The New Movie Magazine (Dec 1929-May 1930)

The Story of the Actress Whose Wit Makes Her LA TASHMAN — as Hollywood knows her today, a trifle cynical, deeply sentimental and invariably amusing, one of the Hollywood famous. revelations. The Tavlor murder occurred in Hollywood, but the Hall-Mills didn't. However, every now and then Hollywood reacts violently from being called a modern Babylon and becomes actually sugary in What did Tashman, who adored the theater, the lights, the applause, the audience, the greasepaint, care for motion pictures? What did Lil, who knew all the wits and wags, crooks and characters, great ones and little ones, playboys and spenders, stars and geniuses of the most famous street in the world, care about Hollywood? She was a typical Broadwayite — and Broadway knew her, loved her, hailed her. More than that, Libyan Tashman had evei-y chance to succeed on the stage. Along with a number of other critics who know much more than I ever will about real acting, I saw Lil play a oneact thing of Eugene O'Neill's called "Thirst" at the Writers' Club in Hollywood. Everyone agi'eed that she might have given Jeanne Eagels a run for her money as a dramatic actress. Her speaking voice is superb. But Lil was in love and so she forsook everything, as women have been doing for centuries, to follow her man. Edmund Lowe had yielded to the call of the camera after seven failures behind the footlights in one season. Not his failures, the critics attested. Just the failures of playwrights who had written him good parts in wretched shows. Eddie had loved the stage ever since he played the bearded old gentleman in "The Bells" during his sophomore year at Santa Clara University. But a man must live and the movies lured him with glitter of much gold. He had made good in pictures, accepted a contract, so Lil forsook Jimmy Walker's little village by the Hudson and went to Hollywood. Arriving, as I have mentioned, during a reform wave. She was very smartly gowned, very witty, very wise. A typical high class Follies girl. And Hollywood at the moment was much more anxious to welcome winners of beauty contests who had just graduated from high school in Peoria, Kansas, with 100 in deportment. its attempts to disprove the statement. Lilyan Tashman deserted her beloved New York, where she had scored a triumph in the original stage version of "The Gold-Diggers"; where the night clubs paused breathless before her suave and brilliant entrance ; where George Jean Nathan quoted her — without quotation marks, of course; where life moved swiftly at her gay command. Out into the vast and unknown open spaces she trekked — for just one reason. A man. The wise Tashman of the Follies was no more proof against love than any highschool girl. 90 'Hollywood pays the usual price of fame by having its private life under a scrutiny no human being could endure." "~V HE reception Miss *■ Tashman got was a bit congealing. It took Lil a long time to recognize this. She was very happy with Eddie — they got married not long after her arrival— she was interested in her new medium of work, and she isn't super-sensitive. Few big people are. But after a while it dawned upon her that she was not getting a break, either professionally or socially. Her motives were misinterpreted. Hollywood gossips accept the slightest excuse to pin scandals on anyone. Hollywood is always ready to believe the worst on the slightest evidence.