Motion Picture Story Magazine (Feb 1914 - Sep 1916 (assorted issues))

56 MISS ALADDIN OF THE ARC LAMPS "You are Miss Clayton, aren't you?" I charged hastily. She nodded solemnly. "I had a few moments before my next scene was called, so I hunted up this corner and settled down to read. But it was so quiet and peaceful that I think I must have fallen asleep," she added, in explanation. "You are fond of reading?" I asked. "Very. Books are my only hobby. My whole apartment is lined with them. They overflow into the hall, up the stairs, and even into the chinacloset," she returned. "What are your favorites?" I asked again. "I haven't any favorites. I like any good book, and I consider anything — except cheap, lurid fiction — a good book. I read everything, from Shakespeare and Dickens on down, and enjoy them all," was her laughing reply. "How long have you been in Motion Pictures, Miss Clayton?" I quizzed. "About three years, and only with Lubin before going with Equitable," Was her still good-natured answer. "And wont you tell me how you came to enter pictures?" I begged. She looked as if she thought 'This poor, little thing must be moviestruck!" but, evidently, her sympathy overcame her habitual reticence, so she started talking, with the very evident idea of ''talking me out of my silly notions." "Well, it all came about as an accident. It was in May, three years ago, that I had finished my season under the Henry B. Harris management, in 'The Country Boy,' and I was preparing to leave for my home in Chicago. While stopping on Broadway, I met Mr. Barry O'Neil, whose leading woman I had been, in stock, some years ago. He suggested pictures to me, but as I had signed a contract for the following season with the Henry B. Harris management, I wasn't very much interested. But he suggested that I come just for the summer. So I did, and liked it immensely. "When the theatrical season opened, I returned to the stage, and the Harris management loaned me to William A. Brady, to play the lead in 'The Brute.' This play ran for only two weeks, and that night, after the notice went up, I was approached by a representative of Lubin, who offered me a contract with that company. And I signed it. "I like pictures — indeed, I do ! But the work of adapting myself to the screen-play, of almost building my ideas of art anew, was very hard. I dont believe that one can really and truly succeed in pictures nowadays without stage experience, especially stock experience. That's the finishing school for the Motion Picture field, or for the legitimate, either." I pretended to be taking her little speech wholly to heart, for I wanted her to think I was a "movie-struck" girl, trying to ''break in," because she does not care for interviews and begs not to be quoted. She says that, with her constant appearance before the public, there is little remaining to be known about her. And she has declined, again and again, to "sit still, now, and let the lady interview you," so I was overjoyed at her mistake, for I was afraid she would run away before I had finished, if she discovered who I really was. At this moment the lights on a near-by "set" went into action, bathing our quiet corner in a deep bluish light that could not detract one whit from the blond beauty of the lady opposite me. In the light, I could see that she wore a beautiful gown of white broadcloth, but on almost daringly simple, straight lines, its only trimming being a broad, soft girdle of black. "What a beautiful frock!" I cried, involuntarily. Lady Dainty smiled, pleasedly. ("Lives there a woman with soul so dead" who does not appreciate admiration for her frocks?) "Do you like it?" she asked. "It was one of the lot that I bought a few days ago in New York, for a picture that we begin on tomorrow. When I