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VIOLA DANA was working very conscientiously in a scene at the big glass-covered Edison studio when I arrived to interview her, and so I sat quietly at one side and watched her with interest, while she went through the scene, and the clicking camera registered her expressions— expressions that spoke louder than words of the unhappiness of the girl-woman character which she was portraying.
When the scene had been finished, and I had been introduced to her, I marveled that the tear-stained face which had such a few moments before been performing before the eye of the world, should ever be wreathed in such happy smiles.
"I don't like sad parts," she declared, "because I always have to appear ever so much more cheerful than I really am after I finish playing them to keep myself from getting the blues."
"Then why do you always play the part of the little girl who has so much trouble in her young life?" I questioned.
"My directors say that is the only part the people like me in," she answered wistfully ; "they don't seem to think I was meant to be happy, but I am sure that I was, and I try to be all the time. There isn't any reason why all of us shouldn't be smiling most of the time, in my estimation. There are
occasions, of course, when the brighter side of life does seem far away, but they pass ever so much sooner if we make the best of them.
"I wish I were not so susceptible to 'gloom,' though, for everything that is at all depressing makes me very downcast. I try never to appear that way, though, and, as a result there is a continual war going on in my heart to keep the smile on my face from being replaced by one of those woebegone expressions I see so many people wearing, and which I dislike so much."
And this is typical of Viola Dana. Her friends — and they number a legion — know her as the sweet-sad, unaffected girl that she is. Her heart is that of a child, though her body is that of a young woman. She is not an "actress" in the cold sense of the word ; she is — well, she is just as lovable little girl.
Her rise in the world of motion pictures was remarkable. She started almost at the very bottom, but within a few short months had risen to the heights of screen popularity. Her success in "The Poor Little Rich Girl" on the speaking stage was marked, and the character she portrayed will long be remembered by those who saw it. But I am getting ahead of my story, for Miss Dana told me of her career, and I will repeat her words to you.
"My ambition was to be a dancer,"