only stares of interest, with no audible comment.
Then we walked over toward Eighth avenue to a garage to have a look a
look at the French car Mr. Fairbanks had just purchased. We managed to get
in front of a public school during its noon recess and here, at least, were
no more well bred stares.
"It's Douglas, it's Douglas!" shouted fifty small boys.
"Come on, Doug, climb a telegraph pole, jump out a window, or do
something, can't you Doug. Oh, come on."
The refuge of the garage was insufficient; these sturdy youngsters
refused to be barred out of the building which held their hero. Over the
windows, through the doors they poured, until no army ever more completely
surrounded a desired fortification.
The garage man tried to shoo them out like so many troublesome flies,
but they refused to be shooed. They climbed over cars, balanced on rafters
and got under every one's feet, until Mr. Fairbanks and his party walked out,
despairing of ever making arrangements for the shipping of the car with this
mob of wild Indians blocking the traffic.
If Mr. Fairbanks thought to get rid of his hero worshippers so easily he
had another thought coming. He walked over to Broadway and they followed.
Forgotten was lunch, forgotten was school or any other trivial thing
like time. They flocked down Broadway calling to Mr. Fairbanks and watching
him until the passerby wondered what new sensation had struck New York.
In the intervals of a few peaceful moments we talked pictures.
Mr. Fairbanks exploded a bomb shell by announcing that he did not believe
the heretofore considered absolutely essential director of pictures was the
really important factor in picture making.
"The director," said Mr. Fairbanks, "is much overestimated. It is the
actor and the scenario writer who should get credit for the success of a
production. A director is entirely too unreliable and uncertain. To his
seven successes he is apt to have three "'flivvers.' I am confident as we
progress in the art of picture making the public is going to be brought to a
realization of the importance of the photoplaywright as compared to the
relative non importance of the director."
To this radical statement I had no answer. It sounded as if it was
being uttered by a man who had lived and suffered with the mistakes of
directors. But of course we looking in from the outside really know little
of what is actually taking place on the inside of the studios.
Mr. Fairbanks also quoted Charlie Chaplin as having the right idea of
picture making.
"Charlie," said Mr. Fairbanks, "only makes a few pictures, but he keeps
people waiting so long they await his next comic with eagerness and flock to
the theatres. Of course there is not so much money made for the stars who
have our own companies in this conservation of pictures, but I am not so sure
that Chaplin isn't wise in the long run. It will do much to keep his
popularity at its present high tide."
We also discussed the high salaries of the stars, Mr. Fairbanks giving
as his opinion that a $10,000 a week pay check did not really amount to any
more than $2,000. "All of us, Chaplin, Miss Pickford, myself and any other
independent star having his own company have so many expenses the amount of
our salaries does not really amount to the figures quoted," Mr. Fairbanks
explained.
We chatted on until we reached Forty-fourth and Broadway where I had a
luncheon engagement. The small boys had by this time returned to their
school, and Mr. Fairbanks, having been sufficiently bored to the point of
tears by the stares and comments of the busy Broadway crowd, said au revoir
and went back to the Biltmore.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
George Fawcett
November 13, 1921
Louella Parsons
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
Even in the days of early five-reel pictures--when Bosworth was
releasing through Famous Players--George Fawcett succeeded in getting himself
mentioned as one of the few artists on the screen. Coming from the stage
with a long career of character parts varied and numerous, he brought with
him a certain wealth of knowledge and experience that he has used effectively
in our motion pictures for the last seven or eight years. George Fawcett was
the first man who wrested honors away from a star without any consciousness
on his part of having played a role too well. The star, a young woman with a
sense of humor, said:
"I cannot have Mr. Fawcett in my next picture, he is too good an actor.
All the fans write and ask about him, and all the critics speak of him as
having made the picture. I shall have to get some one who is less finished
in his work."
The director brought this information to Mr. Fawcett, who thought there
must be a joker somewhere. No man had ever been accused of playing a part
too well. Many had been recalled for inefficiency, but no one for
overefficiency.
The story came to the Chicago papers over five years ago and it was
printed, much to the annoyance of Mr. Fawcett, who was as ashamed of having
played too well as most men would have been of getting scored for not playing
well enough. He was considered one of the few actors entitled to be called
an artist by the little band of Chicago critics who in those days were trying
to write constructive criticism of motion picture plays. A little later he
came to Chicago with D. W. Griffith, with whom he was associated. The
newspaper clan rushed to see him and he shared honors in the published
stories with the producer, who was then coming into his own as the world's
greatest exponent of the new art. Mr. Griffith had no fear that the veteran
actor would take away the honors from the leading men and women. He gave Mr.
Fawcett leeway to do his best with the roles he gave him, and once again the
world was talking of the man who made the characters he created live on the
screen.
Then George Fawcett left the Griffith studios, where he had been helping
as an assistant director as well as acting, and set out to direct on his own.
He made several pictures for Vitagraph, but the lure of the stage and the
screen is equally potent, and the first thing, Mr. Fawcett was back with an
engagement in a Broadway production. But it was not the stage play that
brought him into notice this last time. "The Wren," like many of is
contemporaries on the stage, just breathed and died. It was a picture,
"Peter Ibbetson," that made every one who saw it say with bated breath, "Here
is a performance that is almost flawless." People went to the picture--and
came away to marvel that a part too small to be one of the principal roles
and too big to be called a bit could take such a hold on every one who saw
it.
I had luncheon with Mr. Fawcett shortly after I had seen his work as the
Major in "Peter Ibbetson," and I asked him to tell me something of the art of
conveying thought to the camera.
"The reason some people do not register what they are trying to
express," said Mr. Fawcett, "is because they are too much engaged in studying
their technique. This devotion to the mechanical side of acting takes their
minds off the character they are trying to build, and it shows in the
picture. The camera is canny. It gets every thought behind an act. If an
actor is thinking of his luncheon and trying to play a dramatic scene, the
effect is poor; it shows he is not giving the scene the thought it requires.
Forget the camera, forget the studio, forget everything but the scene you are
playing.
"I have played every sort of man from an old sea captain to a nobleman,
and I have had to get myself in the character before I dared work. You
cannot cheat the camera. It is all-seeing."
Most seasoned players who have traveled all over the world and played
the wide range of parts Mr. Fawcett has been called upon to play have a
sneaking feeling in the back of their minds they would like to leave pictures
some day and return to their first love. Many of these old-time actors look
upon the screen as a necessary evil--a way to make money--and do not hesitate
to say so. Not George Fawcett.
"I love motion pictures," said Mr. Fawcett. "At the time they came into
being the stage was growing archaic. We had sent out inferior companies and
poor actors to the smaller towns until the people were beginning to feel fed
up with the stage. Then came pictures, and the small-town people could see
the plays with the best actors in the world. They had a chance to see the
same picture the city folk saw, and it came as a welcome respite after the
years of having poor plays in the village opera house.
"Then, too, the stage is so uncertain. One year I played in fourteen
plays that were failures, and out of that I only had a very few weeks' work.
We are not paid while we are rehearsing, and we are always dependent upon the
whim of the public. Some little thing in the play may not please and the
whole production is condemned. There are certain things that a producer
learns to avoid, but he can never be sure he has eliminated everything that
he should leave out or change.
