Screenland (Oct 1923-Mar 1924)

fLThe ivorld is changing. Gone is the day when Maw bought her ivhat-not with soap wrappers SOCIETY as the Screen Sees It By H. B. A A )\ day lias dawned ! Gone is the era when folks thought that the what-not Maw got with soap-wrappers was swell. We know how society lives — having the film drama with us. Consider the dress suit stuff of our silent screen. Every time Cecil stalks out on a set he seems to be looking for some social custom to de Millish. His idea of a reigning society belle is a bull-eyed dame full of Laskytude. Vanity Fair would not be the magazine it is today if Cecil were New York's arbiter of elegance. His society drammers are just take-offs. The smartest belles of the smartest set, not even Deauville excluded, would not cavort as I have seen some of his leading ladies do. Cecil wants bare facts. Even beauty spots perturb him. That's where he beats Deauville. As Herb Howe once wrote, de Mille undresses everything on the set except the telephone. I. for one, cannot get de Mille's angle. He's the guy that put the "cog" in cognoscenti in filmdom. His own parlor tricks have been passed by such demanding dowagers as Mrs. Craig Biddle, of the Philadelphia Biddies, I'll have you know, and she has said, frankly, Cecil was the cull for culture. Of course the fact that Craig Biddle, Jr., her upstanding elder son, who left Princeton in his sophomore year, is now in the movies, a good, strong boy trying to get along, — did not cause Mrs. Biddle to strew any verbal tributes for de Millesian social triumphs. Since her arrival some months ago in Hollywood Mrs. Biddle has been entertained chiefly by Cecil de Mille and his brother, William. Her son, Craig, Jr., and George Drexel, have done considerable buzzing about Agnes and Cecilia, daughters of William and Cecil, respectively. Hence gossiping gadflies registered a distinct shock when it was bruited about that Mrs. Biddle had said before the armchair army of shock-troops of the Hollywood Hotel, that she would be extremely glad to be back in dear old Philadelphia again, far from the motion picture people. As the result of such a dictum being attributed to the haughty social lioness, she, Mrs. Biddle, with her own fell quill, told the world that the de Milles were the well-known hot-dogs in the cinema's roll of the socially accomplished. Can it be that the society drammers we all have seen have felt the dictatorship of the coat-and-pants dynasty? Do the exhibitors, many of whom before the rise of the 42 K. Willis cinema thought all collars were made of rubber — do they make men with names as directors grind out deliberate, if amusing, contradictions of things of the haute monde as they really are? Do they demand that Miss Millie Moneybags, played by Lotta Cheek, returning from a theatre party, must always drag an ermine cloak, worth four or five grand, upstairs to her boudoir from the front door, by the scruff of the neck ? Do the exhibitors insist that the ladies of their cinematic manors shall not be on speaking terms with their servants ? Do the box-office behemoths sweat blood if the sets, used in the sassiety drammers they buy, have not a number of silken bell-ropes for members of the cast to pull upon when summoning Jeems and another bottle of that old Madeira. Must every gay dinner party in flicker society have some broad served in much less than the halfshell in order to give the showhouseowners a kick? Do the exhibitors believe that folk with a Blue Booking never bathe unless they can find a bathroom with a fishpond and a fountain instead of the treacherous tub society uses every morning instead of on each Saturday night as is the way of the Great Unwashed ? Are the ticket tyrants responsible for Archibald Neversweat's neverfailing proposal to Gwendolyn Kale in a well-barbered garden, cut round in the back, and must Archie always stutter the troublous proposition while kneeling on a gravel path before Gwennie sitting on a bench of art-stone? Do the dollar drovers demand lacquered silver services for lunch and liquored oolong-bibbers for afternoon tea? All of these and many more? Before pulling out the stops to the full let me tell my reading public, (my wife), that although my name is not in "Who's Who," due to circumstances beyond my control, and although I sometimes dine in dishabille, (another name for a plate of corned willie), and often without a tuxedo, I am fairly conversant with the habits and manners of the upper-crust. In fact I have often trod the glassy floors of the rich with impunity and without my calked shoes. All of which ought to qualify me as an expert. Also in justice to the Zukorious film factories allow me to add that other makers of punch-press dramas, dealing with the lives and habitats of the socially elite, miss the mark as widely as do the Para [Continued on page 97] H,Cuties who drag their ermine cloaks up marble stairways O^Cinema flappers too up-stage to speak to their servants {^Society folks who use silken bellropes OLGay parties in which flicker cuties are served on the half shell H,Smart proposals in well barbered gardens, cut around the neck H^Swimming pools full of water and sub-debs AND fL.Plumbers' convention bath rooms H,May the Gods of the Cinema deliver us