Motion Picture Magazine (Feb-Jul 1925)

Advertising Section My Life Story (Continued from page 39) •m°2M^ But most of my education really came from reading. I read everything. The tattered play books scattered behind the scenes at the theater were my texts. Shakespeare was my curriculum. There were times when we were flush, and my mother laughed and loved me; times when we were broke, and ate our holiday dinner in a Childs' restaurant. I remember I had one aching desire — for a Christmas tree. Not the community affair they sometimes had behind the scenes at the theater, with presents for all the cast, but a tree of my own like the ones the other boys in school boasted of. (Last Christmas I remembered this — and wanted to buy toys and trim a tree for my own little daughter — and couldn't.) At fourteen I was going to a California military academy (it must have been during one of our flush times), and they telegraphed me to come home to my mother's funeral. I stood looking down into her coffin. It was as tho someone whom I had known vaguely was dead, some strange one whose death did not make much difference. She had never taken care of me, dressed and undressed me, heard my lessons, tucked me into bed. I didn't feel like crying, but it hurt that I didn't. Everyone about me was weeping and saying, "How beautiful she looks," and, "She seems like a girl, lying there." I knew they were lying. The face on the white satin pillow was worn and wrinkled. Even Death had to be lied about, then ! But they expected me to cry and I forced small cold tears and played the part of bereavement so realistically that, on the way back from the cemetery, my cousin Clara, who rode with me in a cab by ourselves, tried to comfort me — and I found her comforting wonderful. I held her warm gloved hand and laid my cheek on her little serge shoulder — and quite suddenly the world was changed. In that ten minutes ride thru the chilly autumn rain back to my lodging, I grew up from a child to a man. She was only a stocky little girl-creature, with freckles and a tender heart, but I found her amazing, strange, terrifying — desirable. I wanted to kiss her — and didn't. It was my first experience with sex, and I didn't know quite what it was all about. When the cab stopped, we shook hands stiffly. . . . I have never seen Clara since. But she was the first woman in my life. Before that the world had been occupied by grown-ups and children, now it was peopled by men and women. My stepfather had no mind to have a half-grown boy with an appetite and other expensive features on his hands. He told me that it was time for me to earn my own living. At fourteen I came to San Francisco, where my mother had often played, and turned my back on the stage, hating it for what it had done to her and to me. I have tried to keep away from it, but I have mountebank blood in me. It was a choice between getting a job in a rubber company's office, which I disliked, or going hungry, which I disliked still more. For a year I lived on seven dollars a week, somehow, and had almost enough to eat. Then came other jobs, other places. I lived in Spokane and Portland. Then I heard of the chances in the pictures, an outcast profession then, and came to Los Angeles. I rode cow ponies for Ince .and made no impression on the directors ; but I collected my extra's wages at the end of each day and carried them home to my lodginghouse. Even tho I didn't succeed I was happy. For the first time I belonged. It was several years before I got a real part in a picture, and then it was with the old Triangle. One curious thing — I have the same dressing-room today on the Goldwyn lot that I used seven years ago, but it is not the same man using it. You can win and lose and suffer many things in seven years. I said the dressing-room was the same, but it has been remodeled. It has hooks to hang clothes on now. It didn't then. TV/Tv life seems to me so aimless. Everything is disjointed — it doesn't cog, somehow. There was the war, for instance. The Spanish flu put off my being drafted. When I did go to camp, it seemed as false and unreal to me as everything else — ■ false excitement, false courage whipped up by beating drums and flying flags. I didn't have anybody to fight and die for, but I had made up my mind I was going to die. That was a foregone conclusion. I wanted most awfully to have someone care. The other boys were getting letters and packages. You couldn't turn around without seeing some pretty girl or middle-aged woman clinging to a doughboy, with tears and kisses and pride ! But there wasn't a soul in the world who would miss me when I was gone. It seemed such a futile thing to have lived for, just to have the name, John Gilbert, in fine print under the list of Killed in Action. A little Southern girl came out to the camp to help entertain us. I was introduced, she saw I was lonely. She was lonely herself and was sympathetic and kind. People do queer things when the bugles blow. Three days after that impulsive wedding in the chaplain's quarters the armistice was declared and there I was, married to a stranger! We took a little flat, the first home I had ever had. Oh, we both of us tried to make a go of it. We were both of us frightened at what we had done. The year after the war there was a slump in the picture business. I tramped from studio to studio, but I was too big or too small or too dark for any parts they had. My little stranger wife never nagged or found fault when I came in from the hopeless search. She didn't even ask me whether I had found something. But her eyes nearly drove me crazy — big eyes that questioned my face till I dreaded to go home. It got so I was haunted by those eyes and wrote to my stepfather telling him of our need. I had been making a hundred and fifty to two hundred a week before the war, now fifty dollars would have seemed a fortune. He wrote us two hungry kids, telling us to pray God for help and reminding me that, if I had saved my money as he had saved his (money my mother had earned for him!), I wouldn't be in need of it now. God was too far away from Hollywood, and I had to watch my wife's eyes grow bigger every day. At last I borrowed the carfare to send her home to her mother in the South. The day after she was gone I got a part. I said that things didn't cog. When we bade each other good-bye on oAtLastf Here's aVanitie Jor Loose Powder GMOmnot Spill Dorothy Mackaill, now starring in "^^^^^ "THE PAINTED LADY," says: "Now I can always feel the caressing touch and fragrance of my favorite loose powder." You, too, can say "good-bye cake powder," for now you can safely carry your powder wherever you go. vvlda loose eVamtie for LOOSE POWDER So clever — so simple — so practical — so economical— and so beautiful and dainty, too. You can carry it in any position, but your loose powder cannot spill. Go today to your favorite store. Obtain a Norida Vanitie. The price is #1.50 in gilt and silver finishes. Comes filled with Fleur Sauvage (wildflower^ Poudre, a delightful and sweetly scented French Powder. If your dealer has not been supplied, send $1.50 and we will mail your Norida direct. So Easy to 'Refill Size of Vanitie Tieo Inches When you write to advertisers please mention MOTION PICTURE oNORIDA PARFUMERIE 630 S. WABASH AVE. CHICAGO, ILLINOIS fl MAGAZINE. 123 I"