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THE CRUCIAL TEST 57
were the pictures in which I received mention from reviewers. When such a rarity occurred, the review was reverently clipped from the paper and pasted in my scrapbook.
I was not partial; as long as my name was mentioned I got out my shears. There was a review of The Amazons that infuriated me, but I clipped it anyway. The star of this picture was Marguerite Clark, who was second only to Mary Pickford in popularity. Since I had the part of Count De Grival, which was right down my alley, I was expecting great things from the critics. But the Cleveland Plain Dealer brushed me off with nine words: "A Cleveland man, Adolph Anjou, plays the insouciant Frenchman." My own home town, and it didn't even spell my name right!
But shortly after this my scrapbook received a real gem to which a full page was allotted, for the critic had gone completely overboard. There it was in black and white: "Lottie Pickford plays the part of the society wife and Adolphe Menjou was particularly good as the heavy."
Despite the number of pictures in which I had played, Father had never seen me in one. I had enticed Mother to Manhattan to see a couple, but Father refused to go to a motion picture of any kind. I think he avoided them for fear he might accidentally see one in which I appeared; but he always insisted that he was too busy to go to movies. After prolonged persuasion, however, and some nagging by Mother, he finally promised to go to a movie with us. I borrowed a car for the occasion, drove to Long Island, and brought them back to Manhattan.
The picture we saw was high-society stuff, four reels, with lots of people in it. There was a big masked ball as well as stock shots of the Champs filysees and an English race track. Naturally I thought I had a good part in the picture; otherwise I would never have taken Mother and Father to see it. But unfortunately I had had no opportunity to see the picture, so I was rather disappointed when I discovered that my first scene, in which I was dis