Photoplay (Jan 1921)

The queen ■wept because she was getting fat. Then she ordered chicken patties, hot rolls, strawberry jam and cocoa. lOMEONE said to me the other day that Betty Blythe handled her body as a great artist handles a violin and with much the same exquisite results. Perhaps that is why she was chosen from the clamoring thousands to play the title role in "The Queen of Sheba,-' the spectacular Fox production now being filmed. But I suppose my thoughts of Betty must always be a bit reminiscent. We were "kids together.'" We went to our first dances and evening parties together. And talked all night after we got home. My most vivid memory of her is at those first dances — when she was at the most trying period of a woman's life, that stage between girlhood and womanhood. I can see her now, tall, stiff, a bit too big and a trifle awkward. Yet making you gasp, in spite of it, by the real beauty of her face. I think I understood even then that she possessed beauty, as differentiated from prettiness or charm, though she herself knew so little how to display it or to handle it, and its impressive stateliness was more than half over the heads of the college boys and high school students. She had, even then, that faculty for gorgeous, spontaneous, delightful laughter that still marks her. As a matter of fact she looks like Helen of Troy, 20th century edition, — and acts like the end man in a minstrel show. We repaired to our favorite tea-room and after weeping together over the fact that we were getting fat, and speaking loftily of diets, lemon juice and exercise, we ordered chicken patties, hot rolls, strawberry jam, cocoa, and vanilla ice cream with hot chocolate sauce and fig cake with whipped cream. (Our appetites seem to have changed little since our school days.) "Gee," began Betty, — and when she opens that lovely mouth you prepare for pearls of wisdom and roses of poetry, "Gee. these patties break all the commandments. Waitress, please bring me a lot more butter. Do you remember the night Warren caught his foot in the leg of the table and the punch bowl upset and the president said we couldn't have any more dances on the campus if the boys put a stick in the punch?" I remembered. My only grown-up frock with a train was in the path of that punch bowl. Should I ever forget? "And that day at the football game when I lost my — " "Betty Slaughter," said I. "don't you know you mustn't tell things like that when you are being interviewed? Do you suppose I can fill the pages of my magazine with your personal past? What'd you think your public would say?" "My public? My public!" said Betty. "Oh heavens!" And went into peals of laughter that made everybody in the room turn to look at us in cold amazement, that finally melted into answering smiles. For I have never known anybody who could laugh like Betty. 50 When the j Queen of Sheba Was a Kid j By ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS "Betty, be still!" said I firmly, "We'll get put out." "It wouldn't be the first time, sweet lamb," she remarked, iccovering and beginning to devote herself to a lot of lamb chops and fried sweet potatoes that somebody had brought her "by mistake" she said. "But when I think of those good old days — me in white, with roses in my nut-brown hair, afraid to move for fear I'd knock down the chandelier or wreck the grand piano — dancing with Bull Murphy, he was playing full that year. Do you remember how Bull always managed to get his foot in your skirt? He'd have to be some high kicker to keep up his average nowadays." (Loud laughter.) "And you with your pug nose stuck in the air. so snippy — well, and now here we sit and talk about my magazine and 'my public' Ain't nature wonderful." "It is," said I. "And I will tell you right now that if you don't stop eating so much that man over at Fox's who told me you could make Theda Bara look like a Sunday school superintendent's only daughter — remember the song about the preacher's daughter they used to sing at the Psi Phi house? — anyway, he'll be billing you as the female Roscoe Arbuckle." "You always were an optimist." said Betty, spreading two pats of butter on a hot sugared roll. "And incidentally you were a bum history student. Wasn't it you told Doc Snyder that Nero and Cleopatra were affinities?" "Goodness, that was about 4.000 years ago! I don't pretend to be sure who are affinities in Hollywood right this minute.' I murmured.