Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Dec 1920)

The Silken Cotton Photograph fay Buhraoh I WISH that I might, with some authoritative marshalling of facts, give the contra-distmctivc values of silk as silk and cotton as cotton, the hetter to illustrate the great descriptive value of my title. Not. however, being scientifically informed beyond the rather general, third-grammar-grade knowledge that cotton grows in the Southland and is picturesquely picked by hand by transplanted Africans, and that silk is fearfully and wonderfully spun by delicate and specially nurtured worms, I must be content to r^)eat that I employ the title illustratively, I might say symbolically, because I think of silk as something lustrous and smooth, something resilient yet firm, exquisitely fine, pleasing to the eye, to the touch, to the general sensibilities, something with a super-elegance. And of cotton as the firmer texture, the durability making the delicate resilience possible, the sturdiness and substantiality without which the bloom of super-elegance is but evanescent, not really lasting nor worth the having, a more basic quality ... Perfectly, to my mind, does this contra.sting title describe to me Lucy Cotton, within whose slender, equipoised person the contrast becomes at once a blend, subtle, yet firmly knit. Cotton and silk are conscious products. They are the results of growth, of tending, of a planned and ordered development. They mean somclhini/. They are iiilendcd to mean something. There is thought back of them; there is cnre ]iut into them. They have a definite mission, a definite fulfilment to attain, and from them stabilities take shape and form, and dreams are spun . . . Lucy Cotton, if I may employ the simile, is a conscious product. Her rise into recognition and acclaim has not been mere haphazard chance, brought about by some lucky turn of the wheel, by her pretty face, by a box of tricks. She is the conscious product not only of her own careful work and play, but also of her mother's hopes and plans and the wise execution of both of these. Lucy Cotton and her mother have been building ever since Lucy, very tiny, pirouetted before a mirror in a manner that, tho the foreca.st was long, suggested to her discerning mother an atmosphere of footlights and Cooper-Hewitts . . . since there were no Cooper-Hewitts, we will ascribe that to interviewer's license. To really know and appreciate Lucy Cotton and what she has done, is doing, hopes to do, you would have to know Lucy Cotton's mother. You would have to talk with her mother. H you gained nothing more — and what you didn't gain would quite certainly be your own lack — you would come away with a wider conception of the possibilities of motherhood than the one, wide enough at its least, we think of in the everyday. "Lucy," her mother told me, over caviar sandwiches and coffee in a remote corner of the Biltmore. "is the projection of my early thoughts and desires. I have always been interested in the stage and, before I was married, had my own personal aspirations in that direction, but those were the days of implicit filial obedience and my father's mandate to the contrary was final to me. When I married, however, I determined that if ever I had a daughter who show-ed the slightest inclination for dramatic work, everything possible should be done to cultivate and to develop that tendency, and so when my three little girls came along and Lucy, particularly, began to give little hints in her unconscious way, I began at once a consistent preparation. "I tried, first of all, to instil into her, into all of them, the miracle of self-development, that which comes from within. The balanced, poised, full expression of the individuality." Lucy interpolated softly, "And there is nothing so wonderful," she said, "as to feel yourself growing, day by day, broad (Twentii-four) Lucy Cotton was bom in Houston, Texas. She came to New York and studied under Theodora Ursula Ervine at Carnegie Hall. She made her first distinct hit in "The Quaker Girl"