Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1928-Jan 1929)

Their First Fan Letters These The Stars Cherish Above All The Thousands They Receive Later By HAL K. WELLS KornmanBruno THERE is always a big kick in the first experience of anything, whether it be one's first pair of long pants, the first permanent wave, or the first effort to eat a raw oyster. That rule holds good, even in blase Hollywood. I doubt if there is a bigger all-around thrill in any star's career than that received by the arrival of the first fan letter. Thousands of such letters come showering in upon the player later from every nook and cranny of the civilized world, but none of them ever has quite the kick of that magic first one. It is one letter that is always kept by every star, no matter whether it is written upon the finest of imported stationery or upon a discarded peanut sack, and regardless of whether the writer is a Florida kindergarten tot or an eighty-year-old Iowa farmer. It is a letter that is always read and re-read a hundred times by the star receiving it, and one that always gets a prompt and grateful personal answer. It is a message that is never forgotten. No matter how many thousands may come after it, that first letter is always enshrined somewhere in every star's cache of treasured mementoes. Some of those letters are a little dingy with age now, and they are all creased from much handling and reading. Marian Nixon keeps her first fan letter among half a dozen other cherished personal souvenirs in a small wicker box. It was from a little eighth-grade boy in Waterbury, Connecticut, and closed with the ingenuous plea: "Please, Marian Nixon, send me your picture soon, because I want to show all my friends how pretty you are." Did he get the picture? By return mail. Eddie Lowe, with an actor's superstitious regard for good omens, has his first fan letter mounted under a coating of transparent shellac inside the top cover of his make-up box. Eddie has worn out several make-up boxes since the receipt of that letter, a brief typewritten note of commendation from a St. Louis stenographer, but the token is always transferred to his new box. Leatrice Joy has her first bit of fan mail framed and hanging in her dressing-room at the studio. Written in the labored hand of a youthful second-grader, on a page torn out of a school tablet, the note is a gem of brevity and unique spelling: "Deere lady, I love you very mush. Yours truly, D— C— , Lund, Utah." Mary Philbin's first fan letter came in 1920, just after she had appeared in "Riding Fast," a two-reel Western starring Hoot Gibson. It was an ardently romantic note from a love-sick youth in a small California town, who had apparently been waiting all his life for a girl like Mary. He mentioned that he had been willed a fortune of over one thousand dollars by his late father and that when his mother died, which he thought would be very shortly, he and Mary could then live very comfortably on the estate, without either of them having to do a great deal of work again. That is one of the very few first fan letters that c id not receive a particularly cordial answer. Betty Compson got her first piece of fan mail while she was playing in Christie Comedies. That was before she sprang to fame in "The Miracle Man." It was from a fifteen-year-old high school boy in Biloxi, Mississippi, and read in part: "You have a divine figure. If you will be so kind as to mail me a photograph, please make it one in a bathing-suit because I would be prouder of that kind." He (Continued on page 105)