The Photo-Play Journal (Jul 1919-Feb 1921)

30 Photo-Play Journal THOSE attributes of the Quaker City's best estate, clinging even now to some of its womanhood like the scent of lavender to old lace, are found, curiously enough, in the person of a motion picture actress. For all her wandering to the four, far quarters of the globe — photographically speaking, of course — Mabel Ballin retains the aroma of a fragrant childhood in old Washington Square. "And the smart of many spankings," she would most likely add if she were asked ; for the pensive and sensitive heroine of countless cinema romances has a sprightly wit and a long memory. "It is rather amusing," she said on being asked about her Philadelphia past, "to make the transition from a staid girlhood to the lurid life of a movie actress, but most things are not what they seem." This morsel of worldly wisdom was dispensed with tea at the Biltmore in New York, where Mabel Ballin lives on the fourteenth floor, high above the noise and heat. "But the aching desire for a career will take anyone anywhere from any place. Think of all the great stars of the screen who are said to have been educated in convents, for instance." She regards one with candid brown eyes, serenely, almost impersonally. He must look twice who would catch the hidden gleam of mischief, or wit. But it is there. "I'm more pleased with having lived in the slums than if I had been born in a convent — that is, if people are born in convents. I don't suppose it's quite proper after all." "Surely you wouldn't call Washington Square the slums ?" she was queried above the raucous cries of caged parrots in the tea room and conflicting noises from a dowager late of Minnesota at the next table. "Oh, dear, no. That was respectable enough. So were the slums, but stuffy." "What in the world does all this mean?" her guest asked, pleased, nevertheless, to discover a genuine slum resident among the dinemese. Many have been suspected, but never tracked to the tenements. "Nothing could have been simpler," coolly replied Mabel Ballin, nibbling her cinnamon toast. "We lived in Seventh street, south of the Square, opposite Senator Penrose's home, with old St. Andrew's Church a bulwark of protection and a monument of respectability. We • were very genteel, but not contented ; we had leanings toward making others genteel. "It was the church, in fact, that turned us toward the simpler, if smellier, pleasures of slum life. My grandmother wanted to uplift. I was bundled along to help. In time" I became an expert tambourinist, making a great deal of noise at Salvation Army rallies and at missions. I have helped my fellow-man. Now I want to entertain him — in motion pictures — if I can." Thus disposing of her early life, with its tambourine accompaniment, she went on to the more serious business of her career. It took active form when she studied illustrating at the School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia and later came to New York, where she posed for Eddowes, the photographer. Like manv girls who did the same thing, she drifted to the stage almost before she knew it. Musical comedy mostly, with Yorke and Adams, Frank Daniels and Elsie Janis, and in a drama — "Raffles," with S. Hiller Kent. Always she was Mabel Croft, but Hugo Ballin, then a mural painter and a portraitist of note, thought she shouldn't be. Eventually he proved his contention and had his way a number of years. Then all at once his wife wanted to be Mabel Croft again. The movies did it, of course. The painter meanwhile had become celebrated as art direc(Continued on page S9)