Motion Picture Classic (Jul-Dec 1930)

Isn't She Odd? gestures (A the screen Zasu, there lives the real Zasu — a very wholesome, domestic and maternal person. 77r«* <A« real Zasu Pitts. So Tczl that against it the screen rSles fade into the shadows they are, and the wistful exterior is but a ver>' thin mask, hiding a good capacious heart, a strong, reliant spirit. There is nothing macabre. about the real Zasu Pitts. There is nothing morbid or subterranean about the interests and pursuits of the offscreen Zasu. There is nothing downtrodden or submerged about her. She is different. She is kU -depredatory. She laughed in her funny little, sidc-of-the-mouth way about being interviewed at all. "It seems so silly," she said, "for you to be asking and for me to be telling you what / think ..." But in her personal life, which is her real life, Zasu is teeming with life and encrpes. Abounding with those mterests popularly supposed to be contained in "a woman 's sphere." As they are. And the interests of Zasu are ardens and the growing of owers. Kitchens and cookies, and recipes and diets. " Doing over" the bedroom m babyblue. Buying drapes and new linoleum. Going to food-shows — she took me to one — and comparing the relative merits of wheat and bran flours. Buying big glacdd apples on long white sticks for the little kiddies. Zasu is domestic in the good old fashion of the Mauve Dec "Do ode. What she doesn 't do her "No ftelf she pleasantly su(:iervi9e8. Garbo .She runs her house with the capable help of two women who are her cUj^ friends as w ell as her servants. .She discusses with them the baking of cakes, the values of cuts of beef, the most exact stewing of chickens. She doesn 't entertain pe^jple with whom she has to "put on high airs." She seldom goes to parties. She is an exile from some prim New England shore, dwelling in Hollywood. Her Reasons for Being AND Zasu is, most of all, maternal. She proved that when she had her own little girl and loved having her. She proved it beyond any shadow of a doubt when she adopted Barbara La .Marr's little adopted boy. And Barbara (lid adopt him, tabloid twitterings to the contrary. For Zasu has talked to the matron of the asylum from which he came, in Texas. He is the legitimate Bfjn of a postman, aged fifty-odd, and a trained nurse in her twenties. Both dead, I believe. Zasu's heart is the real, the capacious mother-heart, to which all children are dear because they are children. She loves her little adopted boy equally as well as her own little daughter. .She feels no difference towarrl them. And she intends to have other chiirlren to love and care for. Her older sister died a few months back, leaving four young ones to her care. Zasu wants them to {Continued from page jo) come to her! She wants to tend them and love them. "I can't imap;ine," she said, in that halting, drifting voice of hers, "anything better for anyone to do with their liife than take you share my enthusiasm for The IT Girl?" , boss, you can keep Clara Bow. But I'd take Greta any time!" care of babies. For every baby born there should be someone to love it. I can't imagine having anything more worth while to work for. There must be something worth while to work for or there would be no reason for it. I would feel so silly acting parts on the screen if I didn 't have an object in view. I 'd like to work until I have just enough money to be able to stay at home and take care of things. 1 'd like to adopt a lot more children. I 'd like to have a nursery home, where a lot of little babies could have sunshine and fresh air and food and lots of toys and loving. To make them happy — that is the most important thing." Not Guided by the Stars 'y^ASU has a house down .Santa Monica jT 1 way. Asked what type of house it is, she says, "Oh, iust a house ..." And in that house, which is also a home, Zasu is the personally presiding spirit. She is, literally, up with the sun. There is nothing remotely resembling a movie star's regime in the schedule followed by Zasu. No breakfast trays brought to a daised bed. No hours spent in massages and facials and manicures. No silken seclusion of self. No artificial padding is put between herself and life. Zasu is the mother of her family, Tom Gallery's wife, and the mistress of her home b" fore she ever gets around to being a mov' actress. The children are in Zasu 's room as soon as they wake, at six in the morning. Tumbling over her, laughing, sublimely sure of a welcome. Zasu can be seen in the morning only through a riotous tangle of small arms and legs, heard only through the gleeful shouts of the little, beloved tyrants. A more pjermanent and lasting frame, I should say, than perfumed French rosebuds and tinted laces. This alone, in itself, should tell you what manner of person Zasu Pitts really is. It is her valedictory. It is self-explanatory. It needs no words, no rhetorical eulogies. An Accidental Actress ZASU didn 't have a particularly happy young girlhood. Her childhood was normal enough. There was the older sister, and there were two or three young brothers, and there were the garden and flowers to tend. "I always loved to tend things," said Zasu, striking her own major chord. "I guess I was born being just the Help, in one way or another." She lived in Santa Cruz during most of her childhood and went to school there. She didn 't care much for school or for books. There was the living world, lying all about her. She never dreamed of becoming an actress, least of all a screen actress. She used to appear in most of the school plays, but then, so did most of the other girls of her acquaintance. When she grew into adolescence, it was constantly held before her that she must work, must earn her own living in the world. And to the domestically inclined child this pressure became a dark shadow, ominous. There was no money to be had in tending flowers, especially if you only tend them because they are fragile and helpless and you love them. Zasu came to Los Angeles. There might, it occurred to her, be money in that play-acting she used to do at school. They photographed you play-acting now. And Mary Pickford was the star at which to hitch so frail, so tentative a little bark. Zasu "hitched" andher first picture experience was with Mary Pickford in "The Little Princess." As a consequence of having to work and hating it, Zasu doesn't want her little girl to be on the screen or anything but she wants her to be just a normal girl "having a good time." Zasu says her one great ambition is "just to get along." She doesn't care for luxuries. Her one extravagance is her smart Straight Eight. She doesn't care for jewels or for lavish entertainment or an extensive estate. Most of her money goes into gardens and babies, sunshine and young laughter, good milk and roses and kiddie l^rs . . . This is the real Zasu Pitts. There is no other. 80