Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1922)

Photoplay Magazine — Advertising Section The time will come when you will be sorry you have freckles It may be at a party, a wedding, or with a man — when all eyes are turned on you and your beauty receives attention and admiration. And Oh, how you will wish for a normal, flower-like skin! Freckles are not natural. You were not born with them. You can remove them with STILLMAN'S FRECKLE CREAM Now Bold in the new purple and gold box. It leaves the skin without a blemish and causes no downy growth. Well groomed girls keep it on their dressing tables constantly. If your druggist has no supply, write us direct. Mailed in a plain package. 50c a jar. Money refunded if not satisfactory. Send today for booklet, "Wouldst Thou Be Fair?" containing helpful beauty hints. STILLMAN CREAM CO. Dept. 32 Aurora, 111. The Truth About the Latest Pictures — Told in a "Different" Way By ROBERT E. SHERWOOD the noted screen critic, in every issue of PHOTODRAMATIST "The Magazine for Writers" beginning with the August number. No one who studies, or enjoys, screen drama con afford to miss this fascinating feature of the biggest and best magazine published for writers. Regular subscription price is $2.50, sample copv 25 cents; but $1.00, with this ad, will bring Photodramatist to you for the next six months. Address Photodramatist Publishing Co., Inc. 620-P, 411 So. Main St., Los Angeles, Cal. Wanted — Railway Mail Clerks $135 to $190 /-r.Trr".*r tt.^-^-t.t:^ $135 to $190 ' FranklhlnsL, Depl.G228, Rochester, N.Y. A MONTH / Sirs: Send me without charee : (1) c„nj rnnnnn / sample Railway Mail Clerk Examination Send tOUpon / qucstiljns . fc) schedule showinu places of lOaay 3Ure / an coming U. S. Government examinations; MEN— BOYS/ l ^ ^'st °* manV Government jobs now obtain ,. tn ' able. Over 17 / Naml ./ Address . table to table — Conrad Nagel and Jack Holt eating the clawless lobster of the coast — Viola Dana, Dorothy Dalton, Dustin Farnum, Gloria Swanson, Bebe Daniels, Douglas Fairbanks— solemn authors from the East sitting at an end table with the lighter-hearted members of the Screen-Writers Guild — at other tables the British group, Sir Gilbert Parker and Edward Knoblock and Somerset Maugham—it seemed almost a village scene, everybody knowing everybody else, a gay picture of oddly painted faces and costumes exquisite and grotesque and of friends moving from this table to that for a brief visit, all stared at by a few family parties of Iowans . . . she could only sit with downcast eyes, listlessly moving a fork, for there, with two other of the Earthwide directors, sat de Brissac. She had to fight down a tendency to flush. His hand was all right, though she thought she saw a white scar across the back. He smoked his cigarette with his old easy grace, laughed in his offhand way. He even gave her a careless nod across the room. As if nothing had happened. She felt afraid. Her one thought was to get out without having to speak with him. She couldn't do that. But she couldn't leave before the others in the Plantagenet party, and he managed to catch up with her just as she was opening the screen door. He said then — perfectly de Brissac, without a flutter of the nerves (her pulse was racing like mad)— "You haven't tied up with Mortimer for more than the one picture, have youHattie? . . . No? . . Well, don't." That was all. He turned to light a cigarette at the gas light on the counter, and let her go. CERTAIN difficulties that confront the novelist have a troublesome habit of appearing to be insuperable. Coincidence, for one. So common in our daily lives as to seem, often, the determining factor, coincidence must not, with its familiar long arm, touch and arrange the scrupulous narrative. . . . Talent, for another. Not unfamiliar to the least pretentious village neighborhood, a driving force in every department of life, it yet remains a quality that the writer dare bestow upon one of his characters only at the risk of his reader's simple belief. . . . And, for still another, Success. Old-fashioned success, that spells riches and that focusing of widespread interest known carelessly as fame. The facts are everywhere, yet the fictionist must step warily among them. And among all these facts of outcropping material success, the most blatantly familiar, of late, the swiftest to arrive, the most overpowering in quantity and force, have been the successes of the screen. They come, some of them, overnight. They are almost instantly a matter of wireless communication from careless brain to empty brain all around the world. They strike capriciously and hard. In Hollywood are thousands of eager young actresses and actors. They swarm at the gates of the studios. Some have experience, perhaps