Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1921)

[ustine Johnstone is so beautiful that she makes you want to say act. [ust stand still so that I can look at you." T USTINE JOHNSTONE, the very newest Realart I star, is the sort of girl who wouldn't put powder on her nose or have her hair marcelled if her husband didn't approve of it. Walter Wanger is the sort of man who could say: "Don't have your hair waved. You look prettier with it plain," or "Don't put powder on your face — I don't like it," and have his wife flattered to death because he noticed whether her hair was plain or undulated and whether her nose was natural or dull finished. And, as -Justine Johnstone is Walter Wanger's wife it looks to us like one of those very rare matches which are made in heaven. When it was reported, more than a year ago. that Justine Johnstone was going on the screen every one seemed a bit skeptical. There are times when perfect beauty is a handicap rather than otherwise, for people are likely to think that when a woman has that Godgiven thing it will see her through any crisis in life without the slightest effort on her part. However, Miss Johnstone does seem to have been singularly successful in everything she ever undertook. In the first place she was an infant prodigy in kindergarten and then she graduated from high school when she was only fourteen years old. Miss Johnstone was born in this country in the city which is famous for its beans and its broad "a" — Boston, but she is of Scandinavian descent and perhaps that is where she gets her spun-gold hair and her peaches-and-cream complexion and her forgetme-not eyes. In Spite of Her Success of a sort came to Justine John insisted on working hard and being more By Harriette iiihilllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllliH When Charles Hanson Towne saw Miss Johnstone he wrote the following lines : When God made you He took the sunlight and dew, Star dust and dreams, Moonlight and mist, Roses morn-kissed. That does describe Justine, although to us it is strangely reminiscent of the little verse we used to say as a child ending, "Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of." But we left our heroine back a paragraph or so graduating from high school. After that she was sent immediately to a finishing school — charm schools the} call them now — to learn all of the things that a young lady mirt know before she can make her debut. But little Justine had other plans ; she wanted to be an actress, and so she came to New York and almost immediately she did make her debut, though not as her parents had intended. It was in the Ziegfeld "Follies of 1915." She was one of the sensations of the season, and she was featured in the Follies for two years. But all the talk was of her beauty. It seemed to be because of her beauty, too. that a theater was named for her and then a popular club on Forty-fourth Street. Miss Johnstone was the club's hostess and had her name out in electric lights and everything. From there she went to the musical comedy stage, but no one ever asked Justine Johnstone to act. She is the sort of person to whom you would be inclined to say: "Don't act. Just stand still so I can look at you." Miss Johnstone realized this, and, with a determination worthy of a plainer woman, she resolutely left New York and went to work in a stock company in Waterbury, Connecticut. It was after nearly a year of this hard work that Miss Johnstone became a star in the Realart Company. She has made only two pictures so far — "Blackbirds," a crook story, and "The Plaything of Broadwav." Mr. Wanger is extremely anxious — pugnaciously so we might say — to have no one believe that he and his wife get anything without working hard for it. So instead of beginning at the beginning and thus having our construction and continuity beyond reproach we shall plunge right in and get it off our mind. Mr. Wanger hasn't a cent of money invested in the Famous Players. He is only the general-production manager, with twenty-six companies working under him. "I haven't any money to put in it," he said emphatically, "and if I didn't make good I'd be fired to-morrow, same as any one else. Then I'd be out of a job." This was in answer to our timid query: "You are starring your wife, aren't you?" And immediately we learned that he had nothing to do with starring his wife. "She was selected by a jury of twelve persons, and I was not one of them," he added. So now that we have chronicled that fact we mav 'Don't