"There is a curious psychology about plays. One little thing will
change the whole trend of the public, or one line spoken in a different
intonation may save a play. I have seen plays condemned to be taken off at
the end of two weeks revive and come back for a long run. You can never tell
a thing about it.
"This profession is the most difficult in the world," went on Mr.
Fawcett. "The actor never knows whether it is a feast or a famine. But he
is always cheerful. You never hear an actor complain. He is always
optimistic and hopeful and always ready to tell of what he expects will come
his way. He has chosen his life and he is loyal to it, even in its
vicissitudes, and in its unfortunate moments."
Since the "Peter Ibbetson" role, Mr. Fawcett has had innumerable offers
to do something like it for other companies. He said he did not think he had
created anything out of the ordinary until the papers started to comment on
it and his friends spoke to him about it. When he was called upon to play
the old major who entertained the children with fairy tales, he studied the
play, "Peter Ibbetson," and learned the character of the eccentric old
soldier. The few hundred feet devoted to his later appearances as the
decrepit old man who has lost his reason and his ability to remember is one
of the finest things ever presented on stage or screen. It stands out in
cameo clearness, and any one who has seen this highly artistic picture made
by George Fitzmaurice will never forget the "major."
We stoke of the tendency of the screen to repeat its successes. One
successful mother play brought an avalanche of others with the same theme.
"It is only natural," said Mr. Fawcett. "Every one responds to the fine
sentiment of motherhood. Father and daughter, mother and son, has the same
appeal. The real things of life are the subject that hold interest. They
are the foundations of big plays and will be until the end of time."
Mr. Fawcett related an amusing story of the first problem play brought
to this country. He said it was very mild compared with some of the sex
tales now unfolded on the stage, but in those days it seemed the acme of
wickedness. Some of the producers who went to see it thought the man who was
bold enough to produce such a thing was crazy. But it was a success. Now it
would be considered Mellin's [baby] Food.
George Fawcett's popularity as an actor is exceeded only by his
popularity as a man. Everywhere he goes he is surrounded by friends who want
to shake his hand and greet him. He says when he was on the stage he was
like a bear, because he had to argue with producers on the way to play
certain parts, "but now," said Mr. Fawcett, "I am as gentle as a lamb,
because I never have any trouble with my directors; they let me do as I
please."
And rightly. Any director who would attempt to improve on George
Fawcett's technique needs an alienist to examine his mental status. And I
say technique advisedly, for if any one person can be said to have acquired a
technique that is beyond question, I think that man is George Fawcett. Wise
enough not to attempt to play youthful parts, and sensible enough to know the
love interest can be sustained only by a juvenile part, he has learned in
some miraculous way to make the characters he gives the world human beings.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Robert Harron
February 8, 1920
Louella Parsons
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
At the juvenile age of 26 Robert Harron is a pioneer. Conjure up, if
you can, a mental image of what a pioneer means to you. An early explorer
who drove his team of horses across the country while it was in a state of
abject wilderness. A feeble, white-haired man, who braved the perils of a
land where cultivation had never bloomed. A man whose hardy youth is on the
wane, but whose deeds of valor in blazing a trail still lives. This romantic
definition then of the word does not apply to a young man of 26.
And yet, Robert Harron is a pioneer. He has been a screen actor for
exactly twelve years. In the steel, railroad or mercantile business this
length of servitude would scarcely entitle a man to be thus classified, but
in the young motion picture industry twelve years equals a half century.
If Bobby Harron had not been a very good boy at school he might never
have been an actor. What a monumental argument in favor of the 100 in
deportment lads. Not that Bobby was ever that kind of a boy from choice. He
must have been as full of tricks as Peck's Bad Boy or the more modern Penrod.
His brown eyes, which have a way of dancing even now, attest to this fact.
But, like the universal goodness of childhood at Christmas time, when there
was something worth while at stake Bobby could be angelic both in looks and
disposition.
It was in one of these same evangelic moods that he was selected to be
sent to the Biograph studios. He went to the Christian Brothers school in
Greenwich Village, and the boys were frequently recruited from the ranks to
serve as "extras" in the then new motion pictures. Bobby, being the sort of
lad who is willing to try anything once, worked so hard to be sent to the
studios he was finally elected. He and James Smith were sent together.
That was twelve years ago, and in all that time neither of the boys have
ever worked under any other management. David Griffith was their first
director, and as far as a mutual understanding goes he is very likely to be
their last. Mr. Smith assembles and cuts the film, while his wife, Rosie,
who is a small town girl, gives the final word on what will pass and what is
taboo in hamlets where the mid-Victorian code still reigns.
Bobby Harron needs to be coaxed to even divulge this much about himself.
He is one actor whose ego does not precede every other through. I have
wanted to interview him ever since he came on to New York, but he lives at
Gedney Farms when he is not working at the studio in Mamaroneck, and when he
is in New York it is to rehearse. Mr. Griffith rehearses his players at the
Claridge before he films the picture at the studios.
Gedney Farms and Mamaroneck sound like the ends of the earth. Like the
place La Salle set out to discover when his wanderlust brought him from the
court of France in search of a new country. Perhaps--one of my readers urged
in her every week letter asking that Mr. Harron be interviewed--he will come
to New York. Having a single track mind it never occurred to me Mr. Harron
might purposely make a trip to this city at my request. But that is exactly
what he did, and in such a nice way before he left he made me believe I was
the one who had gone out of my way to see him.
We met at the Algonquin. No, I won't tell you what we had to eat. I am
dieting, and he, wishing not to make me envious, ordered exactly what I did--
"Twelve years ago I was 14," answered Bobby. "Jim and I were earning $5
a week. At that time $5 was considered a big salary for a boy. We were
proud of ourselves until we started playing regular parts and then we used to
hold indignation meetings and say if the company didn't realize our value we
would leave. A threat which never worried any one and which we never carried
out."
"Do you remember your first picture?"
"Do I? As well as if it were yesterday. 'Bobby's Kodak' was the title.
I was the enfant terrible, and I snapped my father kissing the maid, mother
flirting with the butler, the nurse maid having an affair with the cop.
Later I showed all the pictures and the pandemonium that followed has some of
our best slap-stick comedies looking lifeless. There was a chase--Edward
Dillon played father, and it was from his irate grasp I had to escape."
Mr. Harron was in the original group in which Mary Pickford, Lillian
Gish, Dorothy Gish, Mae Marsh, Mabel Normand, Blanche Sweet, Owen Moore,
Florence Lawrence, Arthur Johnson and other famous members of the film
industry started their career in pictures. Of that group only he and the two
Gish sisters have remained under one direction.
"I have never worked for any one else, excepting one time when Mr.
Griffith loaned me to the Goldwyn Company to play in a Mae Marsh picture.
My ideas on pictures and picture making have all been gleaned from my
association with Mr. Griffith. In that length of time you grow to know a
man, his faults and his virtues, and the fact that I have never wanted to
work for any one else sums up my honest opinion of David Griffith as a man
and as a director better than any mere words could possibly do."
Mr. Harron has a great admiration for Charles Ray.
