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Prisoners of Their Reputations
Janet Gaynor mustn't know life, and Garbo has to be a hermit — because
of fixed ideas you have about them. They're chained to their reputations.
And this goes double for some stars!
RUDOLPH Valentino once said to me, "I am a prisoner. I am a prisoner of a fixed idea. I am a prisoner of my reputation for being a constant <_ Sheik. Wherever I go, whether with young women, middle-aged women, or elderly women, whether I am
at a Mothers' Meeting or a Bal Masque— the same thing is expected of me. I am expected to ogle, try to charm, and make overtures to every person of the opposite sex — without an exception.
"It is exhausting. It is
America's Sweetheart — which "reputation" her studio is now industriously creating around the young and talented figure of Jean Parker. The web is in the weaving and once it is complete, young Jean will have made her last careless gesture, told her last funny joke, had her last impulsive romance. She will be a prisoner ot her reputation and neither bolts nor bars are firmer or more inescapable.
Sometimes the reputation is determined by the first chance part a player plays, and if he or she is successful in this role, he or she must play the same role forever after. But whatever the origin of the fixed idea, the result is that a prison house is built for the player in question, within the limits of which he must run about like a mouse in a revolving trap, warily certain that if ever he steps out of the trap, the Cap
Alice White has tried to escape from the
gold-digger roles. In real life she is a
practical, sensible young woman
confining. No man wants to play one role his whole life long. No man wants to walk a treadmill of the same emotion. I should like, now and again, to be a man's man, a man among men. But men look askance at a 'sheik,' at a man who has been labeled 'Every Husband's Phantom Rival.' I should like, so much, to have a woman for a friend. It is impossible. I am deadly tired of it. I am trapped by it. I am afraid that I shall die a prisoner of my own Sheik." He did.
Most of the screen stars are prisoners of one sort of reputation or
another. Sometimes it is a reputation that has been wished on them by zealous publicity departments, who wish to create a new Perfect Lady or a new sultry siren or a new
30
Janet Gaynor is imprisoned by youth
and sweetness. The realities of life must
not be allowed to touch her
Mary Brian must live up to the perpetual ingenue — and realizes after several years that she'll never escape
tious and Critical Cats will get him! He must perform, forever more, the same antics, cut the same capers, squeak the same squeaks — jailed.
They Won't Let Mary Grow Up "A /TARY BRIAN once said to me,
'I am the Perpetual Ingenue. I shall never escape and, by this If I violated every decency of every morality code in the country, no one would believe it. So fast are the walls of this prison of a reputation that a jail
time, I know it.