Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1930)

imme Myrtle Gebhart GIM-GAM was unique in Hollywood. And that is to achieve. Main Street never saw a Gim-Gam. Main Street wouldn't know what to do with her. Hollywood did. Hollywood paid her a whopping salary, and admired her clever melting of Oriental allure into the modern flip mold. And talked about her. Which, in case you don't know her technique, is Hollywood's way of enthroning a favorite. At least, Hollywood took the credit. But a sloe-eyed girl knew that she had piloted her own flight — a solo. For Gim-Gam had coined her motto: "I'll roll my own career!" And she had made a neat job of it, with just one hole left to be patched. "Fascinating rascal," men mused, blowing kisses to the trim figure at the wheel of the red roadster, with its odd monogram on the door in gilt Chinese letters, tearing down the Boulevard. "Her contradictions appeal to the imagination. Something in her head, too. Got a future. Hard-boiled, though. Gold-digger. Doubt that she has a real feeling. Her heart's just a beach bungalow. " Gim-Gam had gone after what she wanted, planning deftly. If she had cried over mistakes and hurts, nobody had ever known. Her screen characterizations were adroitly drawn. Her publicity — "Chinese maiden throws off shackles of racial restraint, fights for selfexpression" — had won public admiration, tinged with pity. HOLLYWOOD wondered how much of her story was true: her father was a grave, intellectual man, tradition bound; he frowned upon the new ways. And her mother had been a beautiful dancer, won by artful Oriental wooing to a mysterious, lattice-enclosed life. Much was made of the romance that had bridged racial differences. It made a glamorous story, and Hollywood didn't demand authenticity. Film-town wonders, and sometimes whispers, but fears hearing facts that might tear those exquisite fabrics she does so love to weave. Buster Kingsley had met Gim-Gam in the casting director's office, where she had come to sign for a r61e in his new film. "Damn cop tried to pinch me." Her plaintive voice slurred a crescendo of rebuke. "Feature that! Only doing sixty-five. 'Trail along, Arbutus,' I yelled. Did he? He tried. But he didn't cramp my speed worth a wrinkle in my sweet disposish. See my new buzz-wagon, Rocky darling? It's the oyster's ice-skates. " It would have been crass in any other girl. But as she sat there in her brief crimson frock, one tiny, scarlet-sandaled foot curled under her, somehow each word trailed a vague enchantment. She was a picture painted in vivid miniature, as though the polished ivory of her face had been done with a toy set of pigments. Didn't her battery ever run down, or need recharging? Life in her seemed tuned always to a vibrant pitch, a contrast to the slow, ageless East voiced by slanting eyes and subtle perfumes. "Listen, Gim-Gam," the casting-director's eyes held a 38 worried tolerance, "you're going a swift pace. Honeysuckle — that's your name in Chinese, isn't it? Gim-Ghun-Fah. Doesn't fit you. No wonder Hollywood twisted it into Gim-Gam. Slow up, honey. An eloquent shoulder italicized a printed sub-title. Cut! Hire Some day your back will break, If you weren't you, and a darn Couldn't 'You archaic per-son! her scorn. "You talk like the Bowl if you must orate. carrying your nerve around. good side-kick of mine, I'd throw the hooks into you. I, Rocky darling, couldn't I? HER almond eyes, brimming with mischief, met an answering twinkle in Buster's, and Rocky squirmed. "Lay off a me, Gimmy. Keep your line for your play-boys. Strictly business here. About this contract — how'll sevenfifty do?" "You're just cold tea. Am I a moron? Thanking you for