Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1922)

JUST A GOOD BUSINESS MAN While the others are at tea Ruth Roland watches the ticker By zyfdela T^ogers St. ^Johns THERE is, of course, a more or less general impression of what a motion picture star is like. Some have black hair, like Bebe Daniels, and some have blonde curls like Mary Miles Minter. Aside from that, they are much alike. They have many characteristics in common. They are all soft and alluring creatures, temperamental and unreliable and very, very feminine. And essentially unbusiness-like. Isn't that about the way you regard them all? Well, let me tell you something. v There are just as many different kinds of motion picture stars as there are different kinds of prohibition officers. For instance, if I should ever be called upon to write about a woman for one of these magazines that deal chiefly with business methods, and that tell you how to get rich blacking shoes in your spare time or how to rise from newsboy to bank president in a couple of weeks, I would choose a motion picture star as my subject. Ruth Roland. I have spent a good deal of time roaming around Hollywood gazing at the stars. I know most of them well enough to have some general idea of their characters and their general traits and abilities— and disabilities. And I say that here, if ever, is a unique and interesting and sometimes baffling personality. Feminine, yes. Charming, quite. Apparently no different from 999 other pretty girls with teeth-revealing smiles and figures that will stand the present fashions. Not a great star nor a great actress, but a very excellent serial star, whose pictures in the past two years have grossed large amounts of money for the company that pays her $2,000 a week. An actress who has, I discover, a '^M very large personal following. ""*■ I r But the fact that her hair is curly and fluffy, that she has really exquisite pansy-purple eyes, (her one real claim to beauty), and that she rides softly and luxuriously in the most stunning town car in Los Angeles, doesn't alter the fact that Ruth Roland is first, last and always a competent business woman. Underneath that smooth, well-groomed exterior, she knows more about stocks and bonds than the man who invented them. She can, for instance, quote you the price of any recognized stock and tell you how many points it has dropped or climbed since yesterday. She understands how to estimate the percentage your money can really earn. If Ruth Roland is a rich woman today — and there is no doubt that she is — it is due more to her intense business sagacity than to her powers as an actress. Her acting has given her the capital to operate with, but she has used it to an advantage that would shame the average young business man. She owns Hollywood real estate. More than that, she understands how to make money on the turn-over of real estate — when to buy and when to sell. She has an unerring eye for chances and she rarely makes a mistake. Also, she has something that few business women, even good ones, have, courage to make decisions involving large sums of money and make them quick. She speaks of her broker, her lawyer, her real estate dealer as normally and naturally as the average woman speaks of her butcher or her dressmaker. If she hadn't been born on the stage and had waited until she was grown to pick out her career, Ruth Roland under present day conditions, would probably have developed into a feminine financial genius. An Emma McChesney. A constructive feminine force in a business way. She has made the very most of her every talent and her every opportunity, where women with a great many more gifts and chances have booted them away. She has saved her money and ordered her life because she is farsighted and has the strength of will to live up to her vision. Ruth Roland has never been to Europe. She has no She is the Champion Coupon Clipper of ' Hollywood gorgeous jewels. She lives well, but conservatively— like a girl born to wealth rather than one who has suddenly achieved it. She neither drinks anything at all nor smokes even a social cigarette. She keeps herself in perfect physical condition. No other actress in the past year has worked as hard for as many weeks consecutively and with as little time between as this serial star. Yet she never looks nor acts worn or nervous. The even tenor of her ways is not affected by the doings of others. Her home is smoothly and intelligently run. If you met her, you would admire her, I think. Cool sanity and good judgment and self-respect are always causes for admiration. Oh, you'd never get the heart throb, the laughing-crying choke, the quiver around your heart that some stars give you— Mary Pickford, for instance, or Lillian Gish. ■ | She is admirable, rather than lovable. To use the old phrase of fortune teller, her head rules her heart. Her history is an interesting one. When you come to think of it, it rather amazes you to realize that of all the motion picture stars, Ruth {Concluded on page 105) 49