Motion Picture Classic (Jul-Dec 1928)

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Twenty Cents Twenty cents brings you the miniature Tangee Beauty Set — •11 six items and the "Art of Make-up. "Address Dept. M.P.C. ". TheGeorge W. LuftCo., 417 Fifth Ave., New York. Name . Address . Alive and Sticking (Continued f om page 22) well when I'd tell the theater manager. 'I'm sorry-, son, but I don't believe I'm going tz make it this afternoon.' And then when I got to the theater and knew t-hey were waiting out beyond the curtain to see me. I'd get the actor's second wind." Once, after a collapse in Cleveland, he came back to Hollywood on a litter They tried to argue him out of making the long, tiresome journey, thinking privately that he might as well die comfortably where he was, but the terrific will of the man overruled them, and again he lay and looked out over Hollywood, smoking his big black cigar defiantly in the face of the grim Reaper. And now Theodore Roberts is back again, this time without the crutches, leaning heavily on a stout cane. At the MetroGold wy-nMayer studio, where he has been working in Jack Gilbert's picture, they tell me that as soon as the camera begins to purr he drops his cane and walks slowly and without a limp the few steps necessary' for the scene. It has been fifty years since he first saw Los Angeles, as a young actor barnstorming the state, and played before an audience of Me.xicans in a German tiirnverein social hall. In years Theodore Robserts must be an old man, but he doesn't seem old when you listen to that powerful voice of his and look into those keen eyes. You Can't Fight Time " T GUESS," he shifts his cigar comfortably Jl to a corner of his mouth, "it isn't so hard for a man to find himself getting along in years. // killed my wife, that and worrying about my sickness. She didn't know she was an old woman, and she was. When she realized they were casting her in mother parts, it broke her heart. A good many women have told me it was the bitterest suffering of their lives when they saw themselves thrust aside by some fluffy-headed girl. Now I'm supporting stars that were prop boys and extra girls when I was being starred myself and I don't mind — much. It's life. That's one thing you can't fight." He moves restlessly in his deep chair, a powerful man, impatient of helplessness. One thinks somehow of a g^im,'grey old lion looking fiercely out behind bars. "They can't star me," he nods. "I know that. Audiences are about fourteen or fifteen years old as a rule. They don't go to the movies to see an old man. Xo, they pay their money to look at the young folks like Tony Moreno or Wanda Hawley — " Young folks like Tony Moreno or Wanda Haxdey. How much electricity has been spent in theater signs since those names burned among the brightest. Vet to Theodore Roberts they are the youngsters of the screen. And these others — these boy stars in their teens and these schoolgirl finds, what does he think of them? "Actors? They're not actors. People aren't actors because they have pretty profiles and yellow hair. Acting is a Godgiven thing. It's born in yoti. And if it isn't, you'll never learn it. "They need them for a picture," he nods, "they've got to have youth, and naturally youth and experience don't go together. If a star is young enough and good looking enough, it doesn't much matter whether he or she can act as long as there are real actors in the cast. That's what you're forgetting, that's what everybody forgets — the other people in the picture, the ones that don't get their names in electric lights. They're often the ones who do the acting for the picture." Theodore Roberts's popularity in irascible business-man roles was so great at one time that Lasky signed him up on a life con tract and made a star of him. .\fter first few pictures he came voluntarily to tb\ front office and resigned his stardom, can't carry your pictures," he told th fiercely chewing his cigar, "I'm too old. Bi I'll support your stars." Strangely enough thereafter, the nani<J chosen by theater managers to put iil electric lights over their theaters was thai of Theodore Roberts as frequently as it wa:i that of the young star. The big black stogiei held at varying angles to express different emotions, was Roberts's trade-mark; audiences in .\ustralia, Tokio and Calcut burst into delighted laughter when it| appeared. "I adopted it in self-defence," he chuck-i les, "the theaters where I used to play all] had Xo Smoking signs back stage, but I couldn't get along an entire evening without I smoking. So I wrote a cigar into all th^^ stage directions for my parts. " It is almost seventy years since The Roberts was born in San Francisco, that time, he says heavily, he has watched the whole world change. "When I was a boy. most people didn't know what to do with their evenings beyond sitting on their front stoops. If a man dropfjed in at the billiard parlor or the bowling alley, he was called wild. If he went to the corner salooi] he was a dissolute character. Any Place But Home THERE was always an opera house in town, but most folks didn't know what the inside of it looked like. Maybe a man was foreign born, maybe he couldn't afford the money to go to shows, maybe he thought the theater was an invention of the devil. Then along came the movies that anyone can understand and afford. And of course nothing is wicked these days. So nobody stays at home evenings any more. That's why I don't take much stock^^ in this new fangled television they talh about, movies radioed into your own home Because most people don't want to staj home." As for the talkies, Roberts says they are" not needed, that they will divert the interest of the picture fans from the movies to thCj sf)eaking stage. Already in his forty week of trouping through the towns and cities of the United States he has seen it happening — long closed theaters and opery nouses which have been used for storage warehouses are being dusted: the fat tummies ( plaster cherubs on the proscenium are beir regilded. Stock companies have moved int town, and the community theater idea flourishing. The stage is coming back inl its own. Something has happened to the life conJ tract which publicity pictures showed! Theodore Roberts signing some years aeol ("They've just sort of forgotten it," nej hastens to assure you). He is free-lancing. From the broad bay window of his oldfashioned house he can look down o\ Hollywood like another Moses from mount and see the places where he once pKJwerful. And now they want youngsters— youngsters like Moreno and \\'anda j Hawley. "But I don't mind growing old," saysj Theodore Roberts stoutly, "not as long as| I can keep on acting. .\n actor wants to' die with his grease paint on. It's the ones' that struggle against age and try to make i people believe they are still young that feel it most. I'm happy. I'm haxnng a real ', good time being old." Jammed in a corner of his mouth, his big black cigar glows gallantly, defying fate a jaunty angle, like Cyrano de Bergerac's plume.