Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Jun 1929)

FACIORYClRt BECOMES CONCERT/ ARTIST POOR FAMILY — POOR GIRL — NO EDUCATION— That matters not. She was born with a noble gift. Do you know that you, too, have this same gift? Caruso, Galli-Curci, McCormack, Kreisler made the most of their opportunity. Perhaps you have just as much talent, but have lacked opportunity. Music is a part of your being. Here's your chance to develop this beautiful gift. It's so easy to master the piano or organ by Dr. Quinn's unique method. Like this little factory girl you may turn a regretful, wasteful life into one of accomplishment, refinement, and culture — without a day's knowledge of music. Will you spare a few pennies a day to become an accomplished pianist, or organist? Run out and mail this coupon for your first free lessons Surprise your friends within a few days. You can play the piano in three lessons under Dr. Quinn's amazingly simple written method. This seems i mpossible; but sit down and run over the first TWO FREE LESSONS. With the third lesson you can play a piece in every key. You're actually playing before you realize it. Now try it again. Notice that your fingers get away from you. Why is this? Dr. Quinn's method controls your senses. You don't "take lessons" the old oral way. Why practice and drum? What you need is a scientific method of guiding your fingers. A few minutes a day will work marvels. Then watch your improvement under Dr. Quinn's simple method. Soon you'll play classics almost faultlessly. Won't this inspire you for the concert stage? This is Dr. Quinn's Book. All that you ever need to know of pianoforte is in this carefully written book* *' Learn the Piano.*' It is not a dry affair that has to be learned by heart. Every sentence is lively, helpful, and interesting. Dr. Quinn's method gives you thrilling pleasure, not irksome, hopeless drills. Mail the coupon for this book and your free lessons. Get on the way to cultural progress — -and profit. MAIL THIS COUPON TODAY FOR FREE LESSONS AND SCHOLARSHIP BLANK Marcus Lucius Quinn Conservatory of Music 12S1 Quinn Bldg., Boston (Allston Station) Mass. Oentlemen : I know^ that I can qualify for the Quinn ConBCrvato. yScholarship. May I have your Free Lessons and book, and explanation of your teaching method. I understand this does not obligate me in any way. Name Street City and State His Crack-Ups and Downs (Contimied from pnge 58) a camera truck, loaded with paraphernalia and two zealous cameramen (pardon the error, boys: cinematographersi who miraculously escaped fatal injuries. Busy making movies, they had not seen us descend and had driven rapidly toward the field which had been clear a few seconds before. We smashed a wing and, but for some quick work on Dick's part, the accident would have resulted in a catastrophe. The field was in a turmoil. Stars, directors and spectators ran toward us expecting to pick up the pieces, but the Dick Grace luck held good and we both stepped out of the machine, unscarred and unscared. Dick said a few naughty words, posed for some snapshots, autographed a piece of the smashed wing for me, apologized matter-of-factly for the unexpected ending to our ride and half an hour later I was on my way home in a safe and sane automobile while Dick remained to make bigger and better crack-ups for a thrill-hungry public. An hour later another one of the pilots was killed in a similar crack-up. Another buddy gone. Our crash was the beginning of a mild friendship. We've talked about life, happiness, and the pursuit of lo\'e. But mostly of stunt flying. "Will you tell me," I am fond of asking him, "why a man with a family background of doctors, college profs and judges, and himself a Phi Kappa Sigma, should want to commit spectacular suicide? Is it the thrill and excitement of it, or what?''^ Callous of Thrills HE SHAKES his head decidedly. "It's the money, I guess. I want to make a certain amount each year. I couldn't make so much any other way. Then, of course, I've been in it a long time. \\'hen I returned from the war, the old home town seemed tame. I was with the naval air service in France when I was seventeen. I couldn't settle down to the old grind of study. I tried to finish my law course at the University of Minnesota and was within a year of getting my B. .