Motion Picture Magazine (Feb-Jul 1923)

(pRsaas?^ If any woman should act like the vamps in life, the average man would flee from her in terror, fully convinced that she was about to enter an epileptic trance, or was on the verge of a fit or seraphic, is horrified and repelled by a man merely because he once sowed a wild oat. To the contrary, dashing male devils with interesting pasts are in great demand. The insufferable prig who is ignorant of Dr. Sylvanus Stall's "What a Young Man Ought to Know," and who cant tell the difference between Dubonney and Bicardi, is rated low in the debutante's Bradstreet. The average sensible young lady chooses the experienced man of the world who has had a couple of mild flirtations and knows how to mix a cocktail. There is another motion-picture law of ethical conduct which might be mentioned in this connection. The law has no foundation in life, and, indeed, is without inherent common sense. But no director would dare break it. It has become an immutable precept in the strange, outlandish life of the silversheet. This particular law forbids a heroine ever to tell a falsehood, or even to pretend to something she does not feel, no matter how terrible or tragic mav be the result of her refusal. For instance, if the villain has bound and gagged her doddering old father and her decrepit nonagenarian mother, and has threatened to torture them and put them to death unless she will permit him to caress her There is nothing left for him but to set up marital housekeeping with a hussy whose past is as black as his own, or else go down to his grave a sad and lonely bachelor. The same law works in the case of women. Any demoiselle who has ever been to a naughty cabaret, worn a ring on her thumb, smoked a cigaret, read "Town Topics," or held hands with a gentlemanfriend to whom she was not formally engaged, is considered unfit to mate with a young man who has lead a forward-looking, right-thinking and stainless life. In her case, too, if it appears that she had ever fallen from grace on any one of these counts, it must be proved that she is merely the victim of fiendish slander, or else she can never don the wedding veil. The theory would seem to be that no pure young lady or upright young gentleman could possibly love a member of the opposite sex who had ever made a slip of any kind. But, in actual life, no flapper, however virtuous In any fight the hero must win. The villains may be champion pugilists in the pink of condition. It doesn't matter. The hero, with his bare hands will lay him out cold La Heroines . . . Any demoiselle who has ever been to a naughty cabaret, worn a ring on her thumb, smoked a cigaret, read "Town Topics" or held hands with a gentleman-friend to whom she was not formally engaged, is considered unfit to mate with a young man who has led a stainless life cheek, she is absolutely forbidden to acquiesce to his demands. Let the old folks suffer — her soul must not be sullied by a faithless kiss ! Even if the man she loves is suspended over a precipice, and she has but to promise the villain to marry him, in order to save her lover from being hurled to death on the jagged rocks below, she is not permitted to make that promise, even tho she could — with perfect justification — break it later. No! She must be technically truthful to the bitter end, no matter what the horrible results to herself and to others; and must trust to Heaven — and the director — to get her out of the predicament. (Continued on page 108) 52 t\GC