Pictures and the Picturegoer (Jan-Dec 1924)

42 Picl~\jre s and Picf-\jre$ ver AUGUST 192 " Irene," and I've often admired her playing at Maxinc Elliott's theatre. They laughed at this, and looked at one another a little shyly. " Ah, that old theatre," said Mrs. Tearle, " that is where we first met. Tell him about it Conway." " Yes," I said sternly, " tell me. I'm calling this interview The Confessions of Conway, and this seems a suitahlc moment tor you to begin confessing." " It is Adelc who ought to confess," lie answered. It was all her fault really. She got a friend of hers to introduce ns. 1 would never have done anything so immodest." " Xo, all Conway did was to come to the piece every night for a couple of weeks and look at me from the front row of the stalls with most tragic eyes." " Registering despair," interrupted Conway. " With a frown?" " With a frown ! " " Cince Conway is to enter the confessional," remarked his wife, "he'd better take you to sit on the porch while I get on with my gardening. His youthful indiscretions would be no news to me," she added maliciously. We sat down obediently. "Well?" I said. " Quite, thank you " said Conway. That's the worst of him ! He never will give a straight answer to a straight question. I foresaw trouble ahead. 1 tried him with the oldest, most ordinary and most useless question that an interviewer ever addresses to a film star. Surely he couldn't sidetrack that. "Do you prefer stage or screen work? ' He looked at me squarely and answered " Yes." Heavens ! What a man ! I gasped. "Yes what?", I demanded. " Yes thank you," he answered. I just sank back in my chair and let it go over me. " I prefer them to everything," he said. " I'm an actor and all my people have been actors before me. I'm interested in my garden, and fishing and tennis and motoring, but acting is in my blood and I can't get away from it. My wife is rather the same. We haunt first nights, and never miss a new production either of stage or screen. ]V/[y father was a very well-known x English actor, and my mother a theatre-owner in Brooklands. Wherefore I began my professional career at the advanced age of live, and for ten solid years I worked in stock with my father, playing small parts in anything that came my way. At fifteen I suddenly became ambitious and hlossomed out into a boxer. I was a professional for two years in London, under another name. No," he said firmly as he saw me beginning to speak, " 1 shall not tell you what that name was. Hut the only solid results of that career were a broken nose and a cut lip. Ever hear of the time I played " ' Hamlet'"? he asked inconsequent ly. I said I'd heard of him playing " Ben Hur." " That was a different time," said Conway sweetly. " I have played ' The Sheik ' too." I beat a hasty retreat. "Well, about "Hamlet"? " It ended my boxing career, and perhaps a good thing too. My father, who was playing a Shakespearean season at the time, was suddenly taken ill, and for lack of anyone better they ordered me to take the part. I was eighteen. I didn't know a word of ' Hamlet,' except ' To be or not to be.' I didn't even know what was to be or not to be. So the manager went in front of the curtain and thoughtfully explained the situation to the audience before the play began. He said that Mr. Tearle's son was going to try his hand, and that anyone who was not satisfied could have his money back at Reading downwards: Jlfr. and Mrs. Conway Tearle (Adc'.e Roii'land) reading a scenario: Conway puts in a little hard labour at the pump; and filming " The Man of Stone," an Arabian story.