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DECEMBER 1924
Picture s and Pichjre $oer
51
f?5HDiw Pythias
Not even the classic friendship of Damon and Pythias exceeds that of Ramon Novarro and Rex Ingram. Hence the title of
this interview.
It was during the filming of Ben Hur, when he was hurrying across to Italy to join his producing unit under Fred Niblo and Marshall Neilan, that for the first time I caught my Ramon without his Pythias. As a general rule, they have been inseparable. They have worked together, played together, dreamed together. Each has been an integral part of the other's glory, and each has understood the power which the other has stood for in his career. Friends — and colleagues. Master and disciple — artist and brother artist. Film after film has found them side by side, the one behind the megaphone, the other before it. And Ramon has made love to Pythias's wife — oh quite respectably, I assure you — for many a long year of celluloid. Pythias has another name, and it is Rex. Rex has another name, and it is Ingram. As for Ramon, he has all sorts of other names, including his father's name, Samoniegos, but ten
unknown, and fatheredhim, pretty Alice Terry mothered him and taught him the subtle art of screen lovemaking, and between them they turned young Ramon Samoniegos into Ramon Novarro the star.
Pythias — I beg his pardon, Rex — is an Irishman, Ramon a Spaniard by birth, and these two fiery artistic souls understand one another. They have formed the perfect alliance. No wonder its dissolution has set many nervous hearts fluttering, and has tempered with a certain gravity the happy idealism of Ramon himself.
I found him in talkative mood, rather like a particularly nice and unaffected
Ramon Novarro in his first prominent role (Rupert of Hentzau in " The
Prisoner of Zenda "). schoolboy, torn in two between his distress at parting with Rex Ingram as a working companion and his excitement at the prospect of playing " Ben Hur." " All my life, as long as I can remember," he told me over our cigarettes and Turkish coffee, " I have had a secret ambition to play " Ben Hur," either on the stage or on the screen. He has always been my ideal of a real actor's part, and you can imagine the thrill that it is to me to know that in a few weeks time I shall really be making the part my own."
" Did you ever expect to play it?" I asked, sympathetic a 1 1 y . Ramon's eyes twinkled and he grinned.
thousand dollars' worth of stationery, pictures, posters and general advertising have been scrapped to assure an anxious world that the best name of all is — with an " o " — Novarro.
D amon thinks that there has never been a director quite like Pythias since the movies began, and Pythias never hesitates to announce Ramon as " one of the greatest discoveries of the screen." A mutual admiration society, if there ever was one, and what a combination of genius ! You see, Rex found Ramon when he was obscure and
Above :
Ramon
and
Pythias
snapped
between
scenes of
" Scara
mouche.'*
Right :
With his
brother Edou
ardo, who made
his first screen
appearance in " The Red Lily.