Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1922)

Poor little Mabel Ballin. They made her climb away up there and then they shot her. While husband Hugo sits at ease on his director's platform, observing coldly and critically, and saying, ''Not that way, Mabel — just a little more emotion, please." The man on the steps is there to see that she doesn't run away before they have completed their camera crimes it doesn't make much difference to her father in what picture she appears — it's a motion picture, isn't it? Lord Curzon is said to be the last person to be interested in films, especially where his own daughter is concerned. Lady Cynthia married Lieut. Oswald Mosley, member of Parliament, and a critic of the Irish policy which his father-in-law supported. It would make a nice little scenario itself. COMES a story from California which has all the earmarks of encouragement for extra men. Hitherto scorned, by the world at large and the industry in particular, the extra man has had his innings. Henry Van Heel has married a Pasadena lady whose fortune is somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty million dollars. Van Heel has appeared as an extra in a number of films. Bet he'll go right out and buy a great big studio and produce pictures with himself in them — not. SAW Mae Marsh one evening with Mildred Harris' mother, watching the vaudeville act in which the former Mrs. Charlie Chaplin appears. Mae is no longer the quaint child of Griffith days. She's a polished, smart young woman. m Instead of going back to the Griffith company, as was originally announced, she will make a picture for W. Christy Cabanne this summer. WHAT came very near to being a real tragedy took place on Rex Ingram's set the other night when Joe Martin, the big monkey, went on a rampage and attacked Ed Connelly, an actor working in the picture. It was late at night, the big monk was tired and when he saw Connelly take a drink of water, he reached out his hand for the glass. Connelly started to give it to him when Curly Stecker, the trainer, interposed and said, "No, he only gets warm water to drink. Don't give him that. It's not good for him." Joe Martin gave the actor a dirty look but went quietly about his business until Stecker's back was turned. Then he made a leap for Connelly, who is a middle-aged man, and floored him. It took Stecker and three property men almost ten minutes to get the monkey loose. Connelly was badly bitten in the hand and much bruised and smothered. He no longer has confidence in simian temperament. Barbara La Marr, Ingram's leading woman, was also on the set, but Joe Martin paid no attention to her and went on working again when the affair was over as quietly as could be. MIRIAM BATTISTA was doing a scene in which she was supposed to look happy. The child whom Elinor Glyn calls the screen's one great actress began to look sad instead. The director asked, "What's the matter. Miriam? We want you to look pleasant in this shot." "If I cry," replied the youthful veteran, "you'll give me a close-up." She got it. MARY McIVOR DESMOND was strolling up Broadway in Los Angeles the other afternoon when she heard a newsboy shout, "Bill Desmond, picture star, fatally injured." Mrs. Desmond staggered, just kept from fainting, and managed to get a paper. There she read that her husband had fallen off a so-foot cliff and been injured so badly that he was not expected to recover. She dashed home, to be met by a butler who to!d her that her husband was on the long distance telephone from Truckee waiting to speak to her. Much bewildered, poor Mary went to the phone to hear the welcome news that Bill had fallen off a cliff, but that being Irish it didn't kill him, only sprained his ankle. "Bill falls off a cliff and goes right on working— and I'm in bed for a week with a nervous breakdown," remarked Mrs. Desmond. "Do you see anything fair about that?" PERHAPS the most interesting screen development of the month is that made by Goldwyn to the effect that Mae Busch has been selected to play Glory Quayle in "The Christian." For years, this role has been considered one of the really great dramatic roles of the stage. Every actress has aspired to it and during the long years when Hall Caine's masterpiece was one of the three biggest moneymaking stage productions in America, some of the biggest stage stars have been seen as the fair Glory. Goldwyn scoured the entire industry for an actress to play it. Mae Busch has been so far only in vamp roles. But she has great dramatic ability. The company left this week for London, to join Maurice Tourneur, who is to direct the scenes on the Isle of Man. Richard Dix will appear as John Storm. "I'm crazy about it," said Miss Busch, "but I had a terrible time with my passports. I was born in Australia, which makes me an English subject, but I married an American, and by the time I got through I didn't know whether it made me an Elk, or what." DID you know that the amount of light used for the filming of the picture with the average number of interior scenes would, if concentrated and fed out to the average American town of 15,000, illuminate it for eighteen nights? And that the electrical load is 77,120 amperes or 344,000 watts, enough to keep an ordinary reading lamp burning twenty-four hours a day for 126 years and 8 days? Whew! Well, it's true! WHAT pranks fate plays. That the daughter of a minister should, some years after, be appearing in a picture called "The Curse of Drink," is indeed different. Doris Kenyon, besides doing the honors in a new play, "Up the Ladder," is making the picture of the above hectic title. (Continued on page go)