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19
Just a Natural-Born Actress
Janet Gaynor's recent amazing achievements completely upset the old tradition that an actress must suffer before she can really act. The unusual emotional powers of this youngster, whom all Hollywood is praising, are the result, not of an unhappy past, but of innate dramatic ability.
By William H. McKegg
AN actress, we are told, must go through great suffering and much sorrow in life before she can do really convincing emotional work. To all those in the past, present, or future who hold this belief, I fling the name of Janet Gaynor.
No love tragedies, no bitter disappointments have hovered over Janet's chesnut-brown head. Yet, lacking such, she has during the past year proved herself an emotional actress of the first order. She gave early proofs of her ability in "The Return of Peter Grimm" and "The Midnight Kiss," but now, in "Seventh Heaven," she has surpassed all expectations and taken the film world by storm.
I first met Janet Gaynor in 1924, at a secretarial school in Hollywood. She was then doing occasional extra work at the Hal Roach studio.
"But I can't tell when I'm going to be out of a job," she explained. "Now if I know stenography, I can slip into secretarial work during ^ slack times."
Janet surprised the film colony not long ago by announcing her engagement to Herbert Moulton, young Los Angeles newspaper man.
I learned that Miss Gaynor had been born in Philadelphia, that she had also lived for a while ' in Florida, Chicago, and San Francisco, and that she was now bent on having a career in the movies.
One day, she did not appear at the school, nor for several days thereafter.
"Where've you been?" I demanded, when she at last returned.
"At Universal !" she replied excitedly, writing her shorthand all wrong. "Fm going back there next week. I think they're going to give me a good deal of work to do." In order to catch up with the exercises she had missed, she made me stop my own splendid progress to attend to hers, making me hear her as she repeated shorthand rules from earlier lessons.
"The circle," she recited, "may assume the form of a loop where more convenient — say, what is Pola Negri making now?"
Our work ceased, and news of the studios was eagerly discussed, until an instructor, hearing too much talking, entered from an adjacent room and demanded quiet. As it turned out, Janet found little use for her secretarial training, for after she once got started in the movies, there were few slack times for her. From one film she went straight into another. Then, at the end of 1925, Fox signed her for the lead in "The Johnstown Flood."
From that time on, she was kept so busy that, in spite of the fact that her home is only a few blocks from my own, I didn't, except for occasional glimpses, see her again until I had this interview with her.
.She was at the time in the midst of making "Seventh Heaven." I had lunch with her in her bungalow, then went with her to the set,
Continued on page ''.04
It is as Diane in "Seventh Heaven " that IVliss Gaynor proves herself beyond all doubt to be an emotional actress of the first rank.
Yet certainly no one with so serene a smile can have a dark tragedy hidden in her past.