Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Jul 1929)

33 Sorority the girls that they were missing something in life, that caused them and more like a college sorority, with pins, vows, dues — and half an hour at every meeting. Silvester not she will be able to accept the membership. Occasionally a girl has to refuse. She may have just been married, and can't leave her husband, or else she is working very hard, and hasn't the necessary time to devote to it. But usually they accept. At her first meeting she is initiated. The initiation is secret, but it is violating no confidence to say that it is beautiful rather than grotesque. The vows are lovely, vows of friendship, tolerance, and charity. Then the rules and regulations are read to her and she is a "Regular." Perhaps her first meeting will be a little perplexing. If she has been expecting merely a social club, she will find that this is different. In the first place, there is half an hour devoted to reading from the world's best literature, by Marjorie Bonner, the club's flapper librarian. "The Regulars" are very proud of their library, and among their circulating books are Christopher Morley's "Thunder on the Left," "The Life of Sarah Bernhardt," "The Life of Eleanora Duse," "The Story of Philosophy," Willa Cather's Jobyna Ralston. Alyce Mills. 'My Antonia," Fanny Hurst's "Song of Life," "The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man," John Barrymore's "Confessions of an Actor," "Beau Geste," Rupert Brooke's "Collected Poems," a complete set of excerpts from the world's best literature, and many other currently popular and discussed books. These volumes the girls may take home to read, but at every meeting Marjorie Pauline Curley. Priscilla Bonner. reads aloud from "The Story of Philosophy," passages from the world's best literature, and from a couple of little motto books presented to the club by William V. Mong, called "Strength for Every Day," and "It Can Be Done." "It is silly to pretend that some of the girls don't become a little restless during some of the heavier reading," laughed Priscilla Bonner, the 1927-28 president of the sorority, "especially during the reading of 'The Story of Philosophy,' and books like that. But I think in the long run they are glad they know something about it. I remember something Esther Ralston told us. She said she had always been awfully bored with the reading of that book at the club, until one night she was invited to a dinner party where 'The Story of Philosophy' was the chief topic of discussion, and she felt so proud of herself that she knew something about it, just from reluctantly hearing it at our meetings. "That is the reason we have our oral reading, to bring the girls in contact with worth-while things they might otherwise miss. That was our aim in organizing the club — to be helpful as well as amusing." And then she went on to tell me about the beginning of "The Regulars." It was Virginia Brown Faire's idea, and she rounded up six of her closest girl friends at her home one night and put the proposition before them. In that first little group sat Virginia, Priscilla, Marjorie, Kathleen Key, Menifee I. Johnstone, and Pauline Curley. "When Virginia told us her idea, naturally all the girls were crazy about it," Priscilla explained. "You see, most of the girls in pictures have never been to college and so have never /belonged to a sorority. Thus we decided to make 'The Regulars' mean to Hollywood what the chapters mean to the schools. I think girls love to belong to things, don't ydU ?" 1 [Cont'd on page 99] th&sxpi o:i " ... ms ,/Jhotoa airli Jo laattr