Motion Picture Classic (Jul-Dec 1928)

till Qoi oing trong Johnnie Walker Has a Fine Future Behind Him — and a Finer One Ahead By Walter Ramsey YOU'VE read many stories and interviews of the young man just on the threshold of success. Stories of what he hopes to do — of what he wants to find. But have you ever read the story of a man who said he was through — unless ? The Filipino boy had cleared away the table, lighted the Benedictine for one of his famous demi-tasse de liqueurs and left for the evening. Johnnie Walker and I were in front of his huge fire-place — alone ! "It's curtains, I guess, unless the last one hits !" Johnnie seemed to be thinking out loud rather than talking to me, so I decided just to lie back in the big chair and listen. "It all started back there when I made 'Over the Hill,' the picture was a huge success and I was to have a happy future, but I didn't. I was immediately stamped and indexed by both the public and the producers as 'a sympathetic boy' and, for all my fans know, I must still be in rompers. "Da.sh it all! I've grown up — I've grown older — and my future still pursues me. The pictures calling for a sympathetic boy are, at least temporarily, not being made. j "Of course, for quite some time after the picture was ' released, I played the same parts in other plays, but there f, never was a story like 'Over the Hill' — for a boy part — I and I don't suppose there ever will be another. "Sometimes, as I look back, I shudder to think how I went merrily on — playing one boy after another — happy in my ignorant belief that my time had come, that nothing could stop me — I was made. I sincerely believed that I would go right on, playing the same role, and that jieople would always like it — and the producer would continue to produce — and A One-Part Actor B' ^UT now, I can see that had I done anything else — anything — I would have been better off. I had been unconsciously branding myself as a 'one-part' actor. The public knew that Johnnie Walker was a boy — a perpetual boy. They kneza that, and they believed it to such an extent that I couldn't play another thing and get away with it ! "Yes, I tried, I did everything from a 'Tom Mix' to a 'Lon Chaney,' but there was no use — they just wouldn't have it. I didn't realize the full importance of my mistake until I did my last 'little-boy' picture. It was terrible — the worst story a player ever had to swallow, and the public loved it. Suddenly, as if I had been asleep and just awakened, it dawned on me — 'I made myself what I am today' — why it even reached the point where I only received fan-mail when I stuck to my 'selfimposed' characterization. It was too much — I quit. "A year or so passed. I was trying tq forget pictures, but you know that it is impossible to stay away from either stage or screen once you have so much as sampled success. I decided to try producing — what a delightful pastime that is. Just like juggling bombs. One only has to spend thirty-six hours a day working and the other twentyfour trying to keep the pen — with that damn red ink — out of the bookkeeper's hands. You know I had four bookkeepers and each one's favorite color was red — RED. I got so I hated that color so that I came to the conclusion that I would have the books of my company kept in red ink entirely — of course, that necessitated blue ink for deficits — and it wasn't long before my books were all blue. I wasn't so easily fooled by this as I had been with my parts — so 'little-boy-blue' sold out. "Then I takes myself aside and I sez to myself, sez I — 'You're a cinch, Johnnie Walker, your success is surely {Continued on page 77) 66