I waited to hear some if and buts wedged in between the almost
extravagant words of praise he has for his colleague, but there were
strangely missing. His whole-hearted sound liking for young Ray is free from
any underlying meaning. He did not qualify his original opinion. He
considers Charles Ray the greatest screen star of his kind.
"I cannot think of another actor who can play the roles Ray does with
the same fine shade and feeling. His rise has been gradual, and I believe he
stands as an example of what gradual development means to the picture star.
There is so much to learn, the star who becomes great overnight is seldom
lasting in his popularity."
Robert Harron has never been on the stage. And he has no qualms nor
longing to learn what he has missed.
He shook his head doubtfully over the stage idea.
"No, I have never wanted to go on the stage," he said. "I know nothing
of its requirements, and I should be a fizzle if I tried to say my lines over
the footlights. You see, I have no illusions on the subject. I know myself
and my own limitations. I also know an artist when I see one."
"Who do you consider an artist?"
"Ethel Barrymore," he answered without hesitating for the shadow of a
second. "I went to see 'Declasse' the other night, and I met her after the
performance. If I were a girl, I would probably say it was the most
wonderful moment in my life when I stepped into her dressing room. It was
just that. I knew Lionel at the Biograph. He was one of the original
Biographers. In those days he weighed over two hundred pounds. I thought he
was the fattest man I had ever seen.
"'If you think I am fat now,' he said, 'you should have seen me six
months before. I weighed fifty pounds more.'"
Lionel Barrymore is slender now, so he cannot possibly resent Mr.
Harron's allusion to his fat days. In fact, I should think he would find
enjoyment in comparing his now and then self.
"'The Jest' is another play I am glad to have seen," Mr. Harron said.
"I suppose John Barrymore is considered the best actor on the American stage
today, but it is interesting to know Ethel Barrymore considers he has a
rival. She said:
"'Oh, yes, John is a splendid actor--but Lionel--well Lionel is the
actor in the Barrymore family.'"
Robert Harron does not believe the world has failed to properly judge
him. He is not dissatisfied, nor has he any envy in his heart. It is
refreshing, indeed, to hear any single person in this world who is satisfied.
In these days of Bolshevism it is so unexpected. There are no regrets in
young Mr. Harron's mind for what might have been. He believes he has chosen
his career sanely, and doesn't hesitate to say so.
Now that there is the slightest angle of egotism in this attitude,
I took it as rather an indirect compliment to David Griffith. To work under
any other direction is as far away from his thoughts as the moon. To him
there is but one director in the world, and he is the great Griffith.
Sometimes it sounds sentimental and saccharine to speak of how much a
director likes a star or a star likes a director. Often it is so apparently
a pose one is bored. In the case of Robert Harron, his liking for Griffith
as a man, as a director and as a comrade is unmistakable. He believes his
influence not alone in pictures, but in his general outlook on life has been
the greatest thing in his life.
Bobby Harron is a lot of fun. He has a great sense of humor and sees
the funny side of everything. He has a fund of stories and a good-natured
talentage for other people's foibles that has made him one of the most
popular men in pictures.
He will go a long way in pictures, will this young pioneer with the
laughing brown eyes and the boyish, happy disposition.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Sessue Hayakawa
July 3, 1921
Louella Parsons
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
"If you want to see Mr. Hayakawa," said a voice over the telephone, "be
at the Biltmore at 2 o'clock. A minute earlier or a minute later will not
do. He has engagements every hour of the day."
In ordinary cases I should have answered gently but firmly--the
interview is postponed indefinitely. But this time feminine curiosity and
interest triumphed and I permitted this very important individual to hand me
out orders without a word.
"Very well," I said, "I shall be at the Biltmore at 2 o'clock."
To accomplish this I had to swallow my luncheon and risk an attack of
indigestion in order to reach the hotel at the very moment the clock was
striking the hour.
I found--
Every one assembled.
But Sessue Hayakawa.
He was not there.
"I am so sorry," said his wife in a soft voice, and a smile that no one
could resist, not even an irate interviewer. "My husband has been detained."
"But I was told--"
"I know," she said, still smiling, "but he went to Washington to see the
President--and he was detained a little longer than he expected. He
telephoned me from the station to ask you to please wait.
"You will forgive him?"
Seeing it was President Harding who had interfered with my 2 o'clock
engagement and that I had been given such an adequate substitute in Tsuri
Aoki--Mrs. Hayakawa--I did not see how I could maintain a grouch.
Mrs. Hayakawa was entertaining a friend she had not seen for twelve
years.
"I knew Tsuri," said Mrs. Pulsifer, "when she was a little girl,
spending the Summer at Colorado Springs, and haven't seen her for twelve
years."
Mrs. Hayakawa then went on to tell me she had been in this country
twenty years and was really more American than Japanese.
"My uncle," she said, "was an artist and he was busy on a special
assignment the Summer we met Mrs. Pulsifer."
"And you have kept up your friendship all these years?"
"Yes, I always keep my friends after I make them," replied the little
Japanese with a quaint dignity.
Just then Mr. Hayakawa came into the room, followed by two of Robertson-
Cole's representatives who had accompanied him to Washington. After greeting
his wife and meeting Mrs. Pulsifer who had come in from her country home to
see if her little friend had found a husband worthy of her, Mr. Hayakawa was
presented.
"I have come East to find what the public likes," he said. His accent
is much more marked than his wife's. He speaks very slowly in the English
tongue with some difficulty, and I had to listen very attentively to get
every word.
"How can you answer that important question?" I asked him.
"I shall ask to see whether they want me in dress clothes or in Japanese
costume, or in the dress of a coolie, like I wore in 'The First Born'."
"Which do you like?" I asked him.
"I prefer the costume, but in some cities they object, so I must find
out what the people want before I start my Fall plans for Robertson Cole."
"What else are you doing here," I asked him.
"Going to the theatres," he answered. "I saw 'Lightnin'' and I think
the whole success of the play is in the courtroom scene.
"When Lightnin' asks Mrs. Lightnin' if she received her $6 and then says
he will go away forever, there is a strange mixture of comedy and tragedy.
Only an actor could have played on his audience's emotions the way Frank
Bacon has, bringing the tears and the laughter so close together--they meet."
Then Mr. Hayakawa explained the value of comedy and the value of drama
when they follow each other. He says he likes the American theatre because
all the science of the drama and its effect has been worked out so carefully.
"I like America anyway," he said. "In Japan we are much more formal.
If two friends are separated for a long time and they meet they bow and bow
and bow. They keep bowing without exchanging a word.
"Here they slap each other on the back and say:
"'Hello, old man, how goes everything.'
"I like that way better or the kiss. In Japan they do not kiss after a
long separation; they bow politely. The American custom is warmer."
I was interested in that because Mrs. Hayakawa had greeted her husband
on his return from Washington with a real American kiss and hug and I failed
to see her salaam her lord.
"That is one reason so many of the Japanese pictures are not good," said
Mr. Hayakawa, "they cannot spare all the footage necessary for that bow,
which is repeated over and over again."
Mr. Hayakawa was deep in a discussion of Japanese customs when we were
interrupted. You are behind in your schedule, he was told--you must end your
interview.
