Modern Screen (Dec 1931 - Nov 1932 (assorted issues))

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Sylvia's father, Sigmund Sidney. He was a hardworking dentist when he met Sylvia's mother, Beatrice. She was a costume designer in Wanamaker's. They fell in love at once, were married, and started housekeeping in the Bronx. Sylvia was born there. children who roller-skated, jumped rope and indulged in all the other city, sidewalk games beneath their windows. Sylvia was born in a free country, true enough! But she never has been altogether free. In her veins flows the blood of her father's Roumania and her mother's Russia. Therefore, if we are to understand Sylvia at all, we must know something of her parents first. She is, in truth, the fruit of her family tree. Which accounts for much of her rebellious unhappiness. Which accounts too, for her being able to play a murderess convincingly when she was only eighteen and for her being one of the most promising dramatic actresses on the screen now when she is barely twenty-one. BEATRICE SIDNEY, Sylvia's mother, lived through the bloody horrors of indescribable Russian pogroms. Her family was forced to separate that they might hide better. And many a morning, disguised as a little peasant, Beatrice used to walk many city miles to make sure all had safely survived another long, cruel night. Beatrice was fourteen the day the soldiers stood her brother-in-law up against a great stone wall and bayoneted him, not with one comparatively kind death-thrust but, viciously, six times. It was this that determined her to get away with as many members of the family as she could possibly manage to take with her. Carefully, to avoid suspicion, she began selling their possessions. Her Sunday dress. Her mother's brooch. And toward the end, with every few kopecks bringing their escape appreciably nearer, the samovar went, too. There were older sisters, but Beatrice had the stoutest heart. She managed everything. And so it came to pass that she was fifteen when, with her mother, one brother and three sisters, she stood on the deck of a steamer, America bound. Half way across the rough stretches of the Atlantic, while the ship lurched and pitched, she held tightly to her widowed sister's hand . . . It was then her niece was born, the posthumous daughter of the man the soldiers had bayoneted while he stood against that high gray wall. Arriving in America. Beatrice had managed somehow. There was magic in the way she draped materials on figures. She was clever with her pencil. A few years of apprenticeship and learning American ways and she became one of John Wanamaker's most valued designers. NO wonder, looking down upon her baby that August day in the year 1910, Beatrice Sidney marvelled that she should have been born free. It is, after all, only those who have endured the cruel rule of other lands who can properly value our national gift of freedom. And it was fitting and proper, too, that Sigmund Sidney should have pronounced free a beautiful word. At seventeen he had come from Roumania. And for years thereafter he had worked by day and studied by night to win his D. D. S. Then he had met the beautiful Beatrice. And they had married and gone to live in a little flat up in the Bronx while a short distance away Sigmund had established his dental offices. And then Sylvia came! It was perhaps for this they both had worked and dared and dreamed. That one day there might be a Sylvia. And that she might be free. "If only," said Beatrice to Sigmund and Sigmund to Beatrice, "she would grow to be more like other children. If only she would be giggly and carefree and learn to curb her frightful temper." But Sylvia's grandmother, who came to visit sometimes, used to shake her head at the prospect of any such transformation. Grandmother was old enough to be resigned to the inevitable, old enough to know that what is in the blood is in the blood. "When she is much older, a young lady, then maybe she will learn to be gay sometimes," the old lady used to tell her daughter and son-in-law. "But deep within our Sylvia, even then, there will be sadness. "Tsch! You two come to America and in one generation you expect a happy-go-lucky American. That cannot be. One generation ! Tsch, it is as nothing. And you expect it to erase all the other generations that have gone before." And her voice would grow sad with her memories. SYLVIA speaks of her grandmother who died a year or two ago with deep affection. "My grandmother was orthodox," Sylvia says, "but never in my life have I encountered such tolerance and such understanding. Always her attitude was 'That is 28