talent; either may fail or succeed. A gifted and beautiful young actress may appear in twenty pictures without once capturing the popular fancy. A little cash girl out of a store may wander in by chance and arrive in a day. Repeatedly the managers in concert abolish the star system, only to fight like cut-throats over the ignorant child who, as a result of some unknown law, photographs well; offering her fortunes in a moment, placing her in authority over trained, mature men. ... A picture is released; within a week it is viewed by more than a million theatre-goers, and still within that week a thousand, two thousand, five thousand exhibitors have telegraphed to their exchanges a peremptory demand for more pictures of a certain pretty little face, or of a pair of crossed eyes, or of two acrobatic feet. This dramatically capricious bolt strikes not, perhaps, so often, but strike it does. And no system of management can withstand it. De Brissac's greatest picture, "Bagdad," was released after very brief preliminary announcements but with a sudden burst of publicity that taxed the resources of Earthwide's press department. Suddenly, in a blaze-struck outbreak of posters and display advertising and reading matter, every city in the United States became vividly aware of it. The name "DE BRISSAC" everywhere preceded the slogan — "The Greatest Picture Ever Made." It was played in regular theatres at theatre prices in the Griffith manner. The great director went East in person for the New York opening. He was dined by mayors and governors. At Washington the President attended as his guest. T_T ATTIE wasat this time nearly through with ■*■ ■*• her job at Plantagenet town. She was unhappy and tired. The end of the family income was more than in sight; it would be fairly upon her within the fortnight. Mr. Mortimer had, she knew, done his besf in his brusque way, to make the best of a bad bargain. And she had done her best; but knew now that it was nothing. She wasn't an actress; was sure now that she didn't want to be one. She even longed for the routine of the mailing room, which at least, however monotonous, didn't tire her brain, worry her about things she couldn't understand, drive her to secret tears and to playing in secret, at home, with a doll she, as secretly, bought one day. She talked to the doll. It was the only one she could talk her heart out to. More and more she had to cheer Henry. The family didn't know that she'd helped finance his fruitless journey to New York. It was just then that the United States rose up and demanded more of Harriet John. She didn't even know that this was her new name. She saw none of the Earthwide people. And at first, when the men and women she met changed sharply in their attitude toward her, she couldn't catch the significance of it. She was too tired. But she did observe with an almost impersonal, almost meaningless little thrill the constant appearance of her own "stills" in the Los Angeles papers. And the girl on the lot gave her the dramatic sheet of a sober New York Sunday paper with a remarkable lot of praise for her acting. They said she was an artist of rare delicacy, of utter appeal and charm, yet, surprisingly, with emotional power. Even this failed to come home to her. She knew she was no artist. The bitter thought came — "Ask Mr. Mortimer. He'll tell the world ! " Whatever she might be in " Bagdad " was what de Brissac had made her, by working in from the outside — by dressing her, and cleverly making her up, and posing her and exciting her. She had never known what he was up to, what anything meant. The family and Henry were excited, however. Alice couldn't resist dreaming expansively. At last the money was to come pouring in. But they hadn't got it yet. Times were terribly bad; Hollywood was wretched with unemployment. Many of the studios had shut down. Henry, for all his natural enthusiasm, wasn't certain that the wealth would come so quickly. Ultimately, yes; he was sure about that; but perhaps not right away. Itwas a delicate time. A Mr. Harbin, from the Earthwide press department, called one evening with an enormous bundle of clippings for Hattie. He said that Mr. Zeeck, who had just returned from New York, thought she'd be glad to have them. So there was no hard feeling, after all. She thought it awfully nice of them, and read the astonishing pile of reviews — all praise for Harriet John — with a queer bewilderment. They left her no happier than before, merely more excited. She found refuge in locking her door and whispering playfully with the doll. On the following evening Mr. Wurtzel called up to warn her against accepting any offers that might come. " I may be able to tell Every advertisement in rHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE is guaranteed.