Close Up (Jul-Dec 1929)

CLOSE UP It is but a sign of Billy Doran's ripened powers as biographer that in his masterly life of Silverspan which took the country by storm, The Yacht that Xickels Built, he follow^s to the limit Schiller's dictum that art consists also in knowing what to omit. To speak of the superproducer's inauspicious beginnings at the bottom as a " pants maker to reveal the fact that while in his cups the gentleman is not what you might term " safe for democracy laying upon occasion, as a matter of fact, a heavy hand on his own better half, (a moral trait which the forgiving Press now describes as the delightful eccentricitv of a mondain) is not at all Billy's method who uses artistic restraint, discretion, and a refinement of taste not discoverable in writers of meaner powers. The future historian examining the records of the dark ages, so to say, of Silverspan's sartorial existence will be in a position to speak more freely than any contemporaries who often write of the movies with a view to a little contract or so. The eager world always clamouring for news of its truly great men, must be content to know Silverspan only in moments when he shares with the public the burden of his thoughts. Climbers to the top sometimes take the bottom with them. However, in the case of our hero time and intercourse with professionals have bestowed among other virtues that sometimes go with money making that aplomb and savoir faire ^\ to borrow another gem from Billy Doran, which give weight to every utterance of his. It is at a momentous period in the history of the drama that we discover him on board of a transatlantic liner besieged by members of the Press always willing to gather the manna from Silverspan's lips unburdening himself on a topic of 365