Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1924-Jan 1925)

The Editor Gossips rODAY has been good to us. It has given us back Tsome of our former belief in the human race . . . eradicated some of the dark doubt which our adult years have brought with them . . . renewed our shaky faith in the fellowship of man. A month or two ago we published in another column of this magazine a notice telling of Florence Turner, ill and destitute in London. Florence Turner everyone remembers as the veteran motion picture actress. She was known as a screen personality before she was known by her name. Before the casts were shown upon the screen the public wrote letters to Florence Turner addressed to ''The Girl With the Big Eyes, Yitagraph Company, Brooklyn, New York." Marion Davies read our note or another like it and straightforth had her representative in England investigate Miss Turner's circumstances. She had never known Florence Turner personally. It was sufficient to her that a fellow actress was in distress. Theatrical people have belied all the things we heard about them before we knew them personally except that they are unfailingly quick to help a comrade. Their purses are always being emptied in generous and impulsive gestures. Their latchstrings are always raised in an offer of hospitality to any friend in distress. So Marion Davies had Florence Turner and her mother brought to America as her guests. Today they are her guests in a New York hotel and Miss Turner is to have a role in the next Davies picture. Perhaps Miss Davies lias come to a premature acceptance of that simple and wise philosophy: "There, but for the grace of God, go I." Life does queer things to people. It turns their lives topsyturvy. It doesn't always whisper a warning. Today— ah, yes! Of today we are comparatively certain. But tomorrow is always ahead of us — an eternal question. Talking to Florence Turner, who is the Marion Davies never knew Florence Turner personally It was sufficient to her that a fellow actress was in distress. So she had Florence Turner and her mother come to America as her guests. Today they are her guests in a New York hotel. And Miss Turner is to have a role in the next Marion Davies production. Surely when Youth stops in its parade of glamorous days to hold forth a helping hand to a comrade in difficulties, it is an unusual youth: rich in promise. Below, Miss Turner and her mother photographed on their return to America Photograph by rnational Newsreel same Florence Turner we remember in the old flickering films, we gathered that the happy transition which she has known in the last few weeks has left her little time to realize the reality of what might well seem a dream. Just a month before the day we saw her she was counting over the remains of her last bank-note ; hoping wearily that the few shillings and fewer crowns would last until another engagement brought new bank-notes. Pride invariably intensifies the difficulties of trying positions. The Turners were striving desperately to '"keep up appearances." Clothes from the old affluent days helped their pretenses. They managed so that no one was ever admitted to the bare and shabby interior of the flat where they lived. The furniture had gone the way of the jewels and the furs and any other things which fickle prosperity had given them and on which slight sums might be realized. Just so long as the world could be kept in ignorance of such a state of affairs, it didn't matter so much that there was often a lack of food . . . and frequently no tram fare to take Miss Turner to the studios where her hopeful inquiries about engagements so often met with disappointments. This was the discouraging state of affairs which confronted Florence Turner and her mother for years, ever since the war wiped out her studios, her company and her savings. Their health gave way under the strain of anxiety and worry on two or three occasions, and life loomed before them in a vista of grim, stark years. Who would dare condemn them if they had refused to face such a future . . . ? But then another engagement would come along. And then the same deadly struggle would begin all over again when that engagement's money dwindled away. However, we remember our grandmother's telling us that the longest lane must have a turning. . . . One day a message came to the Turner {Cont'd on page 110) 53 PA/3 t