Picture Play Magazine (Jul - Dec 1929)

28 ter th Photo by Brown Ziegfeld lured Ruth Morgan from Hollywood to play in "Whoopee." NO, it wasn't a traffic jam that delayed me," Fanny announced airily, as though that excused all. "I was walking, and I had to pass the Roxy Theater." Before I had a chance to gasp "Walking?" she was settled in the chair beside me, with a wave of her hand had indicated to the waiter that she wanted practically everything on the menu, and was all set to go on with her story. Fanny really deserves the title of the first and only continuous one hundred per cent talker. "Have you ever tried to get past that crowd waiting to see 'The Cock-eyed World' ?" she asked as indignantly as though I were in some way responsible for it. "Have I ?" The vehemence of my retort stopped her for a minute. "I tried regularly every day for a week. Finally, one day I waited long enough to get halfway into the lobby, but had neglected to bring along a box lunch, so I fainted from hunger. And where do you suppose my rescuers carried me? Right into the theater! When I came to. I waited craftily until they weren't looking, and then I scuttled out of the hospital quarters down into the theater, thereby beating two or three waiting sections." Vilma Banky has emerged triumphant from a siege with a diction expert. 5/2? e *E>y&iancler "Dear, dear!" Fanny condoled patronizingly. "You really ought to get around more and meet important people. I went with a newspaper reviewer and all we had to do was knock down two or three hundred defenseless old men, and explain to the door man who we were. Then we went right in and didn't have to stand more than half an hour. "And will you tell me what makes that picture such a knockout?" she demanded, not, of course, expecting a reply. "It wasn't McLaglen, because he has done the same sort of thing before, without starting any riots, and vocally he's a disappointment. It must have been Eddie Lowe, or my old favorite, El Brendel. You'll never get me to admit that it was Lily Damita. Women don't like Damita. She reminds them too much of the tales returned soldiers told about their French sweethearts." Fanny is right. "As rare as a girl who has a good word to say of Damita," is a time-worn simile. I'd be a traitor to my sex if I admitted that I admired her performance in "The Cock-eyed World." Really, she is not like that. At least not on the tennis courts in Hollywood. She is more inclined to be coy and hoydenish. "I think I liked 'The Cock-eyed World,' " Fanny rambled on, "because I was so relieved that there was no war in it. All a picture has to do is to show a one-legged man, or play a few bars of 'Over There,' and I am dissolved in tears." In which case Fanny has a long, hard year ahead of her. The war is to be fought in an epic way by at least three companies. Herbert Brenon is to make "The Case of Sergeant Grischa" for RKO. I suppose he knows his business better than I do. Do I hear tumultuous cries of "Yes, yes"? But still I cannot see how he will make a picture of the heart-rending story of an innocent man's execution and the relentless workings of red tape. Universal will make "All Quiet on the Western Front," and Tiffany-Stahl "Journey's End." They are the three grimmest, most heart-breaking dramas of the World War. They are just the bewildering routine of a small section of the war as seen by sensitive individuals. "Journey's End" has charming humor of a goofy sort, but the others have none of the comic spirit that inspired the saying that the French fought the war for patriotism, the English for power, and the Americans for souvenirs. But even with such weighty mat