Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1927)

Will Rogers Says Everything is O.K. as far as he is concerned ALL you hear and you read, everybody is always asking, "What is the matter with the picture business?" All I can see the matter with it is that hundreds, yes, thousands of people are making more money than they ever made in their lives, or dreamed of making. Name one that is in it, star, producer, writer or any one else that ever made that much money in any other business. So that is about all there is the matter with the picture business. Personal income tax is about the only thing that can hold this business back. I hadn't any more than been thrown out as Mayor of Beverly Hills than Sam Rork engaged me to play "The Oxen" in "The Texas Steer." It was one of the most famous plays of the stage twenty-five years ago (of course that was before my time) but Sam Hardy, Louise Fazenda, Lilyan Tashman, George Marion and a lot of these old timers we have in it remember it well, and have told me a lot about it. Ann Rork, Sam's daughter, and young Doug Fairbanks (we was going to use the old man, but we had too many old timers as it was). Well, Ann and Doug Junior and I are about the only young folks in it. We carry the love, interest while these others and Mack Swain and Lucien Littlefield wrestle along with the comedv and heart interest. I got out as Mayor of Beverly because I made a holler. The society people of the town were making so much noise at their parties that the movie colony couldn't sleep. It wouldn't have been so bad if they had invited any of us, but when they made all that noise alone it got us sore. Hollywood has made me an offer to be Mayor for them, but there is nobody living over there now but extras, and they are always smart enough to mind their own business. HpHE editor wants me to note a few of the changes ■*• since the days at Goldwyn's, when I come West with the eminent authors. Movie stars are at the stage where variety or vaudeville actors were when I was first in vaudeville fifteen or twenty years ago. In those days every one of us was paying payments on a big diamond ring, generally yellow. We either bought it at Boastberg's in Buffalo, or Castleberg's in Washington. We thought our whole success depended on the show that we put up with that ring. Yes, and a horseshoe pin. If we went in to see an agent the first thing he saw coming through the door was the ring. I used to wear mine on the hand I spinned the rope with. It wasn't vanity. I really thought that it was furthering me in the estimation of the people who saw it. Well, the movies are at that stage now with automobiles. They think that their success will be judged by tne price of the car they drive. There is nineteen Rolls Royces on our lot, and they say that it is about the cheapest lot out here for cars. Mickey Neilan says that he is just waiting until a property boy drives in in one and then he will commit suicide. Well, it took us actors about five years to find out that there wasn't anybody doing that except us and the gamblers. Now that's the way it will be in the movies, with all the expensive cars. HTHE actors will wake up some day to find out that ■* there is nobody making that kind of a display but them and the bootleggers. I lived on Long Island, out near the Meadowbrook Polo Field, and all those rich Long Islanders (any one of which could buy these here studios and never miss it) drives to the games in these here yellow buckboard Ford cars, station wagons they calls them, or at the most in a Chrysler roadster. It is not exactly good taste that is making The Texas Steer Company what it is, but we have a typical Buick cast. Young Doug is the only high hat. He has a Packard, but he's trying to trade it in now on a Buick. Was over to Big Doug's studio the other day. He had seven hundred long-horned Texas steers that he showed me. He has had them on the lot for three months. Why, that's more steers than some studios have actors. Most all the other big specials use hundreds of extras, but I bet this big scene where Doug used all these steers will be great, and a big novelty. Everybody knows what seven hundred actors in one bunch will do. They will all wave their hands at the same time, shout at the same time and look the same way. But no director in the world can make these steers act. Each one is going to be doing what he wants to be doing and that's the novelty of looking at it to see what they are doing. If they were actors you would know before you looked. I believe that will be the future of pictures — more steers and less actors — at least that is what Doug intimated to me. But Lord, they do eat. Doug said they eat more'n actors. [ continued on page 135 ] Will Rogers Is Writing for PHOTOPLAY Every Month 35