Motion Picture Story Magazine (Feb-Jul 1912)

MAURICE COSTELLO, OF THE VITAGRAPH COMPANY If all I have been told by travelers in the Orient is gospel, trying to interview a famous picture player is about as discouraging as permission to salaam or kowtow, as etiquette may be, to the Gaikwar of Baroda or the Sublime Fuzzy of Bing. It isn't that the actors and actresses are stand-offish or reticent, when o'nce you have crab-netted them. Not at all ; I have always found them courteous, painstaking, and friendly to an interviewer. But the trouble lies in bearding one in his lair, or in catching her when her "Marcel" waves like the ocean. It's rather easy to get about Brooklyn (so the inhabitants said), and I made three little journeys to the home of Maurice Costello, with the same result : "Not in." The druggist on the corner seemed to be full of misinformation about him, but it was not until I was warming up in a nearby garage that I got a direct clue. His hobby is automobiling, I was told, and he keeps his machine looking like an instalment piano. As I neared his house, now grown quite familiar, from its outer side, the humming of a motor sang to me hopefully. The sound came from a private garage in the grounds, and as I entered it, I found the auto, with hood off, and engine complacently running. But look where I could, no owner could I find. "Can it be," I thought, "that he's such a bug that the chatter of his engine puts him to sleep? — I've known such extreme cases." I was about to walk out when a pair of woodman's shoes slid out from the rear axle, and wiggled violently. These were followed by a length of overalls. "That's it! I knew it. He does sleep under it," my thoughts went on, and then an arm with a spanner wrench and a tousled head of hair followed, making for the open. "Beg pardon," I shouted, as he sat staring at me. "Can you tell me where Mr. Costello is?" The woolen undershirt and shock of hair came up slowly even with mine. "He was under there some time ago," the mechanic said, pointing to the car; "must have got lost or something." Then his identity slowly dawned upon me. When he had shut off the nerve-racking noise, and I had made my business plain to him, he smiled like a schoolboy. "Have a chair," he said. "No? Oh, there aren't any, I see. Well, climb up in the car, and let's have our little say." "To begin with." he said, "I've been reading your writeups in The Motion Picture Story Magazine, and cannot qualify on a lot of your pet questions ; so let's get them out of the way. I have never gone to college, haven't any favorite flower, never did anything heroic, and know all my neighbors." "Thanks," I interposed, "that's very clear, but I'm afraid it isn't interesting. But since you like the categorical method, suppose we commence." Q. Have you a nickname? A. Yes, known everywhere as "Dimples." Q. It isn't necessary to ask you how you came by this? A. No, I was born with it. Q. Where were you born, and when? A. In Pittsburg, and I wasn't old enough to remember the date, at that time. Q. What nationality are your parents? A. There is a good deal of misunderstanding on this point, but not on their part, for my mother is Irish, and father, Spanish-Irish. Q. What interests you most? A. Loving Dolores and Helen Costello. Q. Then you are married? At this rude question, the infernal motor started up again, and was like to have shook me from my perch. In the interests of a lot of my young lady friends I kept the question balanced on the tip of my tongue, and when the racket subsided, put it again. A. "I suppose I'll save your inquiry man a lot of bother," he said, laughingly, "if I told you, but my answer is, 'Guess.' " I'm still guessing. 138