The New Movie Magazine (Jan-Jun 1931)

Dick Arlen cherishes the aviator helmet and goggles he wore in "Wings." And why not? They brought him luck. Mary Brian saved the little acorn which Peter Pan gave her when she played Wendy, and she never parts with it. The Movie Favorites Are Just as Sentimental About Their Lucky Talismans as Other Folks her friends and who has developed into one of our shrewdest business women, still cherishes a lace blouse she wore in "The Miracle Man." RUTH CHATTERTON, the woman of the world, who brags that she lives in the midst of turmoil, never puts anything away and can never find anything she looks for, has saved a pair of shoes from almost every successful picture or play in which she has appeared. She has a trunkful of them and can tell you at a glance in which production any pair of shoes was used. One pair, she showed me, was used in "Daddy Long Legs." That was her first stage starring vehicle. She played an orphan and, knowing that orphans get only what is left and what no one else wants, she started on a hunt for shoes to wear in the play. Appearing in Denver, she noticed a scrubwoman with an old, old pair of shoes, coated with the gray that comes from age. Said Ruth: "If you'll take those shoes off right here and now and give them to me, I'll give you $15 for them." And those are the shoes she values today. Shoes seem to be a favorite keepsake, although I've never been able to figure out why. Mothers treasure the first shoes their babies wore. Joan Crawford, although only the mother of a large family of dolls, has kept a pair of satin slippers in which she danced the Charleston in "Sally, Irene and Mary," which first attracted attention to her and started her on her hey-day career. Marie Dressier has kept a pair of torn stockings and Call them talismans, mementos, charms, lucky keepsakes, sentimental souvenirs or what you will, they stand for an unforgettable memory in the lives of your movie favorites. Even Marie Dressier has the dilapidated shoes she long ago in the popular Tillie's Punctured Romance/' wore dilapidated shoes which she wore — no, not in "Anna Christie," but in "Tillie's Punctured Romance," which was made before many of you ever saw the light of day and in which Charlie Chaplin appeared but wasn't even featured. But if you think Miss Dressier doesn't remember "Anna Christie" with a tear and a smile, get her to show you the glass beer mug which she kept as a reminder of that heart -wrenching scene in the saloon of that picture. TANET GAYNOR, too, has the shoe penchant and kept »J the pair she used in "Seventh Heaven." So profound is her belief in their talismanic qualities that she has not only kept them but actually wears them in some one scene of every picture she makes. If the shoes are out of keeping with the character she portrays, she wears them in a close-up where they don't show. William Haines, who boasts of his unsentimentality and who swears that he wants to live in the present and not the past — who hasn't even a still from any of his pictures — has kept the complete uniform he wore in "Tell It to the Marines." And Mrs. Oakie's boy, Jack, who is the last person one would ever suspect of sentimentality, has kept the hats he has used in almost every picture he's made. But the gob's lid from "The Fleet's In" is the one he puts under his pillow at night. Dick Arlen, whose life has been as kaleidoscopic and colorful as any 0. Henry ever wrote about, who has been buffeted about until he {Continued on page 100) 37