Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1928-Jan 1929)

crQ)ill Wally Reids Son If The Boy Does, It Will Be Contrary To His Mother's Hopes /"S there to be another Wallace Reid? That is the question. And if there is, who is better entitled to fill that beloved vacant place than Wally's only son, Bill, the small replica of his father in the flesh, like his father in many ways, unlike him in others. It is a delicate, By GLADYS HALL White When their home and their happiness were complete: Wallace Reid, with his wife and his son, Billy, just after they moved into what was to be Wally's last residence in Hollywood dangerous, difficult thing to be the mother of Wally's son. To know just what to do. What attitude to take. What to teach the boy about his father. In what clear, honest, impartial light to present him to the small boy who asks innumerable questions about him: "Tell me, Mother, what was he like? How did he talk? What did he like to do? What would he want me to do in such and such a situation?" These are the questions Dorothy Davenport Reid has to ponder and answer day after day, year after year. Easy enough to sketch that world-beloved portrait with a tender, sentimental hand. Filling in the soft-focused background with the love of millions, the grief of millions, the vast generosities, the broken idealism, the dramatic dreams, the hurt and heart. Difficult to shade the story as finely as it should be shaded. Difficult to give the boy his father as a very human being broken on the wheel of his most endearing qualities. Difficult to explain that dreams are not always best, that the love of millions can break a man as well as make him, that idealism and flattery can lead to degradation, that prowess of body is not always pride of spirit. CECIL WAS NOT SANTA PERHAPS when young Bill is older and his horizon wider, his mother will tell him something of what she 50 told me the other day. She has a knowledge of what wrecked Wally; a knowledge founded on scientific study and a grasp of biology. She has spent the last several years in an endeavor to cure drug addicts. She has found a man with a cure and has spent time and money in an effort to put it over. She knows that Wally died of a disease. That it may have been induced by the superficial attributes of his life is only the superficial aspect of the matter, not the core and kernel. She will tell Bill these facts. She will tell him, too, how his father's heart was broken, time and time again, when he discovered that his gods had feet of clay. To him, all men were gods, incapable of sin or stain, and his first step down into disillusionment came when he saw the reverse side of the ledger of life. She may even think it worth while to tell Bill of his father's first great idolatry of Cecil de Mille. His firm belief that "the king can do no wrong." His bewildered hurt when the first Christmas came along and there was not so much as a word for him from his idol. His muted voice when he said to her, "He might have remembered to send me a card." That would be Wally. Sentiment. And Christmas is the time for sentiment. He was like a child, believing in Santa Claus and finding, in the gray light of morning, his stocking unfilled. Wally was like that. He wanted to give with his arms wide-spread, his heart on his sleeve, love and light and laughter in his eyes. He did give. The world gave back. But there was a flaw in the giving, and Wally's philosophy could not admit of flaws. And so he took tc the Lethean waters that spelled oblivion for him. {Continued on page 86)