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February, 19 2 1
37
Seeing Sylvia
By OLIVE WATKINS
SEEING Sylvia was not as simple and easy and alliterative as it sounds. Still a cat may look at a king; why not I at a queen — a picture queen? But nobody could be a cat about Sylvia Breamer.
For two whole days I was staved off by her secretary who said she was on a shopping debauch, and by an anaemic-looking young blonde of the less deadly of the species, guarding the hotel desk, who said she was out of town. I departed burning for revenge; and on the upper deck of a Fifth Avenue bus indulged in the "negro blues," a version of which I heard recently on the lips of a joyous African in a Greenwich Village cave — a weird chant, a veritable hymn of hate hinting darkly at a "necklace of razors" ending ever in the monotonous refrain, "I'se gwina pizen you."
Later I decided if the worst came to the worst, I would be a cat after all and curl myself up in a corner of the hotel lobby and watch the elevator like a mouse-hole till she appeared. This feline strategy, however, was rendered unnecessary; for, taking the same unfair advantage as the farmer who rises at 4 a. m. to slip up on his oats in the dark, I telephoned Miss Breamer's rooms very early in the morning, and
Photographs by Charlotte Fairchild
was rewarded by an invitation to lunch.
At the quiet hotel in the west forties, the "boarding-house" of many players from the coast, I had just leisure to wonder if the flesh-and-blood Sylvia would be as startling a vision as the tropical creature who is her shadow incarnation. If so, there would surely be a riot when she appeared. No mistaking her when she did appear. We made a triumphal entry into the dining room amid greetings from all sides, and I basked smugly complacent in her reflected glory as we took our seats.
I recalled how she looked romancing with Charles Ray in "Sudden Jim," and playing the clinging vine to William S. Hart's stalwart oak in "The Narrow Trail" ; then I watched her talk to the waiter about four-minute eggs — and wasn't disappointed. This was the acid test. Eggs are such a prosy subject. Some man might have his breakfast eggs glorified for life by eating them opposite her. I ventured to put out a feeler in this direction.
"Marriage is an unknown quantity," said Sylvia, "and as such I'm afraid of it. Perhaps some time — in any case, I would not leave the screen. Besides nothing exciting ever happens to me." She looked slyly around the bend of her lashes as she skilfully blew away a cigarette ring. "I live the most commonplace life in the world."
Yes, decidedly life on Fifth Avenue must
seem tame to one who spent her early years
adventuring from Samoa to New Guinea and
from the Fiji Islands to Tasmania, led by the
(Continued on page 55)