Pictures and the Picturegoer (Jan-Dec 1925)

50 Picture s and Pichjre $uer MARCH 1925 work and grounding. Bryant Washburn, the lead, fell sick at the last moment, and as I was rather like him then I begged for the part, and promised myself and the directors that I would make good in it." " And so," I said, as he stopped, " you all lived happily ever after." " Something like that," said Rod, with a smile. I warned him that all good stories ought to end with a wedding, and that— " If you've been hearing all that nonsense about me and the possibility of my getting married," he broke in hastily, " cut it right out. There's nothing in it, nothing at all." He assured me that his mother and co-starred career." A brave statement, Rod, for a man who has played the partner to Corinne Griffith, Madge Kennedy, Mabel Normand, Marguerite Clark, Constance Binney, Mae Marsh, Mae Murray, and Pola Negri, to name just a few. But Rod is full of enthusiasms; they are part of his personality just as much as the grace and the graciousness and the intelligent conversation. It is just in these bubbling enthusiasms, these unqualified loyalties, that Rod shows his youth. He is one of the very youngest of our leading men, for all his experience and surety of touch. Twenty seven. Too young to be accepted for the army at the beginning of the war. Too young to be given leading parts, in spite of his talent, for many a year — or so the directors said ! Too young for electrics, until in The Ten Commandments his talent broke out in electrics of its own. Twenty seven, and twenty of those years spent in the actor's craft. " A long training," I said, ending my thought sequence out loud. " Long, but invaluable. Those times on the stage taught me my footwork for the screen. I was really an actor made before I ever stood up to a oamera, in the old Essanay days, long before my first real chance came. That was luck, but I was able to take the chance only through real hard sister made him the best home in the world, and that nothing would make him marry while they lived. His mother and sister, are two more of Rod's enthusiasms. " So you see," he ended, " you won't be ringing the wedding bells for Rod in your PICTUREGOER for quite a time yet." T thought to myself that he would look nice at a wedding. Rod in wedding clothes and a tall hat — Rod in evening dress and an opera hat clasped to his shirt front — Rod in riding kit on a polo pony — Rod in very little but his own strength in the boxing ring — they all fit. Always just right. Always a success. Always a credit, to his partner, or his opponent, or his bride. And I was just mentally arranging the details of Rod's wedding, and wondering whether Cecil De Mille would lend him the " Defiance " for his honeymoon trip, when the door opened and the Other Sleuth appeared on the threshold. He scowled at me. He smiled at Rod. "Mr. La Rocque?" he asked. " That is my name," said Rod, uncoiling his long form from the depths of an armchair. " But I answer as well to the names of Valentino and Blue." " You are very like them both," said the Other Sleuth, tactlessly. " Delighted," said Rod, with a sarcasm peculiarly and emphatically his own. And as I went out I suddenly realised how he must hate them — Valentino and Blue. But say so, never. For his loyalties, like everything else about Rod, are just right. Edyth Elland. Left: With his mother and sister. Below : Rod on the Thames Embankment, London. v