Motion Picture Classic (Jul-Dec 1928)

Would You Sleep In a Haunted House? MayBe. But not many people would — under any circumstances. Of course, when the house is Rudolph \'aientino's. it's a bit different. But not much. Spooks is spooks, no matter how famous. You've read Ruth Biery's stor\ in the Xovember issue of course, about how she slept in \ alentino's deserted and, according to Hollvwood, haunted mansion. Miss Bierv" probably didn't do that for fun. She did it in order to see what there was to the rumor that Falcon's Lair was everv night the scene of ghostly happenings. And she saw. She found out — and in the manner that all the writers for Motion Picture M.\g.\zi.ne use to find out — by going right into the thing and getting the facts first-hand. She found out just as Gladys Hall found out whether there was anything to the notion that if the greatest star on the screen were not recognized, she couldn't break her way into a job on the spot. Miss Hall got that star to try it. And the ston,' of that is the storj' of Rosalie Grey. -And then all these rumors about Clara Bow's love-lifer Was there anything to them? Well, we know now. Ruth Bier}' went to Clara and got the real lowdown. These are just three instances of how Motion Picture gets its news. It goes right to the people or the place involved and finds out. Not just gossip; not hearsay or opinion. Facts. The real thing. And not only facts now and then, but ever\ time. In this issue, the next issue, and the one after that. .And so on. For consistently new and startling and always authoritative material, no fan magazine in the world can approach Motion Picture. Which is doubtless why no group of fan readers, in their interest in every issue and their anticipation of pleasure at the next, can approach those of .Motion Picture. You may think this is the greatest number of a movie magazine ever turned out. Well, at the risk of blushing out loud, let us not contradict you. But always remember the words of Al Jolson, "A ou ain't heard nothin' yet." Wait until you see the December issue. It's not out until October 28th. .And that's quite a stretch: a whole month. But even if you are impatient, always bear in mind that it's going to be well worth waiting for: the December issue of MOTION Picture It^s the M.agazine of Authority DomesticatingDePutti {Continued from page ji) pretty important person. Yet she is the same star who hid herself away at the op>ening of her first .American picture and, they say, sobbed her heart out when she saw what they had done to her on the screen. Sheisa little angry now at "\'ariety." She may be fed up with hearing its praises sung so often. Ever\-thing is always: "Oh, but it's nothing like '\'ariety.' You were so wonderful in that." Her eyes snap when she says: " I see '\'ariet\'' again now, osser day. I like — but nod zo great pich-shure as peoples t'ink. Osser pich-shures are goot, too. I can do again vat I did there. Jannings he tell me: 'I.ya, you are as good actor today as then.' It iss so. I am the same De Putti!" She is wTong. She isn't the same. Hollywood never leaves people where it finds them. Hollywood has changed Lya. She has dyed her hair, and had a permanent. The De Putti of "The Scarlet Lady" is not the same potent unvarnished De Putti of "Variety." She is softer. Not so tempestuous, more sympathetic. Holhwood has tamed the Wild Girl of the European Screen — and I rather like the change. Once she could not play the sympathetic roles the American public demands. Today she can. She was the sensation of a literary tea party in Manhattan on her last visit East. You may not know it, but the wise men of the East class motion picture stars generally as examples of bum art. I assume they must have changed their minds when De Putti appeared in their midst in a simple and correct black and white sports suit and tarn. She knew more than they did about some of the newer French novelists. But she didn't rub it in. She is a consummate artiste and she never overplays. You can't dope out whether she is a fascinating woman because she is such an actress or such an actress because she is so much the woman. Her best friend among the Hollywood girls is Billie Dove. .A quaint combination— the beautiful and buxom Billie, lush, serene — and the fiery little dark temperamental Hungarian! Lya thinks Billie is the most lovely girl in or out of pictures; with a disposition, says Lya, to match her looks. Lya's own disjxjsition is as variable as her acting. She will be sombre and brooding. .Ah, Life is hard for the Hollywood extra. The big brown eyes fill with tears. The red, red lips quiver. She is not acting. She is a Hollywood ex-tra for the moment — hopeful yet despairing, hungry. She means it. .And then her intelligent motherly maid, a German woman who came over here with Mrs. Jannings, hands her the daily batch of fan mail. Lya stops, seizes it with the avidity that is part of her, tears one open at random, reads. She dimples; she chuckles — she is happy again. She is a little proud of the fact that hers is the second-largest following of any film star in Europe. Jannings is first. Despite her .American films, her popularity abroad hasn't waned. They want her back there but she likes it here. Victim of the worst breaks of any of the important imports, Lya has stayed and kept on fighting. For a real chance. .At first amiable and obliging, she did evers-thing the directors suggested. She was in .America. It must be right. .After a series of pictures in which she was miscast she awakened to the fact that her career in this country was losing its lustre. She could have left. Europe was crying for her. But she stuck. There's a certain granite determination beneath the pixie-like charm. It's been rewarded, she thinks, with a real role in "The Scarlet Lady." She doesn't want to be good and she doesn't want to be bad, in pictures. She wants to be — De Putti! Not a bad slogan. 84 -rf I fci