In my years' experience as an interviewer I have been urged to remain
many times, but I was never shown the door. My Hayakawa flushed at the
preemptory manner in which I had the exit pointed out for me. He seemed
embarrassed.
"It is all right," I assured him, "this always happens."
He looked at me with pity, as much as to say, "Your life must be very
sad." Sessue Hayakawa is a student and a man who has much to say if one has
time to hear him say it. There is a certain serious dignity about him that
is charming. Both Mr. and Mrs. Hayakawa impress one as people worth
cultivating.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Houdini
November 10, 1918
Louella Parsons
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
When Houdini became a legitimate subject for a motion picture story,
there seemed to me no reason why I should not pay him a visit and ask him to
tell me how he managed to wriggle his way out of a straitjacket while he was
suspended sixty feet in the air, where he concealed the yards and yards of
gay colored silk he apparently extracted from a water-filled bowl, how he
unlocked a bolted and barred box without key or chisel.
The Rolfe studio way out in Yonkers didn't help solve this problem for
me because it is too far from the haunts of man to permit a busy woman to
wander there while there is work to be done. But his name on the Hippodrome
program as one of the integral parts of "Everything" gave me an opportunity
to visit him at the theatre.
We saw his performance first from one of the loges and heard him speak
in a Liberty Loan voice, now the fashion among people who have done service
for Uncle Sam. Then he disappeared from view, and Mr. Conway of the
Hippodrome staff came and told me Houdini would see me in his dressing room.
"Find out how he does it," shouted all four voices. "Don't come back
until he tells you," instructed an enthusiastic female in our party. With
all these whispered words of advice simmering in my brain I followed Mr.
Conway down the devious and mysterious back-stage passageways of the
labyrinth-like Hippodrope. It was dark, and I had a sort of shaky feeling
akin to the sensation one gets when the lights go out and a spiritualistic
seance is put on with a ghostly voice sighing its way into the party.
A cheerful voice, a bright light and an interesting personality--all
belonging to Houdini--made me forget the spooky feeling of a few moments
earlier.
"Won't you come in?" invited Mr. Houdini. His pet eagle echoed the
invitation by flapping his wings, and so I entered the presence of the master
magician with the thought uppermost in my mind, "How do you do all this
magic?"
The thought is twin to the voice and in two minutes I had put into words
what had been singing in my mind.
"Won't you tell me how you untied yourself?" I asked.
"If I tell you," he said, "it will be no secret."
"But if I promise never to tell?"
"Ah, many have asked the same thing, but I have promised myself to carry
my secret to the grave," he said. "If you knew, you would not consider the
feat marvelous or even interesting."
Houdini, and his name has been legalized, comes from a small town called
Appleton, Wis. Appleton is famous also as the birthplace of Edna Ferber and
Dr. John Murphy, Chicago's great surgeon.
"When I was a small boy in Appleton," said Houdini, "my mother used to
bake apple pie. She would lock it in a pantry and it would disappear. I was
the guilty culprit. Apple pie is probably the only thing which would drive
me to such desperate deeds--and even today, for a piece of my mother's pie,
I would commit a theft."
"Doesn't she bake any more pies for you; and do you really think such
rich pastry is good for you?" I asked, wondering if he didn't have to diet
with so much depending upon his physical perfection.
He handed me a photograph of himself and two women. Pointing to the
elder of the two, he said: "My mother left us five years ago. This is my
wife, and we are unfashionable enough to still like each other after twenty-
four years of married life."
Then we came to the subject of pie as a diet. Houdini makes no
restrictions in eating when he likes. He is extremely proud of his stomach,
an endowment, he says, of an ancestral cleanliness. He is proud of his
family and spoke not only in tender, proud tones of the sweet-faced little
mother, but of his rabbi father, who brought him up in the strict Hebrew
church. Houdini is a Jew, and proud of it.
"Once I went to a talk with Billy Sunday," he said. "He talked about
the Bible to me and I went home and read it; the next day I was a better Jew
than I had ever been in my life--that is what Billy Sunday did for me."
We talked about every subject in the world but moving pictures. We
talked about reincarnation, transmigration of the soul, the Sir Oliver Lodge
theory, and in merely a superficial discussion, just scratching the surface
as it were, Houdini betrayed himself as being a rarely well-read and well-
educated man. He does not talk to get an audience, but after the manner of a
man who knows his subject.
Finally we came to motion pictures. Houdini is right now nursing a
broken wrist and a bumped head.
"I had to go into pictures to get these," he said, pointing ruefully to
his injured members. "You see, I don't have any doubles. I do all the
stunts myself. Some of the business Arthur Reeve left out of the scenario,
with instructions for me to get out of any predicament I was in as best I
could. Well, I followed his advice and got these."
But Houdini likes making pictures. He says it is a sinfully easy way to
make money. Attention here, all you hard-working stars, who sigh over the
vicissitudes of the picture-making game.
"Why, the director tells you what to do, and you do it. One thing,"
said the master magician, "there are no fakes in the serial we are making.
I have done everything called for, without calling in any help, and our
fights have been real fights."
The Rolfe serial, "The Master Mystery," is the subject of great
enthusiasm with Houdini. He likes it, and thinks the public will enjoy the
tale of adventure it unfolds.
"You know the only thing that worried me," he said, "when I was taking
the picture. I have never acted with women and I was afraid my wife would
not exactly like my making love to these girls, even if it was only for the
benefit of the camera."
"Did she mind," I asked, amused at this naive confession from a man who
had been learnedly discussing philosophy and religion but a few seconds ago.
"Not a bit," he said. "We both like the young ladies very much. They
are sweet girls. You see, I am not much of a ladies' man."
I should say Houdini is very modest. He has nice gray eyes, a
singularly attractive smile and a most engaging manner. The picture taken of
himself some years ago with his wife and mother shows a very handsome young
man. He is older now, with hair just beginning to grow thin at the temples.
Every few seconds we came back to his art. I call it art, for, black
magic though it may be, he has certainly raised it to the plane of artistic
endeavor. He stands unique and alone. There is only one Houdini. There
will probably never be another one, for he is determined to bury his secret
with him.
"I have not betrayed my secrets on the screen, though I have had some
difficulty in keeping them from the watchful eye of the camera," he said.
I had to return to my box at the Hippodrome without the secret, but
Houdini, much after the manner of pleasing a child who has been grievously
disappointed, showed me how he can disjoint his thumb, a trick I have never
before seen done.
Just as I was leaving Houdini's dressing room he confessed to me I was
entirely different from what he expected to see. "I had a mental picture in
my mind," he said, "and you are just the opposite."
He didn't tell me whether I had failed to measure up to his expectation,
but then, as I said--Houdini is a gentleman.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Harold Lloyd
November 16, 1919
Louella Parsons
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
Whenever the name Harold Lloyd is mentioned, everyone says in one
breath:
"Oh, yes, he is the young man with the glasses!"
And just as Theda Bara's name has become the synonym for vampire, and
curls have entwined themselves indelibly with every thought of Mary Pickford,
so have spectacles become a part of Harold Lloyd. They are his great stock
in trade. Not so much of a stock in the telling, but worth an evening full
of laughs in the seeing.
So when this youthful comedian walked into my office the other afternoon
sans his tortoise-shell specs, the first question was a natural one.
