Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1924-Jan 1925)

My Stor;9 From the Time I Left J\.ew Orleans to Seek J^/Ly Fortune Heather Than Remain a Poor Relation S OMETIMES I wonder if I would have the courage to go thru it all again — the struggles, the harshness, the disappointments a girl, absolutely alone, must experience if she would have a career on the stage or the screen. When I say that I was alone, I mean that I had neither friends nor financial backing to make the pathway easier for me. I did have my mother, tho, and her bravery and unfailing cheerfulness buoyed me lip at times when, I admit, I might otherwise have become completely disheartened. We stood together, late one afternoon in the winter of 1918, on the deck of the ship that had brought us up from New Orleans. Before us stretched the sky-line of New York City, looming massively against leaden clouds. It was snowing, and I was very thrilled, for, having lived in the South all my life, 1 had never seen snow before. I do not know now whether it was the snow or the city that thrilled me most in that hour. My mother, no doubt, was thinking of me, and wondering if she had been wise in permitting me to persuade her to bring me North. 1 knew so little about life. My childhood and girl t hood had been a happy and sheltered one. For more generations than I know, our family has lived in the South, • in and around New Orleans. I had attended the convent of the Sacred Heart in New Orleans, and my summers had been spent at our plantation La Visa, which is near the little town of Shuteston, Louisiana. I remember how keenly, as a youngster, I always welcomed the summer vacation period. Once out on the plantation I would give my time over to play-acting. I was not a schoolgirl there, but an actress, and I would bring the children from the neighboring plantations over to assist me in putting on amateur theatricals. I did not spend my time dreaming about the clay when I I never dreamed about the day I would become an actress, when I was a child. I always felt I was one. (Above) Leatrice Joy when nine years old would become an actress. I always felt that I was one. No doubt there were times when my playmates became rather bored with me, for while I insisted upon their sharing my enthusiasm for the stage, I was not particularly interested in their games and pastimes. When they would not assist me, I would enact my "plays" all alone, indifferent to the fact that I had no audience. Companionship was not indispensable to me then, nor is it now. The year that I left the convent, a shadow fell across my life. My father, who was a dentist in New Orleans, became ill with consumption and was forced to give up his practice. His income, of course, stopped. I have just one brother, and he had gone to war. For the first time in my life, I realized what it was to have my family in somewhat straitened circumstances. Father was placed in a sanitarium, and grandfather advised mother and me to go to La Visa, the plantation, to live with him. Mother probably would have done so, for she had led the sheltered ife of a Southern woman and did not know much about battling the world, but I revolted. It is odd what seemingly trifling occurrences sometimes change the entire course of one's life. • I had seen a play in which a girl, a "poor relation," was forced to be subservient to the wishes of wealthy relatives who had taken her to live with them, and tho grandfather was the kindliest man in the world, I could not resign myself to being dependent upon him. I had a perfect horror of being a poor relation, myself. At' that time a little film company, the Nola it was called, was working in New Orleans, under the direction of a Mr. Martin, and one day, without the knowledge of my family, I went down to interview him. Our family is rather well known in New Orleans, and this may have had something to do with the fact that Mr. Martin made me leading woman in his company. I remember that the matinee idol of a local stock com :om rv PA fill