Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1923-Jan 1924)

3™5 Which one will help yon win fame and fortune! For half a century the world's great artists have used Conn instruments. The stars of today in concert bands, symphony, opera and popular orchestras, have risen to fame playing Conns. They accord a generous measure of their success to these superb instruments. You will profit by following their example. Win success, profit, pleasure with a Conn, "the instrument of the artists." Remember, with a Conn you get these definite points of superiority : Easier Blowing: each tone responds to the slightest lip pressure. Perfect Scale: accurate intonation in all registers. Most Reliable Action: lightest, easiest and surest, whether slide, valve or key. Beautiful Tone: our exclusive hydraulic expansion process insures accurate proportions and perfect carriage for sound waves. All exclusive Conn features at no greater cost. Highest honors at World Expositions. FreeTrial;Easy Payments Send post card for details, mentioning instrument that interests you. Conn is the only maker of every instrument used in the band. We also make high grade violins and drums. Dealers and Agents everywhere FACTORY BRANCHES: Conn New York Co. Conn Detroit Co. Conn New Orleans Co. Conn Cleveland Co. Conn Chicago Co. Conn Seattle Co. Conn Portland Co. Conn Atlanta Co. C. G. CONN, Ltd. 1025 Conn Bldg., Elkhart, Ind. Ted Lewis, above, famous ja/zicnl clown, and Mb) Hallett. below, Broadway favorite, are anionic the great artists who uac Conn instruments. WORLD'S LARGEST MANUFACTURERS OF HIGH GRADE BAND AND ORCHESTRA INSTRUMENTS They Still Twinkle i Continued from page 37) of parts she is the foremost dramatic artiste of this generation. Her start in American pictures was unlucky. "Bella Donna" was a very bad picture and she did some wretched work in it. This was partly because the character itself was impossible; partly because she is not adapted to the part of a society woman with the artificial conventions with which we imagine society life to be surrounded ; partly because the producers had cold feet and forced her to turn Robert Hichens' heroine into a weak tea, Pollyannized imitation of the original character. I am told that while they were making the picture, there was a convention of film salesmen in Hollywood. They saw part of the picture as made ; yelled bloody murder at its frankness ; the picture was stopped and de-natured for the Pollyanna trade. In spite of that fizzle, which she cheerfully admits herself, Pola just "has it." She has temperament and personality. The minute she comes on the screen, you know something has happened. Nothing finer has ever been shown on the screen than some parts of "Passion" and "Gypsy Love." The latter was not an entire success ; because it shocked the American preconceived notion that Carmen was a younglady in a red silk skirt who, in her most devilish moments, sometimes made goo goo eyes and held a rose between her teeth. Pola portrayed her as she really was — an evil, vicious, little gutter animal. On the whole, I think it could be said that Pola is the star by right of conquest. She burst upon the theatrical world like a fiery comet. No one can deny that she is the most sensational theatrical event to be experienced since the discovery of Nazimova in a Ghetto theater in New York some years ago. Pola could vanish and come back alone and unheralded into any studio as Mamie Godinski and do it all over again. And do it again and again and again. Pola has "something on the ball" as the baseball pitchers say. She is arrogant, selfish, inconsiderate, imperious, lazy, and utterly ruthless. But she is a great artiste. Tommy Meighan's appeal is not so easily analyzed. He is a good actor and an attractive personality ; but there are other actors who would seem to be nearly of equal attraction. The box office however has given the answer. The American public has picked Tommy as a star. They just like him and that's all there is to that. Oddly enough, the reason they like him is just the opposite of the reason that they rave over Valentino. Tommy is about as exotic as an income tax collector. Girls go to see Valentino because he is a vicarious adventure. They go to see Tommy because he is a big brother. Men like him because he is a companionable, genuine big fellow — a good scout. He has one characteristic that is also noticeable in Valentino ; both men have a dont-care air of indifference : Well, hardly of indifference. Rather it is an air of detachment, of not bothering about what people think of them. A sort of "you-can-follow-me-ifyou like but I am not going to-follow-you." And under it all, Tommy has the Irishman's sweet sentimental rough delicacy of feeling ; that Irish instinct for true sentiment that made the old bells of St. Peter's, solemn, austere, gloomy old St. Peter's Cathedral in New York, usher in the New Year with the sweetest and tenderest of all love songs, "Believe Me Those Endearing Young Charms." Ah, a wonderful thins is the Irish heart. And Tommy Mcighan has an Irish heart and that is why he is one of the stars who survived. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is quite another matter. He represents merely a trade trick ; and not a very fair or ethical trade trick at that. So much for stars that Paramount salvaged. There are other studios of the same mind. Very few of the other big studios which release program pictures have them. Goldwyn, with its big program of pictures has grabbed the contracts of all the wellknown actors that money could buy but makes stars of none of them. Norma Talmadge, Mae Murray, Charl: . Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Harold Lloyd, Douglas Fairbanks, Lillian Gish, Dick Barthelmess are stars and always will be. Most of those named make their own pictures and finance them thru their own banking arrangements. They make special pictures for audiences that have learned to wait for them. They are hardly a case in point. Of those named, Norma Talmadge probably has had the most devoted following. Norma has a vivid and interesting personality and of all American born actresses is the best with the possible exception of Lillian Gish. Her great weakness has been the wrong kind of stories. Mae Murray is usually considered to be the surest and safest box office bet on the screen. Her appeal is based upon a curious foundation. All her pictures are posters. Every story, every set, evensituation is frankly artificial. Mae shows life as it "ain't." She is the poster girl of the screen. In her personal life she is about as far from her pictures as it would be possible to be. The real Mae Murray in private life is a grave, dignified, self-contained, studied, aloof personality. She is very charming and gracious but you always feel that you are talking to her across a great gulf. She does not show the public the real Mae Murray. She does not show the public a real anything. She shows them a dashing pastel done in daring colors of a girl with a very white face and beautiful legs. Her stories are like the color designs of foreign art magazines. She is the nouveaux acts adapted for the screen public. Lillian Gish has attained and will retain stardom to the end by the sheer force of merit. Of all actresses on the screen, Lillian is the most thoro master of her profession. She is the careful, finished workman. She has the sure touch of the experienced expert. Harold Lloyd is not naturally a great actor. He has won a place by force of a very pleasing, lovable personality ; he is the kind of boy you like to have in the family. If Harold were fancy free and wanted to marry anybody's daughter, no father would take more than one look at him without saying, "You bet you can." His comedies represent not so much exuberance or genius as sure-fire jokes. He tries and throws out a hundred gags for every one that gets onto the screen. Harold shows what a boy with a keen, incisive mind, faithful effort and a clean mind can do if he really tries. What has made Harold a star of permanent orbit is that, if the comedy isn't good, the public never sees it. He has played fair with his clientele. Mary and Doug and Chaplin are not stars ; they are institutions. They belong in the category with the Statue of Liberty and the White House. They will always he because we gotta have 'em.