"Where are your glasses?"
"In the studio on the Coast," he answered. "You don't expect me to wear
my trade mark when I am vacationing?"
"Oh, then your specs are not donned for seeing purposes, just to help
you get a laugh?"
"Solely for the purpose of making me look owlish and wise. This
camouflage is the only invention I can think of which can be used
successfully in more than one picture."
This spectacled young man has, indeed, become singularly successful
within the last few years. He has jumped--and jumped is the word I am using
advisedly--into public favor with an amazing rapidity. Likewise, his worldly
goods took the same leap. From a comedian of several hundred dollars a week
he became a stock owner in his company with a drawing account in lieu of a
salary of enough dollars to warrant buying all the clothes he wants.
Our conversation was held in sections. He came to the office to pay his
respects and between whizzing telephone bells and other numerous
interruptions decided that conversation held under these circumstances was
too much like trying to talk in an engine room, so he suggested we postpone
our visit to luncheon the next day.
And so it was finally over the luncheon table at the Claridge that we
talked of Mr. Lloyd and his picture-making ventures.
In the beginning, Harold Lloyd is a very surprising young man. He looks
more like he might be a college student than an actor. In fact, he looks
more like anything else in the world than an actor. He says he is 25, but he
looks 19. And he doesn't think he has discovered the only receipt in the
world for making folks laugh. He believes there are other young men just as
capable of rising to the top, and that he cannot make good pictures alone.
He believes he must have a leading woman with beauty and brains, a first-
class director, a first-class camera man and an adequate supporting cast.
"It's bunk for any actor to think he is the whole show," said Mr. Lloyd.
"For every man or woman in the cast who gets attention the star is building
up just that much more for himself. It's the most foolhardy thing in the
world to stifle another player's act in a picture. In the end it's bound to
react on the star, for the public is fickle and if he tries to be the whole
show the world is going to sicken of him in a twelve-month."
And best of all, young Lloyd was not talking to the grandstand. He is
quite sincere, and actually is as square in his dealings with his company as
the above sounds. How do I know? Well, a little bird whispered to me.
New York to Harold Lloyd is a joy. He hasn't had a playtime in years
and this, despite the fact that he is in New York on a rather serious
mission, is one wonderful vacation.
"I made five shows in one day," he said.
"Five?" I gasped. "Weren't you ready for an ambulance?"
"I was ready to see five more. I love the theatre, the cabarets, and
all the dazzling lights along Broadway. I don't mean to live here or for a
steady diet, but just for a recreation."
"What did you see and what did you like best of all?"
"I liked 'Lightnin' as well as anything I saw. But dear old Frank
Bacon, I would like him anywhere in anything. When I was a youngster I
played in 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles' with him. He was always improvising
and the only line in the play we could be sure he would repeat according to
the manuscript was 'Up the road to Margate.'
"I went back stage to see him the other night and the moment he laid
eyes on me, he said:
"'Hello there, up the road to Margate.'
"Everyone is glad Mr. Bacon, after his years of hard work, has his name
in electric lights. Of course, it meant waiting a long time, but such a
triumph is worth waiting to the very end to achieve."
We spoke of prohibition, and Mr. Lloyd said it had not hurt him very
much.
"Didn't you need to reform?"
"I never drank," he said. "All my friends drink, but I was afraid if I
started I wouldn't know where to stop, and so I decided never to give old
Johnny Barleycorn a chance to get the best of me. I intend to always keep
ahead of him, and the best way to do this is to stay out of his way."
In some young men a temperance lecture of this sort would sound prudish.
In Harold Lloyd it meant just one more thing in his favor. It made his
common sense stock go up 100 per cent.
Mr. Lloyd has one ideal in pictures. He takes Cecil de Mille's work for
a pattern, a regular cinematic textbook.
"I see Mr. De Mille's pictures again and again," he said. "It sounds
funny, but after I see a De Mille production I try to pattern my comedies
along the same lines. The same smooth story continuity and motive for every
action."
And when we discussed Cecil De Mille it was the most natural thing in
the world to speak of Bebe Daniels. She is the little dark-eyed, dark-haired
girl who has played with Mr. Lloyd for so many years. There wasn't a thought
of what he might be missing in losing his leading lady in the genuine ring of
pleasure in Mr. Lloyd's voice when he spoke of how well Bebe Daniels is doing
and what it means for her to have Cecil De Mille for a director. "She has
one of the big parts in 'Why Change Your Wife?'" he said; "and I am told she
has done some exceptionally fine work."
The new Lloyd leading woman is a petite blonde, Mildred Davis, chosen,
the creator of these comedies says, because of her fresh good looks and
talent. He expects to keep her in all of his pictures, refusing to believe a
constant companion in his films can deprive him of any of his merited
attention.
I have heard so many stars speak of the bad judgment in having the same
lead, it was refreshing to have young Lloyd speak up and say he expected the
public to want to see Miss Davis just as much as they want to see him.
His success on the screen young Lloyd attributes to fate. Fate may have
had a hand though I am rather inclined to the belief it is his own good
common sense which has played a large part in getting his name in the
electric signs in front of the Strand and Rialto. And speaking of these
signs, Mr. Lloyd admits he had the thrill of his life when he saw the name
Harold Lloyd twinkling merrily at him on Broadway.
"It is the most wonderful thing that every happened to me in New York or
anywhere else," he confessed.
Remarks like the above and the refreshing freedom from boredom and blase
mannerisms makes the youthful Mr. Lloyd a very pleasant young man indeed. We
talked for some time and then he taxied with me over to the Commodore to see
Mrs. Clare West, where there was some more conversation about Bebe Daniels.
But I am saving Mrs. West's interview.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Tom Mix
June 21, 1921
Louella Parsons
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
"If you want a good story," said Winfield Sheehan, "go over to the
Biltmore and talk with Tom Mix."
Mr. Sheehan gave me this sage advice following a call on him during
which he did not give me the material I was seeking. Believing he was
softening the blow of his refusal to discuss certain matters with this
suggestion, I thanked him politely and decided to think over the Mix matter.
Next day another friend and some one not connected with the Fox Company said:
"I hope you will not miss seeing Tom Mix. He is one of the best scouts
I know."
Said I to myself, there must be something in this Mix man. Besides
having written his name since he did one-reel Western companies for the Selig
Company, I confess to a feminine curiosity in seeing him as he looks off the
screen. Accordingly, I made an engagement to meet the hero of all those
cowboy romances in the Biltmore hotel.
Tom Mix belongs as much in the elaborate suite at the Biltmore as the
famous bird in the gilded cage. What he needs is the broad sweep of the
plains with a mountain or two in the background. All this fancy furniture
and brocade effect is not Mix atmosphere. But for all that we managed to get
along fairly well.
"New York," he said, trying to find a comfortable position for his 5
feet 11 and great, broad shoulders, "is a fine city. I was here once about
sixteen years ago during the exhibition of riding at Madison Square Garden.
Will Rogers and I each had our glimpse of the big town at that time. But I
couldn't live here--no, siree. New York has me licked. Why, if I came here
I would be a truck driver or a street car conductor; that is absolutely the
best I could do. I believe every man should live where he belongs. The same
holds true of a city man who goes to the great stretches of uncultivated land
in Alaska and other places. They are whipped before they begin. I have
known men to go West during the gold strike and never move out of a saloon.
