Actorviews (1923)

That Adorable Laurette Taylor 121 “Yes,” she said, “now that I’ve seen myself in a test. And that reminds me of a picture manufacturer who offered me a certain incredible sum to play for the screen. I told him his figure fascinated me. “ ‘But first, of course, you’ll make a test,’ he said. “ ‘Well, if I make a test and you still want me,’ I told him, ‘it will cost you just twice the amount you’ve named.’ And he couldn’t see it. He couldn’t see that my proposition, calculating on the chance of my failing to make a decent test picture, was a sporting proposition— that I was willing to take a chance and he wasn’t.” “Did Fannie Hurst take a chance when she sold you the dramatic rights to ‘Humoresque’?” “I’ll tell you about that in the dining-room of the Drake — I’m famished.” “How do you look to yourself in the test?” I asked in the cab. “I’ve got to admit,” she laughed, “that all the pretty Irish in me comes out.” We sat by a window in that vast beautiful diningroom and looked out where the lake was putting up a fairly oceanlike surf. That is, she looked out. I looked at her. Such a picture on such a day isn’t conjured every week for me. And the waiter must have attended to his business, too — everything seemed to come along very well for a new hotel. I looked and listened. Idle and musical was her talk. She has a witchery for words. We’d come to cigarets when “Humoresque” came back. “The Jews,” she said, “write to me, ‘How dare you think you can play Mrs. Kantor! ’ And the Irish write, ‘What makes you want to play her?’ And everybody thinks it’s the screen success that’s made me want to