Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Aug 1919)

II^’s real. Whatever else he is, or isn’t, he's that — essentially that. And so, of course, he loves it. What normal human wouldn’t? “Only that I fear I fall short — that I dont measure up — dont deserve it,'’ he says. And as for this womanhating business — not he ! “/ fall so hard for ’em,” he says, “/ fracture my shill!” He thinks a woman is the most sacred thing on earth — that a man who is married to the woman he loves — kiddies and home — is the-to-be-envied of kings and potentates — and, he’s going to get himself into that enviable state ju.st as soon as he finds her. Also, he’s going to give her everything he possibly can of tenderness and devotion — of protection and care — and all he asks in return is — loyalty. y-\nd he snapped out the word loyalty with the characteristic narrowing of the eyes. There need be no specific type. “That would be impos A snapshot of sible for any one to say,’’ de Street up 1 j TT11 U-.LI on his last Liberty dared Bill ; it s . ’ that indescribable something totally unnamable. She needn’t be any particular variety, so long as I love her.’’ So, you see, she needn’t be one of the dareless daredevils — ride unblazed trails before breakfast — be indefatigable — and all that. She might even use Poudre Riz and prefer a limousine to a mustang. In fact, she could. He told me so. Women apart, however, despite my rigid adherence to this so fascinating topic, he showed a somewhat strenuous desire to talk about horses, which topic, being a woman, was not quite so intriguing to me. Bill Hart, irreproachably tailored, and conversing feministically, was too anomalously fascinating. However ... he does love horses, almost inordinately, and he loves to talk MOTION PICTURE CLASSIC Bill confesses that he isn’t bashful, that women are his greatest weakness and that he’s going to get married as soon as he finds Her. . . . And she may even use Poudre Rie and prefer a limousine to a mustang about ’em. “I wouldn’t mind,’’ he says, “being criticized as an actor, but my hair just would stand on end if I. should be criticized as a horseman. Becau.se, ma’am, if there’s one thing on earth I do know, it’s horses. I understand them and they understand me. No horse has ever thrown me since I was fifteen, and I’ve never hurt one. We just get along, that’s all.” At the expiration of his contract he’s going to take a rest. The first in four years of, as we know, pretty strenuous VV’estern stuff. And he is, even as he says, mighty tired. He looks it, and he acts it. “I could .stand a long rest,” he said, “a very long one. I’m going into the heart of New Mexico, with my horse and my dog and some books, and pitch my tent. There’ll be no one to call me in the morning — no one to call on me at night. I’ll sleep under the stars and dream under the sun — and together they’ll give me back my really remarkable recuperative powers. It will do me a lot of good. I need it — need it badly.” Now, taking him by and large, is or is not your preconceived notion of him rather upset? Did you expect just this gentleness of him ? This quietude ? This grooming? And whether you did or didn’t, dont you altogether like it ? Isn’t it much nicer, much finer, much humaner, than a rabid, rather histrionic personage with an abhorrence for women and a persistent woolly Westernness? Not that he isn’t the West. He is. He is the best of it. He is the very heart of the West, tempered to the East. He is the true cosmopolite at heart — with so much of humanity within himself Bill Hart is the impossible meeting of the East and West. He is Blue Blazer Rawdon and likewise Mr. William Hart, Hotel Astor, New . York that he can take on, be one of, all phases of humanity, wherever the locale. {Continued on page 80) (Thirty-two)