They are afraid."
Strange psychology and reasoning coming from a man who has spent his
life on ranches. I said as much.
"I never went to school," Mr. Mix went on. "I cannot remember anything
but the primer. As soon as I was old enough to think at all I took stock of
myself. I realized my physique was my best asset, and I set out to train.
I believe in outdoor exercise and right living. Why, that is the only way to
live. I went on a ranch and learned the cow-punching business. I like to
ride, and I discovered what I believed to be my forte. Then I won a prize
for riding and roping and Colonel Selig sent for me to make a motion picture.
At first it seemed a great joke. Me an actor. But I only had to do before
the camera what I did in real life, so I stayed right along with the Selig
Company until Mr. Fox made me an offer to make features, and I guess I am
fixed for some time to come."
Mr. Mix likes motion pictures. He enjoys making a comfortable salary.
Not because his wants are many, but he enjoys doing things for his family and
friends. There is a mother and father in Oklahoma, a mother-in-law and a
wife. His mother-in-law, he says, is a living proof that all the jokes on
friend wife's mother are piffle. She is with Mr. and Mrs. Mix at the
Biltmore.
"I'd like to have you know my mother-in-law," said Mr. Mix. "You would
like her. She is a fine woman and lots of fun."
What better tribute could any man pay a woman?
As for his wife, well, Mr. Mix thinks she makes the earth rotate on its
axis.
"My wife isn't like me," he said. "She is refined and educated. I let
her do anything she wants with the house, and she knows what looks right.
If I didn't have her I would probably bring my horse into the parlor."
Which suggestion led up to the famous Tony.
"Now, honest and truly," I asked, "tell me the truth, is your horse
really coming to New York?"
"Why, of course," he answered.
"Because you couldn't bear to be parted from him?"
He laughed at that. "I will tell you the real reason," he said.
"I have to do a roping act at the Academy of Music. I cannot do fancy
roping like Will Rogers. I have to have something to rope. Tony is trained
and I couldn't do my act without him."
"Training animals must be another of your accomplishments?
"Oh, I don't know about that," he said. "I love to train them. I have
dogs, horses and mules at Mixville, where I make my pictures and where I have
a ranch. Perhaps you saw that little donkey in Mary Pickford's picture--that
is my little mule. I am training him for one of my pictures."
"You must be accomplished. Aren't mules the most stupid animals in
captivity?" I asked him.
"Now, that's all wrong," he said. "They are much more intelligent than
horses."
Mr. Mix is very fond of music. He carries his phonograph with him.
"It's sort of lonesome on the train," he said, "and I had this one made to
carry with me." He showed me the traveling case into which the music box and
records fit. In another corner is his silver-mounted saddle, with a pearl-
handled revolver. I have a sneaking feeling Mr. Mix never rides with all
that gorgeous trapping, but it was added to his property list by the Fox
Company as good exploitation. He doesn't look like the sort of man who would
care anything about a fancy saddle, despite his new Palm Beach suit and fancy
red necktie.
One reason that brings our cowboy hero to New York at this time is the
Dempsey-Carpentier fight. Jack Dempsey and Tom Mix are old neighbors and
friends. They have had their pictures taken together, and have had many a
boxing match.
"Will Dempsey win?"
"I am betting on him. Say, you ought to see him fight. He has a punch
that is strong enough to knock out ten ordinary men.
"Are you going to the fight?" I told him prizefighting was a little out
of my line, but I would like to see some of those Dempsey punches.
"Mrs. Mix is going," he said. "Her first fight. But I want her to see
it." Then he said:
"Do you know, I have talked more today than I ever talked in my life."
I assured him I appreciated his effort to help me get an interview, and
said I hoped to see him again. Usually one says that as a polite means of
saying au revoir. In this case it was sincere, I do hope to see him again.
Tom Mix is, as Winfield Sheehan said, worth a story. There is such evident
sincerity about him and a beautiful absence of the veneer we sometimes get
with stage and screen people. He is like Washington Irving's description of
the American Indian--real honest and free from all pretense.
As I was leaving he came to the door with me.
"Won't you come again?" he said. "I want Mrs. Mix to meet you."
I assured him I would be delighted.
"I'll tell you what," he said. "I will telephone you and you come and
have luncheon with her. You women will have a lot to say to each other."
I hope with the Dempsey fight on, an engagement to meet President Harding
next week and all this reception stuff at the City Hall, he will not forget
to telephone.
And it may interest W
illiam Fox to know Tom Mix has no intention of
leaving the Fox organization.
"Why should I?" he said. "They have spent money making me what I am,
and I wouldn't treat any one that way, much less a man that has been the
means of helping me make a success."
Perhaps Mr. Mix is what he is because when he was very young he said his
father never spared the w. k. shingle in the woodshed.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Wallace Reid
May 22, 1921
Louella Parsons
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
If the men with wives and sisters who spend their lives admiring Wallace
Reid could hear Mr. Reid talk they would be less upset by all this adulation.
Wallace, who was mobbed on Fifth avenue by the female shoppers when he
strolled along New York's center of fashion last week, was not in the least
impressed at the commotion he caused. He was much more thrilled over Pat
Casey, a traffic cop, who threatened to arrest the cameramen for taking his
picture.
"It's against the law for us to take a man's picture against his will,"
said Pat, "and us Irish has to stick together. Ain't it right, Mr. Reid?"
Mr. Reid explained the cameraman was a part of the Famous Players-Lasky
paraphernalia, and he was being photographed because it was a part of his
business. He did agree with Pat, however, that the women who congregated to
gaze upon him were a nuisance.
The men with sweethearts who sigh because their best beaux do not look
like Wallace Reid would be amply revenged if they knew how bored this all
makes the man who thinks being called a matinee idol is a deadly insult.
"You know," said Wallace, chatting with me on the side lines while a
director was rehearsing Constance Binney, Wallace McCutcheon and a score of
celebrities for the sketch to be given at the Famous Players-Lasky ball in
which he has a part, "this thing about the women liking me is 'bunk.' If I
have any popularity it is as much with the male element as with the
schoolgirls.
"It never flatters me to hear that a lot of school girls want my picture
or that some man is jealous because his wife visits the theatre where my
picture is showing. I would much rather hear about a picture that has good
acting and direction."
To be a director is the ambition of Mr. Reid's life. He is working with
that idea in vain. He started out to direct pictures and was one of
Universal's prize wielders of the megaphone when David Griffith gave him a
part in "The Birth of a Nation." That was the beginning of the change in his
plans. They simply wouldn't let him direct. He was made a leading man, and
since that time his popularity has made such strides he has been kept busy
acting on the screen.
"But," said Mr. Reid, "if the demand for my pictures begins to wane and
I feel myself slipping I am going to take off my makeup and get into the
director's end of the business as quickly as possible. I directed my wife
the first year we were married at Universal. She was the star and I was the
director's--"
"Come on Mr. Reid. Your cue is next."
"The film is scratched and we will have to have a retake," said Mr.
Reid, rushing into the scene.
