Motion Picture Classic (Jul-Dec 1928)

The Most Misunderstood Girl in Hollywood Because She Wouldn't Cross Streets in a Nightie They Called Olive Borden High-Hat I By Hal K. Wells I AM growing most thoroughly tired of hearing abo that very temperamental and Ritzy little actress Olive Borden — Because no such person exists, ever did. There is the real Olive Borden, the strikingly beautiful kid from Virginia to whom I gave her first picture magazine interview some three years ago, and whom I have known rather well ever since. But the volcanic and impossible Miss Borden who made life a misery for her film associates and "high-hatted" the press and the magazine world alike? Bunk ! When Olive first sprang from comparative obscurity to the lofty heights of Fox stardom, the powers that be formulated two policies for her future career: First, to present "clothes horse" sequences in all her pictures to show the perfect Borden figure to the greatest possible advantage : second, to create of the new star a colorful, exotic personality that would be a sort of combination of Gloria Swanson, Alia Xazimova, and the Duchess of York. The first policy was carried out with grim thoroughness. Never for more than two reels of any story was Olive allowed to remain more than halfdressed. Then would come the lingerie sequence, the leopard-skin sequence, the bathtub sec].uence, or any one of the other countless screen ^devices for presenting the feminine form divine. Olive despised such scenes. She loathes them yet. .■^he did them in a game eflFort to make good in her new status as a star. She tried to make good on the second production policy assigned her also, but it wasn't long before she balked cold on that one. It provided, in brief, that Olive was in real life to beicome an exotic personage who would be "good publicity." She was instructed to be aloof and coldly impersonal on the set. The reputation of being temperamental was to be given her. She was called into the office of one of the executives one day and told that it was no longer "in character" for her even to speak to such menials as electricians, stage hands, and prop boys. This creation of colorful "personages" out of very thin air is a stunt that has been done dozens of times in screen history. One of its first famous examples was But when Theodosia Goodman of Cincinnati. Ohio. became Theda Bara of Egypt and points south, a mystic vampire creation living in an atmosphere of black velvet drapes, lap cobras, and writhing spirals of most atrocious incense. Olive tried half-heartedly to do the Duchess act for a few days, then refused point — blank to continue snubbing '^""^* her friends among the studio's humbler workers. That is one serious flaw in Olive's character for any peace of mind in Hollywood, where "yessing" the powers that be has become one of the fine arts. Olive couldn't "yes" C. B. De Mille himself, unless she happened to mean "yes" at the time. In spite of her refusal to play the part, however, the reputation for being temperamental and Ritzy has been slowly built up around her until today it represents a serious menace to both her happiness and her career. Olive has one fatal personal characteristic that has helped build this web of false impressions, and that is her extreme shyness among strangers. It may be hard to believe that the brilliant and flashing Olive Borden of the screen is in real life very frankly scared stiff in the presence of a crowd of strangers, but it happens to be the truth. And, being frightened half out of her wits when forced {Continued on page 71) 26