\. when I left for California — for no particular reason. Landed there broke and drifted into pictures. Doubled for serial queens and wild west heroes. Tom Mix, hearing that I was familiar with aeroplanes, started me on the aviation stunts. "I've done one hundred and sixty-seven changes from plane to plane, from auto to plane, and so forth. Thrilling? Well, at first. But now I experience no sensation whatever. I've had a physician examine me immediately before and after a particularly dangerous stunt and he found that my heart beat was perfectly normal: didn't xary the slightest from its usual beat. "I plan the smallest detail beforehand. Co-operation is essential to the success of the stunt. Most of the unlooked-for accidents and losses of life have been caused by the carelessness of a director or assistant. But it's all in the game. And a cracked skull or rib doesn't mean anything. ^^ hy, the last time I hurt two ribs — in 'Lilac Time.' I never bothered to have them set. And they mended fine." "But is it worth it, the terrible demands on you, physically and mentally? Don't you regret sometimes that you didn't go in for selling something like bonds or real estate or even law advice instead of crackups and tail-spins?" One Broken Neck I SUPPOSE so," he drawls indifferently, "but life is funny. We can't escape our fate. One thing I'm glad of: I've never killed anyone, either a passenger or a spectator. It — it would just break me if I did. I would never get over it. For myself, it doesn't matter. I'm almost immune to pain. During the filming of 'Wings' I broke my neck. I scrambled out of the wreckage and posed for some pictures with Buddy Rogers and Dick Arlen. But I collapsed later and the doctor gave me six months to live. My neck was encased in a plaster cast for that length of time and I was as good as ever." I mentioned the death the day before of an aviator who had worked with him in "Lilac Time." "Don't things like that have a depressing efifect on you, Dick," I asked, "the numerous deaths of your fellow flyers? They [all seem to go — inevitably." His mouth twists into a wry smile. "Yep, they're all gone — all but me. I'm the last of my crowd. I can't understand it. In the last few months alone, four of my friends have been killed. I've outridden them all. I'm an old man so far as aviation is concerned. It's a game for enthusiastic youth. I've been flying for eleven years. I see them all go — one by one — dropping out of the sky, being cremated under the smoking motors, gasping their last breath. And I'm still here. W'hy?" Finding no suitable answer from my equally mystified self, he continues: "It just isn't right. I feel that I don't belong here — I belong in another world — with them. I've discouraged close friendships ever since a pal died, years ago. If you let those things get you, you go to pieces. You've got to have complete mental, physical and nervous control in this business. Would Alice Care? I'VE no fear of death. Young people with expectations of a long life frequently say that, but there is a lurking fear in most people. But I have none whatever — We been close to it too often not to know myself. I've experienced all the thrills I ever get from my profession. I've seen a lot of life. I'd just as soon see what's on the other side of the curtain. I belong there — with the others. Besides — who cares?" "Alice \\'hite," I suggest. But Dick's answer to that is a derisive "Oh, yeah?" Even romance has not changed his attitude toward death. Like so many young men, he seems to have left his will to li\e on the fields of France. Unassuming, soft-spoken, with a literary turn of mind, Dick's choice of a profession seems incongruous. Until one senses the bitterness behind his ready smile, and the loneliness of the man who rides alone. I think him unsentimental until I learn of his old-fashioned views about women, his contention that women are the race, the savior of civilization. I think him a stoic until he shows solicitude for a minor scratch a girl-friend suffers. I think him a darn fool, and then 1 remember a boy-friend who gets sickly green when he looks down from a great height and bemoans his sad fate when a tooth aches, and I lose myself in admiration for a man who can ignore a broken neck and who can crash to earth and come up smiling. But for all those things, for his regard for women, for his concern over even the trivial injuries to one of them and for, in contrast to that, his own deprecation of an almost mortal hurt to himself, I think him something other than an unsentimental idealist or a stoic or a reckless adventurer. I think — indeed, I know — that Richard Grace is a man. 88