"I am the camera man in this playlet," he explained, coming back to
resume our chat and calling his lines from where we sat.
"You say you were your wife's director. Did she obey you?"
"To the letter. When I am directing my word is law, and that is as it
should be--the director should be the general in command of the entire
situation."
I expected to hear an exciting account of theatres, the midnight
entertainment and the secret places to buy hooch in town. Instead, Mr. Reid
said he had been at Sea Gate with his mother ever since he came to town.
"Mother never stopped talking from Sunday night until Tuesday morning,"
laughed Mr. Reid. "She hadn't seen me in three years and she had so much to
say. Last time Dorothy and the baby came with me and she directed her
attentions to them; but this time she had me alone and she made up for lost
time."
"You look like you enjoyed her long conversation."
"The best time I have had in months. It's great to be with your own
people--and of course there isn't any one like one's mother."
Mr. Reid says he is a little worried over his part in "Peter Ibbetson."
"They have me dissolved in tears most of the time. I shed enough briny
drops, according to the script, to fill an ocean. My public expects to see
me in comedy--and I wonder how they are going to like this tragedy. I am not
very fond of gloom myself and I think I understand how my friends in the
small towns feel."
These Main street habitues are very important to Wallace Reid. Whereas
the average motion picture favorite is more interest in what Broadway thinks
of him. Mr. Reid is far more concerned with Keokuk, Iowa, or Oscaloosa, Mich.
These are the people who are responsible for his popularity, and he does not
forget it. He has no inclination to head his own company although there have
been several flattering offers made him, because these same residents of the
small towns do not care in the least whether he is heading a company or
playing leading roles just so he gives them what they want in the story line.
When it became necessary for the pseudo cameramen to go on with the part
I left Mr. Reid in the mercies of the stage director wondering how much he
meant of his statement that it did not flatter him to hear how much the women
like him.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Ben Turpin
October 2, 1921
Louella Parsons
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
New York to Ben Turpin is bounded on the north, south, east and west by
the Capitol Theatre. Ever since he arrived last Sunday his route has been a
straight line from the Astor Hotel to the Capitol and back again. They even
took his morning last Monday and made him pose for a picture on the Capitol
roof. When I saw him he was gently reminding the photographers, press agents
and admiring ensemble he was but a human being and when the noon gong sounded
its merry chime he wants his chow. He might have had it, too, but when I
came upon him at this inopportune time he had to stop long enough to talk
Essanay. He was one of the old crowd and considered himself in affluent
circumstances when the cashier handed him $20 every Monday evening.
He returned to Chicago a hero, wined and dined and feted. And he says
exaggerating the cast in his eye and making himself more cross-eyed that
nature intended brought this change in his fortune. They didn't realize in
the old days Ben's brand of humor was funny enough to be starred. Every one
liked him at Essanay and laughed at his jokes, but he was never in the
Francis Bushman-Bryant Washburn class. It took Mack Sennett to capitalize
Mr. Turpin, and the little comedian says he will never cease being grateful.
"You know," he said, "I owe everything to Mr. Sennett. What chance did
I have until he featured me?"
"How did you happen to go to the Coast?" I asked Mr. Turpin after we had
discussed all the old crowd and laughed at some of the old-time jokes.
"Mr. Chaplin added me to his company. He wanted me for 'Carmen,' so I
thought it would be a good time to broach the delicate subject of a raise.
G. K. offered me $30 per and I jumped at it. 'Say, Charlie,' I said to Mr.
Chaplin, 'thanks to you I have a two years' contract with Essanay.
"'Great,' said Charlie.
"'Yep,' I said, pleased with myself. 'I am to have $30 a week.'
"'What,' cried Chaplin. 'You fool. Do you mean you signed for $30 a
week?'
"'Sure, don't you think I am lucky?'
"'I think you need a nurse. I thought you were getting at least $300.
Why didn't you come to me before you signed that foolish paper?'"
That, Mr. Turpin says, was the beginning of his dissatisfaction.
Then he played in "Carmen" and was so funny Mr. Chaplin is said to have
told him:
"See here Turpin, you are funny enough to be starred yourself."
Mack Sennett thought so, too.
He sent for the comedian and offered to pay him four or five times $30
just as a starter.
"Oh gee," moaned Turpin, "I got myself all tied up on that contract with
Essanay." And because he had come to the Essanay with Gilbert Anderson when
the company was first organized he just felt he couldn't be disloyal.
Charlie Chaplin, who liked the unaffected little comedian, who wanted to
be loyal even when it meant his future success, said to him:
"Don't mind about that contract. There isn't anything for you here
anyway. I will fix it for you." And he did.
Mr. Turpin, who never had any illusions of his importance with Essanay,
had a terrible feeling his former employers didn't mind losing him, and so he
moved to the Sennett lot with a very clear conscience.
Mack Sennett was clever enough to see the funny side of Mr. Turpin. He
exaggerated the crossed eyes and let him do all the clownish tricks that
always brought a laugh to both the members of the staff and the lounge
lizards at the Essanay plant.
The result was sure and certain. For three years Ben Turpin has been
gaining in favor until he is now considered the favorite of some of our most
discerning film fans, among them Agnes Smith, who considers no boudoir is
complete without a picture of Mr. Turpin.
The ladies who admire Benjamin may consider it a crushing blow to hear
he never travels without his wife. He feels it isn't safe in these days when
the movie scandals are so numerous. Mrs. Turpin was in an automobile
accident several years ago and was injured in such a way she has not been
able to hear a sound since that tragic day. No one could see the little
comedian with her without being touched by his solicitation for her welfare.
He consults her on his photographs, his engagements and, one suspects, even
on the matter of his clothes.
"Got the same wife," he told me. "Been married sixteen years and I'm
satisfied and so is she.
Although she could not hear, we did not doubt Mr. Turpin's boast that he
had made her happy. She has diamonds, good clothes and is looked after in
her affliction in a tender manner that should put a long credit mark after
his name. Duty, you say. Probably, but there is something more than duty
that makes a man as thoughtful as the funny little cross-eyed man in the loud
checked suit.
In all his life Ben Turpin never had anything please him as much as his
return to Chicago. He played next door to the theatre where Francis X.
Bushman and Beverly Bayne were playing. In the old days Mr. Bushman was the
star and Mr. Turpin was just an extra man doing utility jobs for his
benefactor, G. M. Anderson. The box office receipts prove the Turpin
attraction brought in more money than any other similar entertainment in the
history of the Windy City.
It wasn't the idea that he was as good an attraction as Bushman and
Bayne that pleased him. It was the reception given him by his old friends
and neighbors that made the warm glow come to his cheeks and put a sunny,
happy feeling in his cardiac region known outside of medical journals as his
heart.
To cap the climax and to add to the joy of the occasion, Aaron Jones
presented him with an Elk's gold card.
"Say," said Mr. Turpin. "I just wanted to bawl. Mr. Jones has always
been on a pedestal with me. I worked for him once and they don't make them
any whiter than Aaron J. Think of his noticing me. It was the finest thing
that ever happened to me. And, say, no one could get that away from me
without dynamite."
"Over his dead body," suggested one of the numerous gathering, who were
suggesting it was time to take another picture.
