Photoplay (Feb-Sep 1917)

26 Photoplay Magazine Yet, like the pearls at Tiffany's, she increases in value each year. She is an international gem, for she is IrishItalian, born in the show-me State that thinks St. Louis has it all over Chicago. She began to uplift the stage as little Eva ; progressed to tlie Kremer thrillers, glorified the circus business, ennobled a stock company, starred in melo, and finally enriched a doctor by making his regular job an endeavor to spljce her busted voice. All this was more than four years ago. A woman who can't talk has reached the inferno already, and la White, sizzling on her penetential grill, writhed as far East as Jersey City, where, for local surcease at least, she joined up with the unworded drama being spooled by the Pathe boys. And to her the. sign of the rooster became the insignia of enduring fame. You'll notice how seldom that word creeps into this magazine, yet here it goes. Many are heard of, some are popular, a few are notorious, but Pearl White is famous. In France French soldiers on furlough idolize her in "Les Mysteres de New York" — the "Exploits of Elaine." In Porto Rico she crowds the theatres. In Bombay she figures frequently in the newspapers. A Scottish newspaper runs her life on its front pages. Five Australian managers make fortunes presenting her pictures. In South Africa they name babies after her, and in Tokio thev give her name to theatres. ''The Perils of Pauline," the "Elaine" serials, "The Iron Claw" and "Pearl of the Army" are . her heroic enterprises, but around these exalted monuments are glittering fields of comedies, two-reelers, fivereelers, and new stunts of inconceivable physical daring. Remember Broadway Jones' coming-out party at Murray's, in "Broadway Jones?" That location was as real as the party: the exotic ball-room of an exotic Broadway Pearl leads the simple life in a three room flat above 'Murray's, " a gay New York restaurant. restaurant. Well, one floor above is the quiet little country cottage of Pearl White, the twentyfour-year-old grandma of the picture business. Miss White, in Vassar English, refers tu it as "My trick flat." But it is not a trick flat. It is really a secluded, high-ceiiinged, rather sombre domicile of three big rooms, almost at a corner of the fair field of Longacre. In it lurks its occupant, the steadiest-toiling female in pictures. A gay life, hers : to bed over the riot and rumpus — whose fanfare penetrates her cell only in faint echoes — at 9 :30 each niglit, and out with the milkmen at 7 o'clock. On Sundays she doesn't often have to greet the sunrise in T'ort Lee, so she permits herself a theatre-party or a dinner on Saturday evenings. On a recent Saturday it devolved upon the writer to trundle tlie Pearl of the Pictures to a certain Somewhere. He brought around the best taxicab in New York, which was made in 1907, and appeared to have survived three attacks of anthrax. The Pearl came out of her Little Egypt of a home. "You can dismiss your limousine," she said. "I've got a queer little flivver right around the corner — if you're not ashamed to ride in it." Who would be ashamed to ride in a Henry with Pearl White, even in tlie streets of Gotham? "This is the flivver," said the deceiver, confronting her Rolls-Royce, a piece of motor royalty hand-wrought in England, upon which the United States charges an import duty of $5,000. But Pearl should worry about a little matter of five thousand dollars. Good things come high, and nothing but the best for Pearl. And she can well afford to indulge her extravagant tastes. "But." she explained modestly, "I got mine at a bargain ; it only cost me fourteen thousand."