Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Jun 1929)

Could You Kiss a Man Who Repels You? Does a woman really know when she truly is in love.^ Whether what she interprets as the thrill of love is that — or fear — or what? It seems to be a complex thing, this love business. But there's this to say about it: that only those who have been through its bewildering experience can contribute to the understanding of love anything worth-while and genuine. Which brings us to this point: that in a forthcoming issue of ]\IoTioN Picture there will be one of the most fascinating lovelife stories we have yet published. You know the author of it. She is one of the most famous women in the world. A woman both charming and fearless — and overpoweringly attractive to men. She has lived and dared — and known love. No matter what your own experience, what y'our own views on love may be, you "11 find this the most engrossing revelation of the inner storms that rage thrciugh a woman's heart that you have ever encountered. It was she who said that she knew a man who was repulsive to her. And yet a man whom she could not resist kissing. Was this lovep And if not, what? Don't take a chance on missing this story. It will appear in an early issue (jf Motion Picture "It's lilt' XUujazine of AulhorHy' Confessions of the Stars [Continued from pige 72) much sense to me, that story. I only knew that lie was not the Galahad 1 had thought him; I knew that he was telling me that I was not the only girl, as 1 had thought 1 was. I didn't know just what he had done, but I knew that he was not what he had seemed. This was my first disillusion. I returned his fraternity pin, tore up his letters and tried to forget. Of course I succeeded— after six months or so. Poverty and Injustice " O HORTLY after this happened the fam^ ily fortunes crashed. My father died. My sister had married in the last whirl of glory the family knew — and we were left alone in a world stripped of everything but poverty. Real poverty, it was, too. Nothing fictional about it. Days when we wondered where heat and food and clothing were to come from. The kind of poverty that cannot pay rent, or grocer bills and has gas and electric light and all services cut off. "Under the homestead laws of Texas we lost our home. I had to go to court and testify, and I remember that the judge made me out a liar and I was miserable and bewildered with shame and resentment. "And once again, so early, I learned how swiftly humans will desert a sinking ship. People who had cultivated us when they thought something was to be got for their pains, persons for whom my father had rendered services, in cash and other ways, forgot us when the crash came. Never said so much as, 'Thank you' or 'Too bad.' We had lost what the world counts as '6f primary importance. I have never forgotten that lesson. I never shall. "The beauty contest I won after coming to Hollywood, my start in pictures, has all been told many times before. "Then my first marriage — so sordid that it is a memory I cannot bear to dwell on more than to point out how it contributed toward making me the sort of person I am today. "I was ignorant as well as innocent when I married that first time. And I was, or [ had been, very gay and very full of fun. Something it seems hard for people to believe of me. But it was so. I never smoked and 1 had a horror of drinking, but I did go out with boys and loved it. I danced and spooned and went to parties and did all the things a girl does do when she is on her own for the first time in her life. Marriage and Lost Faith " \^V first marriage knocked the joy of J_VJ. life right out of me. I came out of it at last, dazed, cynical, hard and hurt. Hurt. I had lost my last vestige of faith in men and in women. I didn't trust one living soul. I didn't even trust myself. I was disillusioned and embittered, through and through. "You see, I had loved him. And that love had made those dreadful, faith-breaking years all the more hideous. "During those years 1 Was working and working hard, day after day, at the old Vitagraph studio in the Kast. I went to a few theaters. I went to a night club just twice. I took dancing lessons three nights a week. That was all. " I never saw the color of my own money. I scUlom saw my family. 1 had no time and little inclination to make friends. 1 didn't know what it was all about, didn't realize that there was any man in the world but that man or that any other condition of living might exist for me. "It nearly did for me completely, that experience. It has only been recently, very slowly and painfully and with the help of Walter, that I have worked myself out of it and of the bitter aftermath it left for me. 'It was my danger zone. That was the time when I stood the frailest chance of survival. The time when my old inferiority grew apace and nearly strangled me. For my husband would say to me, 'You would be nothing without me.' He couldn't have said a more fatal thing to me. For 1 believed him. "And then, when things grew too dark and horrible, 1 came back to Hollywood. I came fully determined to be bad, to live a life of gay and scarlet sin. I thought, why bother with ideals or dreams if life is like this. What does anything matter? Certainly, I don't matter. Marriage and New Faith I COULDN'T seem to get into the swing of it. I was deathly tired with that chilling tiredness that is not of the body. And very soon 1 met Walter — and was saved. " I met him one night at the Ambassador. He asked me to dine with him the next night. He said, ' I want you to meet my mother.' Somehow, that simple, nice little speech touched the very Tightest spot in me. It was so wholesome, so real. I liked it. And that is what 1 have found, what I cherish beyond anything else in this happy second marriage of mine: wholesomeness, enthusiasms for worthwhile things, respect. "1 have found the worthwhile things in my work, too, I hope. "For a long while 1 was terribly handicapped by an absurd notion that seemed to be current, that 1 was beautiful. "I am not beautiful. I know I am not. Take me apart, feature for feature, and you will see for yourself. "I don't want to be known as a beauty. " Beauty, on the screen, is more of a detriment than an asset. "They won't let you act if you are tagged with that label. It is the old beautiful-butdumb idea. I know. When, in the past, I would ask to do such and such a part, I would be told, 'Oh, but you can't play a character like that. Why, she only wears an apron or a blouse. Your public want to see you gorgeously gowned, wearing jewels and satins.' In other words, I was to be a clothes-horse, walking through artificial parts, stiff, not human. Her Choice of Roles ""^ TOW that I can choose my own V2 J_^ hides I have slipped in the social scale. In 'The Divine Lady' I played the daughter of a blacksmith and a cook. In 'Outcast' a girl of the streets. In 'Saturday's Children' a stenographer; and in 'Prisoners' I am a cashier in a bakery-cafe in Budapest. Human beings with the conce.*ling fripperies tlirown off. The lady of the streets and the lady of the salon are not so very far apart — only in that one may expose her emotions and the other may not. "And some day 1 hope to play Josephine and then Marie Antoinette — human beings. "And so this may explain a little that my coldness is really self-consciousness, born of an inferiority complex that life seemed determined to nourish for many years. My present good fortune in having my own way is the result, perhaps, of the many years when I had no way at all. I believe in the law of compensation. "I am glad 1 went through the things I did. The first marriage, the bad-lands that fallowed. Everything. I had some ecstatic moments; and to me one (perfect moment is worth months of pain. F"or after all, without pain, without the necessity to do, to achieve, to conquer, what or where can be the savor ? " 86