But Ben was firm. He was going to eat whether school kept or not, and
because I knew just how hungry he was, I left him in the hands of the crowd
who are bent on working him to death.
"I want to see you again," he said, "if I can give them the slip,"
winking in a manner that included the whole room and was really, I gathered,
intended for me. "The Mrs. and I will come over to your office. Gee, I want
to see some shows, too. I am tired of work."
When Mr. Turpin finishes his contract in twenty-one months with Sennett
he is going abroad for a long vacation and rest.
"Other plans with other producers," some one hinted.
"Not me," answered Mr. Turpin. "I owe any success I have to Mack
Sennett and you can bet your last dollar I am going to stick with him."
His language may be more picturesque than elegant and he may wear loud,
checked clothes, but there is a heart of gold there and, thank Heaven, he
hasn't acquired an English accent, nor does he talk of his valet and his
great wealth. He saves his money, and he says he isn't a star. Yes,
really--Ben Turpin is as real and natural as the old oak tree in the country
school yard. All the pretense and glitter that comes to most people making a
good salary has passed right over his head. And because of this I am for
him, and I hope he will continue to make people laugh as long as he lives and
they live.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Rudolph Valentino
September 11, 1921
Louella Parsons
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
Rudolph Valentino is a very polite young man. I know because he waited
for me for over an hour and never frowned or acted as if one of his relatives
had disinherited him. To keep a man waiting whether he is an actor or merely
in the ordinary walk of life is the surest test of his disposition. Most of
the other sex consider it a personal affront if they are kept waiting over
five minutes, and few men can control their temper if they have to cool their
heels for any longer time.
No one could be blamed for being late Tuesday night. The rain came down
in torrents and held all the theatregoers stranded waiting for taxis that
passed back and forth without any thought of stopping. I waited, too. In
the lobby of the Lyceum Theatre after the opening of "The Easiest Way" for
some conveyance to get me the block and a half.
Mr. Valentino had been more fortunate. He had found a cab and reached
his destination some minutes earlier. He was not difficult to identify--the
Julio of "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse." His straight hair and very
dark eyes photographed on the screen as they are. He is one of the people
who looks exactly in real life as he does on the screen. The same trick of
expression, the same smile and the same bow are all there making one expect
for a moment that Alice Terry as Margaret or perhaps as Eugenie Grandil will
step into the scene, and take her place beside young Valentino.
Since his Metro engagements--both of which brought him pleasantly before
the public, Mr. Valentino has made another picture--"The Sheik" for Jesse
Lasky--and in this he plays the colorful role of the leader of the Arabs, a
lawless but captivating bandit of the desert. Mr. Valentino characterizes
his work under George Melford.
"As wonderful, great, marvelous," and a few more adjectives, indicating
he liked his stay at the Lasky studio.
But it is to June Mathis young Valentino pays his greatest tribute.
"She discovered me," he says. "Anything I have accomplished I owe to
her, to her judgment, to her advice and to her unfailing patience and
confidence in me."
Up to the time June Mathis insisted that Mr. Valentino be cast as Julio
in "The Four Horsemen" he had been playing "heavies." He made several
pictures for Universal, and it was in a minor role Miss Mathis saw him and
decided he was the type for the young Spanish boy. In this she had to meet
the objections of several people on the Metro lot who believed it was
ridiculous to give the young inexperienced boy this important part.
"I worked hard to justify her belief in me," he said. "We all worked
hard in 'The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.' We were striving to reach an
ideal--it was Rex Ingram's first big picture; my first and Miss Terry's
biggest chance. There was no thought of any personal ambition in that one
picture; we were all working for a cause."
"Perhaps that is one reason the results were so satisfying," I
suggested.
"I am sure of it," he replied. "No picture can be great, unless the
mental atmosphere is clear. Every one is influenced by the spirit that is
present--whether it is kindly, helpful and unselfish, or whether it is
malicious, envious and unfriendly."
Mr. Valentino speaks with an accent. He looks Spanish, but he is
Italian. He was born in Genoa and came to this country seven years ago.
"I was only a boy," he said.
A child, I thought, and he must have read my thoughts, because he
replied: "I was eighteen. I am now twenty-five."
He looks younger. He was very poor when he first landed here. In Genoa
he had planned to be a famous agriculturist.
But New York was not conducive to furthering that ambition. There are
no farms in the city here and he had no money to go to the country, so he
danced.
"Please," he said, "do not talk much about my dancing. I never liked
it, but it was the only thing I could do." His dance engagements led to the
screen, not an unnatural metamorphosis by any means. And now he is here to
talk business. He has an offer from a film organization, but he says he is
superstitious and will not mention names until his contract is all signed,
sealed and delivered.
Mr. Valentino is a Nazimova enthusiast. Either people like madame or
they do not. There is no middle ground where she is concerned. He belongs
to the former class. He played Armand in "Camille" and says he owes much to
her suggestions and to her instructions.
"Madame had a hand in the direction, too," he said. "Ray Smallwood
directed the picture, but madame told me how to play the big scenes. Some
people think my portrayal of Dumas's Armand is better than anything I have
done, even Julio."
Still one thinks of Rudolph Valentino as Julio. He may do many things
--possibly better things, but always there will be the remembrance of the hot-
blooded Spanish boy, who stands out as one of the finest characters the
screen has given us. Yes, it is as Julio one thinks of young Valentino, and
it will be as Julio he will progress and win a place for himself.
Mr. Valentino does not regret the years he has spent playing villains.
He says the experience has made him see from two angles--first as the villain
would act, and secondly, in the eyes of the hero.
"I always recall what Mr. Tourneur said one time.
"'If only the screen heroes would not be so perfect the villains would
once in a while do a good deed.'"
"And that," said Mr. Valentino, "is what I consider fundamentally wrong
with motion pictures. We distinguish too much between people. After all a
bad man may have a kindly impulse some times. No one is entirely evil, and a
good man may be motivated by a spirit that is not all good. We are all
human. I believe if it were possible to picture human nature as it really is
with good and bad in all of us the motion pictures would be better."
And I am not sure that Rudolph Valentino is not right.
There is indeed so much that is bad in the best of us and so much that
is good in the worst of us that it should be filmed as is.
Mr. Valentino is having the time of his young life in our big city.
Will all the theatres opening and the tennis matches being played, he is
being royally entertained. He had much to say about Suzanne Leglen and her
tennis playing, having seen her last Sunday in her double match.
"The American people were so generous," he said. "They applauded and
applauded her quite as if her unfortunate mistake at the opening game had
never occurred."
"The Japanese player who lost won just as many cheers as the victor.
I like that spirit. It is typical of the America people. They are so warm
hearted and so good. It's a great country," he said, squaring his shoulders,
"and I am glad I am here."
Young Valentino still likes to dance, if not for the entertainment of
others at least for his own pleasure. It was after 12:30 when we left the
Claridge and he was headed straight for the Palais Royal to join a party. He
is young and gay and happy, with all the spirit of youth and the impulse to
get the most out of life while he may. But whatever happens he says he will
never forget June Mathis. She is his guiding star or some other equally
poetic symbol in his life. He is, you see, an Italian and expresses himself
in the extravagant language of his race.
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