Picture-Play Magazine (Mar-Jul 1929)

27 In Def< ense of Dick 1 Richard Barthelmess is found to be amiable, talkative, and even courteous, contrary to the reports of many interviewers. B? Carroll Graham RICHARD BARTHELMESS has the reputation, among those who write pieces for the magazines, of being the most difficult of the stars to interview. I have read a number of stories on and about him in recent months. With but one exception they expressed the opinion, in varying degrees of vehemence, that he was aloof, uncommunicative, disinterested, upstage, and to one writer, even rude. All this seemed incomprehensible to me after a year's bowing acquaintance with a man whom I have always regarded as the very essence of affability and courtesy. So when Mr. Barthelmess, bored with the country life of Hollywood, came to New York to get his breath again, I approached him, not as a casual acquaintance, but as an interviewer determined to find out why he had made such a miserable impression on other writers. I speedily found out why he is a bad subject for the typical interview — in fact, I knew in advance. There are two types of persons who are hard to interview, "dumb" and "intelligent." If you ask the usual questions of the dumb one, you may be convinced in advance that the replies will give you acute shooting-pains. In this case you have two courses open. You may be tender, and doctor his statements, or you may be brutal and make him out, in print, the sap that he is. On the other hand, you must approach the intelligent man with the knowledge that the stock questions will give him fatigue no less acute than the moron's answers gave you. It is seldom that a happy compromise can be found. Barthelmess falls so definitely in the class of the intelligent man — there are intelligent actors, even though I am generally the most reluctant to admit it — that most of . his interviews are grounded on that reef. I trust this will not be taken as deliberate disparagement of my fellow writers. I might have asked him profoundly trite and stupid questions about talking pictures, the future of the industry, what he eats for breakfast, whether he prefers blond leading women to brunettes, what makes a perfect screen lover, and the other popular queries. Had I done so, Barthelmess in all probability would have yawned, remarked that he had just remembered an engagement, and run down the fire escape. That is what I would do under similar circumstances. So I asked him, instead, how he accounted Photo by Wide World Studio" The classifications are "I think the interviewer is more to blame than the star, when there is a misunderstanding." — Richard Barthelmess. Mrs. Barthelmess accompanied her husband on their first visit to New York since their recent marriage. for the bad impression he had made on others seeking to get from him first-hand material. "How do I know?" he replied. "I treat people from the press as I treat every one else. I think the interviewer is more to blame than the other person in such cases. "More depends on the writer than on the subject of it. How can any one talk to a stranger, a person you've never met before, without being self-conscious and strained ? "If I'm asked a definite set of questions I answer them. But I can't be brilliant, and shed an aweinspiring aura of words around the room at random. "I can't talk about myself — • neither could you — it's impossible. "One of the pleasantest interviews I've ever had was just before I left the Coast. The writer got to talking about Bill Powell, and she got me to talk about him. That's entirely different. Bill is a subject I could discuss, because he's one of my best friends. "I told her about the first picture we made together — it was 'The Bright Shawl,' made at Fort Lee and Havana. When it opened in New York all the critics said, quite truthfully, that the whole picture belonged to him. "I called him up next morning and said, 'You've stolen that picture right out from under me !' Continued on page 92