Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1931)

The Unknown Hollywood I K now By Katherine Albert The author, now one of Hollywood's celebrated scribes and a member of PHOTOPLAY'S editorial staff, at the time she first went to see D. W. Griffith, and narrowly escaped a picture career WHEN I stepped off the train in Los Angeles twelve years ago I was the dumbest, most ga-ga girl who had ever come to Hollywood to be a movie star. Yesterday I made this remark to a friend who answered, "That's a pretty large order, my good woman, and you'll have to show credentials to prove it." Well, if my story which is now about to unfold doesn't prove that first statement I'll give each and every one of you a nice set of slightly used sound sequences. People broke down in tears when I said I had some stories about Hollywood that had never been printed. "It isn't possible," they said, "the town's been drained dry of copy." But that isn't so. In those twelve years that I've lived in the most bizarre town in the world things have happened that are incredible. Do bear with me while I set them down and do forgive my being personal. The purpose of these stories is to tell you things about the stars you have not known before, but in order to do that I must keep myself in the story, since it is part of my own life. 36 Who tells for the first time the inside story of twelve years spent in the film colony If my mother had known that I was going to write my memoirs some day she, no doubt, would have strangled me at birth, and rightly too. But perhaps memoir writing is no worse than my early ambition — movie starring. Let's begin at the bitter beginning. I bore down upon Hollywood equipped with sixteen years of a dull life, an absolute vacuum in the place where my brain should have been, a letter of introduction to D. W. Griffith, an adoring mother, a picture hat and a sickly smile. I thought that was enough to assure my success as a movie star. Many a girl has arrived in Hollywood with less and climbed those slippery stairs. Griffith was the undisputed genius of the cinema at that time. He had just completed " Broken Blossoms," not at that moment released. "The Birth of a Nation" was still a vivid memory. "Intolerance" had cost him his fortune but had set him up among the artists. He was beginning a new picture — which was to reach the screen as "The Greatest Question." THE letter of introduction was a very personal one, for he was born and bred in my part of the country — Kentucky — and we'd known his family always. The letter duly mailed, his secretary answered and made an appointment for me and my mother. I shall never forget my first glimpse of him. His studio was that rambling green one where Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards meet. It is now the Tiffany Studio. He was standing in a set that had been used for "Scarlet Days," an enormous Western saloon, and in that rough room he presented an incongruous figure, in his immaculate clothes, his soft pearl gray hat, his perfect tie. As I approached him I felt the terrific force of the man and when, during his conversation with my mother — who did the talking for me — he suddenly looked down at me my knees went limp, my mouth was dry. No man has ever had such a scrutinizing gaze asD. W. Griffith. It seems as if he ferrets out all the inner recesses of your soul. At that time (I was just turned sixteen) there was not much to ferret out of my soul. And I think Griffith realized it, for he gave up looking at me and turned again to my mother. Suddenly, he said to me, " Why do you want to go in pictures? Why don't you marry or something?" Speechless, I shook my head. He shrugged his shoulders. "Well," he drawled — he still kept his Southern voice — "I suppose there's as much unhappiness in marriage as in anything else." Poor Griffith — he knew about that! "Come along," he said, and led the way through a maze of sets and into a small room which I was later to learn was a projection room. A score or more of people were already seated there and my eyes suddenly popped out on stems. Mind you, I'd never seen a movie star, except upon the screen, and there before me were— Lillian Gish, Carol Dempster, Clarine Seymour, Ralph Graves, Bobby Harron, George Fawcett, Richard Barthelmess, Eugenie Besserer, and others whose faces were familiar but whose names I did not know.