Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1931)

She was in love with him and he took everything away from her. He took away her belief in her own beauty and attractiveness by ignoring them when they were turned full on him. He took away her belief in her ability by telling her ten thousand times a day that she couldn't act and never would be able to act. And even if she did, it wouldn't mean anything. "An actor," he would snarl, "is nothing but a sounding board, a monkey-on-a-stick, going through the sounds and motions of a thought some person with brains has had. Don't try to think. Wait till I pull the string and then dance the way I tell you to. That's all an actor or actress is good for." But he made her into an actress. For the emotions he took from her, he substituted their mechanics. Even when Sam Alwein of Mammoth Films signed up Padraic Westbrook on a three-year contract, she was far above ordinary. Within six months, she followed him to Hollywood. Under his direction, she had strolled to stardom in her first picture. And Padraic Westbrook, in that picture, gave to the movies not only a star but a new director, John Broadwell, who was his assistant. Broadwell, now, was recognized as one of the best. He had directed her in all of her pictures after the first four. She knew his greatness lay in the fact that he slavishly followed Padraic Westbrook's methods. Padraic had been dead three years. His frail body could not stand the deadly combination of overwork and dissipation. When he lay dying in the hospital, he sent for her. "Segne," he grinned as she held his hand. "I'm checking out. I wanted to tell you before I go that I know you love me. And I love you. I have always loved you." "Oh, why didn't you tell me?" she moaned. And then, for the last time, he voiced his creed. "It doesn't make any difference what happens to you or me as long as we get the message of beauty across! I've made a great actress out of you!" SEGNE emerged from her reverie as her maid, a grimfaced, emotionless Swede of middle age, came in with her breakfast. While she arranged it on the table, Segne Cleve went to the window and stared out at the rain. It was no ordinary storm of gusty fitfulness. It was a deluge, an infrequent, fierce seasonal rainfall of the semi-tropics. Water poured down from gray-black clouds in sheets. A faint glow began to smoulder in her eyes. She loved rain almost as much as she loved solitude and the sea. She loved to walk in it. She enjoyed its beat upon her face, its soaking and weighing down of her garments, its cold, stinging caress of her body. Like the parched soil, she drank it in through every pore. "T TILDA." she ordered in her low, soft voice, "I want my X^Lwalking skirt, a light sweater and the heavy brogues. And the old felt hat." Segne Cleve in Hollywood, perforce, traveled much incognito and in disguise to keep from being mobbed by enthusiastic fans. On her infrequent shopping trips she wore a uniform consisting of an old tweed suit, heavy walking shoes, wool stockings, a nondescript blue beret and a pair of tortoiseshell glasses. She was aloof. She did not entertain. She attended few parties and fewer formal picture openings, the latter in disguise. She spent her leisure time reading, swimming, walking, riding or sitting on the beach, staring for hours at the rhythmic sea. She had few friends. No confidants. When, in refusing a reporter an interview, she once said, "I am neither interesting nor interested," she was entirely sincere. Nothing human interested her. She was a harp lying mute, whose strings only one man could bring alive. And that man was a dead man whose fingers would pluck no more. This was Segne Cleve in person. Aloof. Sullen. Mysterious. The heroine of a thousand legends. And Segne Cleve, the great screen siren, was much the same. Her conscious attention was centered on the mastery of her lines and their delivery, and the minute and graphic instructions of John Broadwell, her director. She made no suggestions. Hers was not an original mind. The cast playing with her in "Lovers and Sons" were not personalities to her. They were animated manequins that danced when John Broadwell pulled the strings. She had been playing three weeks opposite [please turn to page 123 ] Schoenbaum Pola Negri, 1931 Model — no temperament, no swank, no carrying on. Some change from the Warsaw Rose of five years ago, who clawed and snarled at life. Today, in Hollywood, she's leading a quiet life. No mansion — just renting the smaller of Bebe Daniels' Santa Monica beach homes. Hard at work on her RKO Pathe film, "A Woman Commands," her first talkie. Some girl! We'll take a little bet that Pola is in for a grand comeback! 5J>