Pictures and the Picturegoer (Jan-Dec 1924)

90 Pictures ar\d PicfvreOuer DECEMBER 1924 There is a delightful uncertainty about one's Christmas parcels. Besides the thrill of receiving presents and knowing that someone likes you enough to remember you on December 25, there is the added fun of speculation upon what form the remembrance will take. For packages, like everything else in the world are not always what they seem, and their sizes and shapes are often deceptive. Even if we no longer hang up a stocking in the good old way, we are none of us above receiving gifts. Certainly not the screen stars, whose Christmas mail is surely the largest in the world. They receive so many offerings, these darlings of the film-fans that they must be hard put to it to acknowledge them all. And though each and every gift is welcome, if only for the sake of the kindly thought that prompted it, there is always one that is prized over and above all the rest. "Dretty clothes," says Corinne Griffith, who is one of the best dressed stars on the screen, " are every woman's heritage. I don't care if she's a scrub-lady or a Princess, every girl longs to have dainty gowns. And so I think the nicest thing one can have in one's Christmas stocking is a cheque with which to buy ' do dabs ' as friend husband persists in calling them. Specially welcome to girls in humble circumstances is a silk blouse or even a length of washing silk suitable to be made up into a blouse or jumper. Girls are so clever with their fingers nowadays."' A self-confessed bookworm, Madge Bellamy naturally plumps for something to read as her pet Christmas gift. " 1 like Best," she avers, " to read. Books about the kinema have always been my delight. Because I was not one of the pioneer players. I have only been in films a very few years and as I am passionately interested in their future I like to read all about their past. Unfortunately there are none too many, since the kinema is the youngest of the muses, but I get each new one as it comes out. I do not disdain novels, either, though biographies are my favourites. Or else books on music and musicians." Laura La Plante likes pearls. " I know they stand for tears," she writes us. " But then I'm not superstitious. Not in the least, else I should risk my life as often as I do. But then ' Only the good die young ' as Reginald Denny, who usually works on the set next door to me always tells me. I have several rows of real pearls, besides artificial necklaces by the dozen. I prefer the long chains, though, to the cute little ' choker ' necklets that were so much in vogue. I don't like the big pearlies one little bit." "The gift I liked best of anything I ever had any Christmas was a set of tortoiseshell hair brushes, comb, mirror, etc., for my dressing table." Thus Marguerite De La Motte. " They were given to me by the man I afterwards married, and my one fear in life is that they will wear out and then I shan't be able to use them any more. "I have never fallen a victim to the craze for bobbed hair and I think I may say hair brushes are the things I would send to anyone I wanted to be particularly nice to." " I love lovely lingerie," Carmel Myers tells us. " I am afraid I am rather extravagant where ' undies ' are concerned. I guess I shall buy quite a few dozen ' camis ' and — er — other things for myself to send away Xmas time. It isn't enough for me to look nice outside. I have to look nice inside, too, and I think all girls will agree with me. A set of those little clips to keep one's shoulder straps in position are nice things to buy, too, when one wants only a tiny remembrance. Out here in Italy the loveliest things in Milanese silk are to be had. I ' ran amok ' amongst exquisitely embroidered shawls when I first arrived. I have now eight, and I guess it's about time I called a halt." IX/Tost men like tobacco as well as any1 thing else as a Christmas remembrance. Many of them believe in sending cigarettes to their lady friends as well as to those of their own sex. Though some are old-fashioned enough to bar " smokes " when it's a feminine friend. Malcolm Tod isn't. He told us that tobacco was his favourite fruit and would be all his life. So now we know. Little Muriel Frances Dana, whose first two films have just been released this side declared once that she'd like a movie theatre in her Xmas stocking. " Not just a pretend one," she said, decidedly, " but a real, honest-to-goodness movie with a real projector I can work myself. Then I shall have all my friends home and show them myself in my new fill-ums." There are some very (Continued on page 92). Ethel Shannon.