Picture Play Magazine (Jul - Dec 1929)

110 Advertising Sectioi I he best love stories ol to-day are always to be louno in LOVE STORY MAGAZINE _Love stories ol tlie stage and society, ol trie business world , and — just love stories. (jet a cop^ now. JLove Otory MAGAZINE Jcublished J^very Vveek 15 cents per copy At all news dealers Unto tke Sixtk Generation Continued from page 65 by the legendary stories, the boy resented being pushed into the theater. College was followed by business and the study of surgery; both grew irksome. Eventually heritage asserted itself, and he became assistant stage director of his father's company, trained to qualify for the male roles of every play. Parts would be switched. If he failed, wrath fell upon him — of those forbears to whom a mispronounced word, or an eyebrow at an improper angle, was heinous. His official debut occurred at twenty-three. He and his horse fell through the stage. History doing an encore. Years previous, on that very stage, his father was grappling with a villain on an iceberg, when both disappeared through a trap door. From the depths — while above the scenic ice heaved — boomed his father's voice, "Dirty dog ! You meant no good by her !" He renders such reminiscences doubly droll by acting them. Thespic heritage and such training could not but result in success, in England and this country. Twentyeight stage years preceded his movie debut three years ago — if one charitably excepts, as he asks, a term in 1914. He likes to entertain, but everything must revolve about his home — except when he is memorizing a talkie. The screeching screen, incidentally, is a pet abomination. The adored children are barred from his study, and he mumbles soliloquies like a distracted Hamlet. A pastime of keen interest is the coaching of young actors, who are petrified by the microphone. To such a veteran, might not the orders of some director prove annoying? Yet one never hears of Warner temperament. "Patience wins. There is so little use in fighting. I wait, and when the moment seems propitious, suggest my ideas. Feeling, or technique ? The heart, but not riotous emotion. Tempered to suit character and circumstance. Sincerity alone counts in all things — work, love of children, gardening, whatever you do. If it isn't genuine, you can't express it convincingly. "The studios cast me as a villain, because I don't look like one. Quite right, too. A man couldn't be a villain if he resembled one." The personal pronoun is absent, despite that inherited "we." To only two dramas did he refer, and mention of them was but preamble to a reminiscence. Of his own work he says nothing, though of the stage he talks with that tense exhilaration peculiar to all bred to the theater. The producers liked him so well in "Sorrell and Son," "The King of Kings," "The Trial of Mary Dugan," "The Gamblers," "Conquest," and "The Argyle Case," that they are paying him thirty-five hundred a week. "The Green Goddess," with George Arliss, will be followed by "The Passing of the Third Floor Back," for Fox. One of his best recent performances, in Corinne Griffith's "The Divine Lady," resulted from an act of kindness. This is not generally known, even in Hollywood, and he asked the studio not to publicize it. Another actor had been engaged, at a salary far less than Warner's, to play the ironic Lord Hamilton. Afflicted with sudden hallucination of wealth, he ran up debts and had to be sent to a sanitarium. Warner offered to fill the role, at the other's salary, and used the money to pay the man's debts. Perhaps the fact that he has known sorrow awakens his response to human hurts. The loss of his father was a blow. His first sweetheart, at twenty-one, died in his arms, and his first wife was killed in an automobile accident. An odd, yet beautiful, thing about his marriage is the intangible presence of her memory. Shortly after the second wedding, they visited her parents, who accepted Rita heartily. For four years the first Mrs. Warner's photographs hung in their country home, and were removed by H. B. himself only when the first child, Joan, was born. "If I should go, I would wish my successor to speak kindly of me." Mrs. Warner explained her views. "We each have our place and our happiness, as time gives them to us. She would want me to make him happy, and I respect her. I cannot understand why people regard as odd my preservation of his memories of her." On several counts Mr. Warner is an unusual man. He has an exceptional wife, and he's not so ordinary himself.