Picture Play Magazine (Jul - Dec 1929)

89 Sphi mxes and Ronald Colman have about the lady of the Nile into self-revealing personal histories are concerned. H. McKegg lady when she landed in America in 1018? Or was it all fabricated by some one who had taken his spy stories too seriously ? Of course there is no great resemblance between Jetta and photographs of the Matahari of twelve years ago. La Caudal also seems too young. Nevertheless, who could play the spy in "Three Faces East" and "The Forbidden Woman" with more conviction than she? None but a splendid actress, at least. She is a many-sided person, as her roles have proved. In any case, why is she such a sphinxlike personality? Why does she remain secluded from all Hollywood ? She is a very remarkable person, with an intellectual brilliance that would surprise many who do not know her. A gifted linguist, she speaks several languages. She has a slight French accent. Yet Goudal talks the purest English. Her French is fluent, too, but Jetta speaks it in a calm, steellike tone — hardly like a Parisienne. Of tremendous mental power, she knows more than any three people put together. Her personality defies definition— hence her mystifying ways. Ronald Colman is not so mysterious as to antecedents as are Goudal and Garbo. but be possesses a baffling something in his personality. It is well known that he comes from a good family. He does not hide his background. He merely objects to dragging in his private affairs for publicity. Colman's sphinxlike quality is an acquisition. It was not always present. It has appeared only since the war. What caused that baffling, sorrowful expression that you see in his eyes when he believes himsel f unnoticed ? The war "got" those who were in it. and those just old enough to realize the slaughter of it all — that is. the young people of Europe. Colman's plans for the future were shattered on August 4. 1914. lie was already in the reserves, and was one of the first to go to France. More than two years of horror passed before he was sent back to England, wounded. He returned to the London of 1917. Every one was dancing amid the roar of near-by guns. To a returning soldier, the people must have seemed mad. One never knew when one went to bed whether one would be blown to fragments during a midnight Zeppelin raid. Soldiers on leave would have their "last fling" before returning to the death zone some forty or so miles away. Death had touched every family. People went about with a hideous mask of joy on their tear-stained faces, to conceal their terror. The war snapped the cord that tied one to tradition. Many young people sought the stage. Colman was one Ronald Colman's antecedents are known, but since the war he has acquired something baffling in his personality which defies analysis. of them. Poppy Wyndham, Lord Inchcape's daughter who also did splendid war work, was another. Colman and she acted together. This talented, beautiful girl was recently killed while attempting a flight aci the Atlantic. The war had never left her. Is it the war, now ten years gone, that causes Colman to smile so ironically at Hollywood's civilization? Or is it some sorrowful memory in his own life? To his personal friends Ronnie is no sphinx. He is humorous. honest, and straightforward. Still, he has a great sorrow for something — or is it some one? Ronald Colman views his fellow men from a mountain of bis own vision. He laughs at them for their vanities, well knowing the futility of everything that depends on material hopes. Yet in spite of his sphinxlike quality, Colman is the most sympathetic of men — that is. if one h\< sympathy. Greta Garbo has taken upon herself a sphinxlike personality. It is either because she has been advised 0, or because she can't help it. Where does Greta come from? Sweden, yes. Hut where in Sweden? Stockholm is given for answer, Continued on page 114