Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1922)

LIBRARY HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA Who was handicapped by too easy a start, who failed, and then fought her way back By ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS THERE must be people in the world who are not baseball fans. Only I rarely ever meet any. so I'll have to write this story just as if the whole world loved a good ball game as much as I do. You all remember Merkle. Fred Merkle — first baseman for the New York Giants — better known as "Bonehead." Sometimes a man is so supreme in his chosen line that his name becomes a synonym or an adjective. Titian is known to the 20th Century because of the color of his ladies' hair. Paul Revere — Marconi — Romeo — you know what I mean. Likewise you could once say — you pulled a Merkle — or a bonehead. Take your choice. Because Mr. Merkle certainly won the tissue paper bathtub and the complete set of rubber knives and forks and the cut glass brassiere. In a game with the Chicago Cubs that would decide the National League pennant, Merkle forgot to touch second base when he brought in what should have been the winning run. Instead, that little oversight lost the ball game, the pennant >■ Declared a failure as a star. Lila Lee did not quit. She stuck it out, gamely she did nits, ugly ones sometimes, until eventually, through sheer grit, she made good and the chance to play the World Series. But "Bonehead Merkle" had so much — I can't use the word I ought to but you know what I mean — so much grit, that he did play the next season. In spite of the Vesuvius of the bleachers and the bayonets of the sporting writers, who have to fill up their columns, he played baseball and good baseball. He played better than he had ever played in his life. So that by the end of the season, the American public — which is just as quick to ban garlands of laurels on a hit as showers of pop bottleon a boob play — said. "Come home. Freddy, all is forgiven." That was eight years ago — and Merkle played until last year, when I suppose old age overcame him as it does all of us in time. But what I'm driving at is this — think of the thing it took for Merkle to come back. Think of the stamina, the grit, t h e cheerfulness and sheer courage it required to march out on thai diamond day after day, with nothing between him and the rabid multitude but a few cubic feet of ether. Think of the chance of pulling another boot. Think of going to bat in a pinch under those circumstances. I tell you that will break the heart and soul of ninety-nine men in a hundred. It is worse than any physical danger. It requires more than physical courage. It demands moral courage of the highest order. I know of but one other person who has that same kind of sporting blood, who belongs in that peculiar niche in Fame's Hall. And that is Lila Lee. My pet name for her is "Mrs. Merkle." (By the way. if there happens to be a legal one. I offer her due apologies. It is purely a descriptive title.) I have told you all this long tale about the i ball hero, only because in no other way can I illustrate to you the thing that Lila Lee has dime. She is the Merkle of the movies. Let me show you why. and then you will understand why Lila Lee occupies a very real place in my heart as well as in my head. ontinued on page 100) L.la J Cuddles. Thi Lee as ' is the way she looked when she was taken from vaudeville at the age of fourteen and made a motion picture star