We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
x-Millionaire
The movies paid Francis X. Bushman $6,000,000 and today he is flat broke — but oh, he had a swell time!
FRANCIS X. BUSHMAN ia forty-six years old. For thirty of these years he has worked at his pro. >Mi screen and stage.
During that time, he has been paid more than six millions of dollars.
today he's broke! Flat broke! His chauffeur sued him for salary, even, and Bushman promised the judge to pay off in installments.
And he doesn't care. That is, it's no tragedy to him. At Least, so he says.
"I'm not a bit sorry I spent it." he says. "I had a whale of a good time. And I'll always be able to earn a living."
As this is written, Bushman is playing the leading role in ■ stage play called "Thin Ice," in stock on the Pacific coast. It's not a very good play, and the critics aren't very excited about it or Bushman. It probably won't last long. Then Bushman'll have to find some new job in his line.
During 1929, he worked before the camera only sixteen days. Whatever he does in pictures again, he admits, won't be much. Not because he isn't willing to, but because the producers don't seem to be.
"Ever since 'Ben Hur'," he says, "I've been blacklisted. Only a few independent producers with courage have used me. I've never been in a major studio since then. Perhaps I could have lifted the blacklist, but I wouldn't crawl. I'm not the crawling kind. Rather than do it, I'll become a flagpole sitter. r> 7'
"Other stars and the public may feel -D y 10///
The godlike Bushman
head in the days when
flappers went wild
been sweet to me, and their
pity for me. The deuce with
that! I don't want pity or
sympathy. I'm happy. All
I want is the chance to entertain my public. They've applause is still sweet in my ears. I hey haven't forgotten me. I learn that, every time I step on a stage, even if the prodi. have forgotten."
\\ here did his millions go, you ask?
"I spent 'em," he tells you. "Never was money spent BO joyously, and no one could ever have had a better time than I did. I circled the globe thrice, and have visited more than forty countries. There are still some I'm going to. Th why I'm still plugging.
"Bush Manor ate up a lot, and so did lawsuits."
BI'SII MANOR was his million-dollar estate in Maryland. That was around 1915. lie had a great stable of hunting horses, and a quarter of a million dollars' worth of furniture. Then came divorce and litigation.
"Two and a half years of litigation about my divorce," he summarizes, "ended in my getting nothing. Mrs. Bushman got mighty little after the lawyers were through.
"Then," he says, "there were income taxes and penalties.
" I never bothered with such things.
I had five or six secretaries and a valet
£*" , . and I let them attend to it. Several years
.A. € ll T later, the [please turn to PACE 114]
Is Francis X. Bushman dreaming of the days when he looked like the picture above, and the money rolled in? Here he's shown resting in his dressing room in a Hollywood theater
35