Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1914-Jan 1915)

112 MOTION PICTURE MAGAZINE Many of the extras show more importance while waiting for mob scenes than Miss LaBadie did the morning she met the Duke of Manchester and learnt from Director Howell Hansel that she was to work with him in a picture. Florence looked at Mr. Hansel, and the usual queries were non est. She did not fuss with her hair or decorations. She looked at him with those large, blue eyes and simply asked: "Can he act?" When one tries to pay a tribute to her womanliness and sympathetic imagination, inspiration goes a-glimmering, for it is very difficult to enlarge upon a particular virtue or trait that this young actress has, because she has so many and all equally vivid. Perhaps her most basic trait is her intense curiosity. She is a student of life. She wants to understand it. She cant see why cripples or invalids, with no possible reason to live and to whom death would be a mercy, live to become burdens to themselves, while others, reaching the prime of life, surrounded by friends, wealth, hobbies for good that take up their idle moments, are ruthlessly cut down by the grim harvester right at the door of opportunity. She keenly felt Mr. Hite's death, and for days after the tragic occurrence went red-eyed about the studio, because he and Florence were "pals." As Grieg's "Death of Asa" surged at the violin strings for liberation at the funeral, it was too much for the girl of the sunshiny disposition. Tears came, and she sought the exterior of the house of mystery where her chief lay for the last act. In a corner of the piazza where eager eyes have seen her so many times as Florence Gray in "The Million Dollar Mystery," Florence tried to get away from every one and everything and cry as if her tender heart would break, but Peggy Snow, her co-star, hunted her out to comfort her, and before she could do it they were both crying. It was with saddened hearts that they left the ground to go to their own homes. She is an omnivorous reader along lines of life. She hungers to know all about the world we live in, its reason for existence, its peoples, what they were and why they are. She believes, tho, in a universalness of mind, suggesting that by social intercourse the something — personality, magnetism or whatever it may be — goes from the strongest to be absorbed by the weakest member of the group, which would eventually bring the weakest up to the level of the strongest thru the universalism of the mind. And because of this desire to feel, to know, to live and understand, she cannot rest content with her own mental outlook or -her triumphs in pictures. It is continually urging her along to educate herself further, to develop a versatile nature; so Florence LaBadie doesn't have the enjoyments young girls find in a theater, the ballroom floor, or other indoor forms of amusement, because she is a being of the great outdoors, and the sky is her canopy and the earth her throne. Perhaps because she was born in Montreal, Can., of French parentage, the wonderful "something" in her eyes may be her inheritance from the Norman. She is truly artistic, and often suggests a more pleasing arrangement to some set in which she is to work. And she writes poetry — the apex of artistry — but she never shows her work to any except those she loves best of all. Few around the studio have been accorded the confidence of viewing Flo's poetry, but those who have read it claim it is superior to much that sees the light of day between vellum bindings. Miss LaBadie was forced to adopt her love for the woods and water by nature, but her work under directors at Thanhouser's gives her the fullest scope to benefit by her inheritance. She does love to swim. Weighing scarcely 130 pounds, she claims she's too fat. Did ever woman live who did not claim the same thing? In this, and this only, has the scribe found a connection between Florence LaBadie and other women. Her reserve kept him at a distance for more than six months, altho often he wished to con