Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1920)

[04 The Mother of the Sub-Deb (Concluded from page j^) Hugh Walpole from England, and caught cold, and that's how I got these red eyes. But the game was great." "What story are you doing?"' "My, latest novel, 'Dangerous Days,' will be my first picture. I say my first picture. It isn't my first story to be filmed. My 'K' was put into pictures with Mildred Harris and labeled 'The Doctor and the Woman.' And the Bab Sub-Deb stories were done by Marguerite Clark. But now I am having a hand in the filming of my stories; I was in Culver City a month selecting the cast. It's a wonderful co-operative system we have out there. Before, it always seemed to me that a producer said: 'Here's some money. Hand over your story.' Now they say to me: 'You have a story which should lend itself to piclures. Come on and help us work it out; if it can be worked out we'll do it together.' "You see," she went on, ■'I haven't yet found out whether or not I can write filmable material. My previous picture experience has been that my tales do not take well to the screen; the high lights have all been lost. That may or may not haxe been the fault of the stories. "I shall, in the future, pick the players who are to people my filmed pages. I had to leave California before I had found a girl for the character of Audrey in 'Dangerous Days.' It is hard to find a woman to play her; and she must be played right. "That's why I have ne\er consented to the filming of 'The Amazing Interlude.' That story is rather dear to me. You know I had been over in France reporting the war. That sounds egotistical, doesn't it? All I did — all anyone could do — was to see a small slice of it and tell the folks back home what a woman thought. I put my soup-kitchen and my stowaway experiences — I stowed away going over, you know — and all the rest of it into my book. I made Saralee go through all I did. And I wrote under heart-tending personal circumstances. My husband was doing war work; my two eldest sons were fighting over there: and my youngest son, Allan, was lying very ill in bed with a trained nurse in the next room. It was in this very hotel" — a small and exclusive one on upper Fifth Avenue — "that I wrote that book. "And I always said I could never do any Vv'riting in New York!" She lives in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. I said she lives there. 5he is a wise woman who does not confuse her work with her play. She has an oftice in town and every morning she and her secretary go in and work. But the next day — she golfs, or rides or plays tennis. She is the most popular member of the younger set in Sewickley 'Valley. She even belongs to clubs out there. "I average several thousand words a day. Once I wrote 12,000. That was a rush war order from the Sat. Eve. Post. I always thought I had to be at my desk with the familiar ink-well and other appurtenances before I could write a line. Then a magazine sent me on my first reporting job; reporting a political convention, and I used to send out my stuff from the convention hall. I found then that I could write any place, providing I had to I" Her family is her severest critic. Her husband is a writer, too, chiefly on medical topics. They collaborated on a play, "Double Life," which was given a Manhattan production in The Villain Gets His 1907. Her sons appreciate her work but, she says, it has got to be pretty good. She has written more than fifteen novels. They have been best-sellers. She has written several successful plays: "Seven Days" was one of them. And she has several more plays in production; "Bab" is soon to be put on the stage. " 'Bab' — I think I enjoy writing her more than anything else I do. She is every girl I have ever known. Men do not understand her. She is the girl at the awkward age— between 12 and 18. She has outgrown her dolls and she doesn't know what to do. The boys she used to play with have a 'gang' and their idea of fun is to drop ice down a girl's neck, or torture her with impending caterpillars. She is absolutely lost — she has no 'gang' — and so she resorts to imagination. She peoples her poor starved httle world with wonderful heroes. She is always having imaginary love affairs. She is funny, but she is pathetic, too. "I have laughed at her," said Mrs. Rinehart quite frankly — "until I cried. I have mapped out my story, gone over it and read the final draft, and — howled. My husband has caught me several times." Mary Roberts Rinehart is one woman who has followed world events with personal fidelity. Whenever there's a war, or a convention; whenever a great English author comes to America; whenever a new writer blossoms forth with a first book; whenever one of her sons has a new crush — Mrs. Rinehart is there, both in the Webster definition of the word and the slang application. She can write of real people because she knows real people; she is one, herself. She has never stayed on the sidelines, in life or in the studio. She has been a part of it. Mrs. Rinehart has explored the Rockies, American and Canadian, and left her impressions between magazine covers. She is a good pal and a good sportswoman. Her sons say she's game. She never wrote before she had lived, and lived fully. She went to the Pittsburgh Training School for Nurses — she was born in the smoky city. She was a good nurse; but the work was hard, and for a while she was ill. She was married to Mr. Rinehart in i8g6. Her three babies came and grew to be boys before she ever found out that she could translate life to fill printed pages. But when she finally started, she wrote — and wrote, and wrote. You have probably read "The Circular Staircase," "The Man in Lower Ten," "The Window at the White Cat" — all crackmg good mystery stories. "Tish." which May Robson is now playmg in the legitimate; "The Street of Seven Stars," which Doris Kenyon has done for the screen: "When a Man Marries," "Where There's a W'ill"— this is just mentioning a few. "Twenty-three and a Half Hours' Leave" has been enacted by Douglas MacLean and Doris May as their first stellar picture for Ince. "The Altar of Freedom" was her contribution to the literature of the War. Mary Roberts Rinehart loves clothes, as I have hinted; and thinks when a woman has ceased to be attractive — to care to be attractive — there's not much of a place for her in ^he world. She is feminist and suffragette; and she likes tall deep-red American Beauty roses in her room. "I do not like," she said as I was leaving. "I do not like that picture of me that they are using in the moving picture advertisements — do vou?"