Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1916 - Feb 1917)

62 Oh Joyce! She's in Again "Where," I ventured timidly, "did you meet Mr. Moore?" Immediately I knew that I was restored to favor. She smiled. "It was about four years ago, in the old Kalem studio at Nineteenth Street and Eighth Avenue, in New York City. I was a novice then, a little nervous and frightened, I suppose, and I liked him because he was sympathetic and tried to make me feel at home. "Our first picture together was 'Grandfather's Clock.' We went up to Nyack, New York, to make some of the scenes, and I think I never saw such a beautiful place." I wanted to ask her whether the romantic climax to this picture was purely professional, but there are some things even an author shrinks at. Just by way of evidence, however, Nyack could never be that beautiful to the unromantic vision. Yet I felt I would do well to change the subject to more commonplace matters. While I was wrorking my phrases around in my head, preparing the next question, a door opened and a woman shrieked. A flash of blue swept across the studio floor and obliterated the beautiful Alice. A confused murmur of feminine exclamations ensued, the tangle separated, and I perceived that Miss Joyce had been embraced — with such fervor that she lost a hairpin — by Naomi Childers. From the excited conversation that followed, I caught a few brief snatches here and there. Speaking of getting personal — well, listen ! (I'm safe in the office now.) Do you like him as much as you did before you were married? (Prolonged affirmatory explanations and descriptions.) "You couldn't guess how sweet he is ! At least three times a wreek he brings home candy." "Is it candy?" (This, of course, from Naomi, who is engaged to marry a man who manufactures the stuff.) "Five pounds ? Oh, my goodness !" Followed an ecstatic description of her honeymoon, the summer in Asbury Park, and the hope that they would have a cottage on the beach for the summer. "Tom, you see, works up near Yonkers," Alice explained, "and here I am over in Brooklyn. Our home, in West End Avenue, in New York, is just in between, an hour each way ; but if we move to the beach, Tom will have to spend four hours a day on the train. I don't believe I could ever get him up that early. Still, it would be nice for little Alice." I subsequently learned that little Alice would be eight months old on the twenty-third of July, that she had stopped crying at night, that Tom seized the opportunity to catch up on lost sleep, and various other intimate details that professional jokers like myself think are funny. It was hard to realize that the girl before me, all sweetness, simplicity, and charm, was one of the greatest actresses the screen has yet produced. She seemed too young to be so important. Born in Kansas City a little more than twenty years ago, Miss Joyce, while still a baby, went with her parents to Petersburg, Virginia. The life of this old town, one of the quaintest and richest in traditions in the entire Southland, was the ideal environment to develop her native graciousness and charm. Early in her teens, she came to New York. Induced by several artist friends to pose for some of their work, she became one of the best-known models in the metropolis, and among other things posed for fashion pictures. One of the photographers, having become a camera man with the old Kalem Company, suggested to Director Buel that Miss Joyce might be a good subject for moving pictures. At the director's invitation, she went to the studio for a trial, and made such an impression that