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17
H
ouse
When people need spiritual sympathy, a wedding dress, money for a divorce, or even a new kitchen stove, they pour out their longings to their favorite movie star, as they did to their nursery gods in childhood days.
Whitel? Fletcher
is humiliating to overhear mothers insisting that boys at all times "act like gentlemen" and see you home.
The heartaches Anna Mason must have known ! And, being sixteen, she had long since put away her belief in childish gods. She knew dreams didn't come true, just because you wished for them on the first star of the evening. So she wrote a letter, and a few days later Warner Baxter found it in his mail. It proved to be one of the letters he put aside for personal attention.
At last Anna had found a man she could talk to naturally. However, with characteristic shyness, she didn't hope for too much. She knew Mr. Baxter must be very busy playing in the movies, but she hinted that a letter from him, now and then, would reinstate her with the old crowd. She said such letters would give her confidences to share. If he went so far as to say nice things sometimes, there was no doubt that his notes would be much more romantic and desirable than those scrawls the other girls received from local boys, via dogeared textbooks.
This is only one instance of the unique assistance the picture people find themselves in a position to give. The things asked in the letters they receive are not supplied by any charity in the world — such, for instance, as pseudosweethearts. Usually, too, those who write wouldn't think of applying to another individual, because of pride. Movie stars are real, yet they seem impersonal. Really, to read some of the letters is to feel like a Peeping Tom, spying into lonely hearts.
Much good is done, theatrical people being unfailingly generous, but considerable charity is curtailed, because of the professional beggars who have availed themselves of this source of supply. They have asked for everything, from ermine coats
A man just out of Sing Sing asked Harold Lloyd for an old suit.
An ex-soldier asked Corinne Griffith to join a Utopian colony in China to carry out his scheme of revenge on the United States.
worn in certain scenes, to princely incomes. Therefore financial help isn't always given, although it often appears urgently needed.
One girl, about to be denied the right to love, through years with a husband not of her own choosing, wrote Pola Negri as follows :
I am asking you for help. I am forced to get married one month from to-day to an old man who is forty-eight years old and I am only sixteen years. He is rich, and that's why my father is making me marry him.
I don't love him. I'd rather die than marry him.
I am writing to you, because you're kind and you will understand me. Send me thirtyfive dollars so I could run away to my aunt, who is poor but kind. I will repay you for your kindness. I think God gave me your address.
Where else can such girls turn, but to the citizens of that magical land, Hollywood, where the unbelievable keeps on happening almost every day?
There are times, of course, when a letter touches a susceptible spot, and the
as