The New Movie Magazine (Dec 1929-May 1930)

There has been also, it seems to me, a woeful and slightly childish tendency upon the part of some to confuse Mr. Gilbert in person with the parts he has to portray on the screen. Jack hasn't much more to do with the parts he plays than a doctor with the cases he tends. If a doctor happens to perform a successful operation on an appendix, he is very apt to find before long that he is a specialist in appendix removal. JACK happened to make a big hit in a part where he played the impassioned lover in a story by Elinor Glyn. He needed the job and he thought he was fortunate to get it. Like many an Elinor Glyn story before it — or IT if you prefer — there were some love scenes. In fact "His Hour" was spent almost entirely in impassioned love scenes. Now, as mentioned before, Jack was an actor — and a good one. Moreover, if you think for a moment, you will become convinced that almost every man knows the general gestures and ordinary mechanics of love scenes as impassioned as those were. They are the same in nearly every language and have been indulged in by the vast majority of males. And, unless husbands tell less than the truth, most of it up to the time they met their present wives was all just acting anyhow. So! Jack called upon his histrionic ability and his past experience — probably little different from that of any other young gent in his late twenties — and did it very well. Unfortunately, like the appendicitis operation, it was successful and Jack became a specialist ■ — and has remained a specialist much against his will for some time. The things Jack really loves to do are the swashbuckling parts — I will bet a million that if he could buy "The Three Musketeers" right now from Fairbanks he would rather play D'Artagnan than anything else in the world. The advent of Garbo and their costarring parts, cinched him into what have been called "great lover" parts. Just why, I don't know. Perhaps I have been fortunate, but I didn't see anything so different about Jack's lovemaking to the variety that many of the women I know have encountered, both in love affairs and in marriage. Perhaps Jack's technique was better, but you must remember that he had rehearsals. And to assume that Mr. John Gilbert goes around making impassioned love to every woman he meets is silly. Jack admires beautiful women. I have yet to find a man who doesn't. He likes interesting women. But to call Jack a sheik or anything like that, off the screen, or to intimate that he has ever wished to be a sheik, displays abysmal ignorance of the man. The funny part of it is that the man in Hollywood who might qualify for the role a lot of people want to wish on Jack Gilbert is a gray-haired director whose face hasn't been seen on the screen for years. Jack has had love affairs. Most men have. Jack's have been spotlighted. Look over the men you know and see if most of them haven't roamed about at one time or another. Jack is an attractive man. Women like him. But he doesn't notice it any more than any other male of the species. About three years ago — during the time that Jack was devoted to Greta Garbo, and again that doesn't seem unusual since millions of people react to her screen presence with ardor — I had a long talk with Jack. He was blue and a trifle discouraged. He spoke rather beautifully of what a happy marriage must mean to a man, a marriage in which two people were mentally mated. There was something very gentle and a little lonely about his talk that day and I wondered if the strange and wonderful Garbo was giving him a bad time. A man doesn't, in the majority of cases, choose the woman with whom he falls in love. Life would indeed be much simplier if he could. That yearning which had been his for some time is the answer to Jack's swift courtship and sudden marriage to Ina Claire. He told me soon after they were married that he had found the nicest grown-up person he had ever known and that he intended to keep her if he could. But marriages founded upon three week's acquaintance need considerable adjustment. The getting acquainted, which usually occupies a period before the actual ceremony, must take place afterwards. Both Jack Gilbert and Ina Claire were mature people, pretty well set in their ways of life, both used to being the center of the establishment. Perhaps both had been a trifle spoiled. It doesn't seem amazing, therefore, if they took a bit of time to work things out. Surely, it was their business if they wished to live in separate houses for a time. Fannie Hurst and her husband have done that successfully for years. AT this writing .Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert ■l\ have been living together in Jack's house, although Ina Claire is now in New York. They were together at the Lowell-Sherman wedding and at Pickfair the other evening and seemed happy and devoted. When his wife started for New York, Jack saw her off. I still believe that marriage will survive— which is all any marriage ever does. The much discussed episode in Europe seems to me natural enough. I mean, even happy married folks do have a spat now and then. Maybe you've seen them yourself. They don't mean much — unless you happen to be so famous that an ordinary lover's quarrel is headline news. I expect a lot of people are glad they can disagree at a party without finding it broadcast over two continents. At times. Jack has earned a lot of money. His salary is enormous. He took the same bump in the stock market a lot of people did. In this country, the fortune he has amassed isn't anything remarkable. I know quite ordinary people who bought frontage on Hollywood Boulevard who made more just by letting it sit there. And I am still not able to believe that the possession of money renders one immune to every other ill. It seems to me that Jack Gilbert at this moment is in the spot of the man who was asked, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Whether he says yes or no, he's still wrong. But I also believe that he'll weather this, with the help of a few loyal friends and a very large loyal public. While he doesn't talk about it, I know from his friends and his business associates that he intends to make the supreme effort of his life in his next pictures. They ought to be good. And if they are — that's all that matters. N o w ten cents buys precious beauty E ,VEN those discriminating women who buy without considering the cost have wisely selected Heather Rouge as a part of the perfect make-up. This rouge is so absolutely pure it will not harm the skin. Its texture is fine. The glorious bloom it brings to the skin is exactly the tone desired, for the shades of Heather Rouge never vary. 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