Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1919)

All Sv^eet and Pretty Aside trom the tact that he's scairt to death of photographers, >Xill Rogers is right glad he's back in the movies. WILL ROGERS, the rope-throw ing literan digest of the Zieg feld Follies, is about as Ion., of photO£:raphers as a shinola belle of the South Pacitic is of a muskrat coat. "I dont aim for nothin' better'n an argument with a picture-taker." he imparted last spring in Chicago. "I cant see any sense in an awkward maverick like me tr\-in" to look sweet and purtv before the camera." Rogers' aversion to posing for his portrait i* genuine, although a year (just beeinning) before Goldwyn's first line machine-camera trencher should, we hope, have its effect. Rogers' mo<lest> is as real as himself. .And he is as real as tax-bills. At the rate his head is swelling o\-er his success one year more will probably find him hiding permanently in some dark comer. We need only consult Photopl.av Macazixe's photograph files to realize how real his camera sh>-ness is. This librar^•. containing about a milbon pictures of the plavers. provides just one ( I ) picture of the man who' has made a hi^ art of rope-twirling. This picture is a still scene from -Laughing Bill Hyde. " his first picture. "I did have a picture taken once." he said to me. brightening for my sake. 'Meblje I got it upstairs. Praps it's only one of them red proof things, though. Don't calclate you could use that." However, enough about photographs. I am sure Mr Rogers would feel happier if I changed the subject. .So I'll .switch the t>-pewnter into lyric soprano and sing of Wild West shows in the Transvaal, three-vear-old pinto busters ropeIhrowing aboard the New .Amsterdam Roof and of the most extraordinan, rope-ladder in the world. To those of our readers who have been so careless as to miss the national institution called the Ziegfeld Follies III e^m that Will Rogers is one of the few men of the stage, aside from the electrician, who nee.lnt shave for four davs ■t a stretch and who. if you give him enough rope, can do J^j ^ything with it but hang himself. In the Follies ^rbed as a cow puncher, it wa« Mr. Rogers' dutv to impart' the ne^^s of the day to people so busv wafchini{' the preltv girls behmd the footlights thev didn't get time to read the papep. I'm not an actor," explained Mr. Rogers. "I'm a rnp... IVrhapn t\tr jrt■ •( u\rrJiJ liiiii mc\( on (lif draw illjf. KrI.iw !• \' ill Kiijirr* ill J •crnr from " l.diif|l\iii)| Hill Mydr" — an J hf tl<ir«ii'( I lok .\ bit " »c.iirl " thrower. I can't act. I can't be nothin' but mvself " Right-o. Will, an.l if you let Mr. Samuel Goldwyri tn to make you be anything else, then— '•—and I don't know just what sort of thing I'm goin" to «lo m pictures. Movie people are funnv! Thev sen.l me a book to read and ask if I'd like to do it in pictures I read the book and write back that I wouM. Then thev don't huv It. And if I say I <lon't like a stor\ thev buv it. I don't know much about pictures, though." However, he has some interesting views on them "I don't want to be a hero." he protested. 'Let Rill Hart and Torn Mix <Io that. Herw* arc right good to look at and we all like to see thrillers, but I ilon't aim to plav in th.jse parts I was never much on killin' people and Id rather not gallop through my pictures armed like a battleship and linin' a dozen bad men against the Arizona skyline, ilyin' of fright "I'm friendly by nature. I gucs<, and in my pictures Id like to smile a lot and make evcr>one feel sociable an I at home-like. Then, mcbbe we could tack a wcddin' on the '-'wl with some love scenes and all, vTcnow." 9»