Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1921 - Feb 1922)

64 Breakfast at Eleven soon as your pay envelope swells so does your expense account. We're always poor." "Always poor, always poor," groaned Polly, and then he went into wild shrieks of hysterical laughter. "Are you going back to the stage?" we asked, not because we were doing an interview, but because we missed Mr. Tearle on Broadway. "I hope so, indeed. I want to go back next season, and am reading plays now. Here is one of Samuel Shipman's," he said, picking up a fat manuscript, "that sounds promising, although I haven't finished reading it." "And give up pictures?" "Never," said Mr. Tearle decidedly. "I am only just getting to be known, and I should hate to give it up now." "Only getting to be known!" we exclaimed incredulously. "Why, every one knows of you ! You have been on the stage always, haven't you?" "Ever since I was five years old, but, you know, a Broadway reputation doesn't help at all on the screen. It is only what you have done in pictures that counts." "But you have made a lot of pictures, haven't you?" "Yes, I have, but do you know that I worked for one whole year without having a single picture exhibited ? It seemed as though every picture I made, for some reason or other, was put on the shelf. That was before I made my present affiliation." "There wasn't anything wrong with the pictures, was there?" we ventured. "No," answered Mrs. Tearle; "it was just a stroke of hard luck." "Hard luck, hard luck !" groaned Polly. "What is the greatest difficulty you have to encounter in being a star?" "Why, I think the lack of good stories. It's appalling when you realize what the directors have to work with sometimes. And of course, no matter what goes wrong, the star is always to blame in the eyes of the public. You see all the plays; haven't you any idea for a good story for me ?" "Why don't you do 'The Champion?' That ought to make a fine screen play with you in Grant Mitchell's role." "So," said Mrs. Tearle laughingly, "you know his guilty secret. He was once a prize fighter, just like the young man in the play." "Not a prize fighter, dear," said Mr. Tearle modestly. "A boxer. That isn't the same thing at all." "Not at all," shrieked Polly triumphantly. "But were you really a boxer, and when?" we asked incredulously. "Thought you were always on the stage." "I was. I started in my father's company as soon as I was old enough to walk on, and I played small parts until I was fifteen. Then I got so tall and ungainly that I felt I had missed my vocation and 1 mourned over my lack of personal pulchritude in secret. Boys of that age are extremely introspective, though one seldom guesses it. Failing, as I thought, to make good in my inherited profession, I decided to be a boxer. I seemed to be pretty good at it, and from the time I was seventeen until I was nineteen I earned my living in the ring." "Why didn't you continue to be a prize fighter, as your wife calls you?" "Because, by the time he was nineteen, he began to shown signs of the manly beauty which has since made Continued on page 102 IF YOU ENJOY Grace Kingsley's "Romances of Famous Film Folk " don't miss the one aboat Will Rogers which will appear in our next issue. It is one of the most interesting, and certainly the most human and appealing stories we have read in some time. You'll like it, we know ! Illlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllfl^ FILM CLIPPINGS By Nat N. Dorfman The millennium is due any minute now. A well-known movie star is reported to have refused an interview to a newspaper man because she had nothing new to say! Nobody seems to know just where heaven seems to be located geographically, but from the large number of bathing beauties we see disporting in the movies the average man ofifhand will give its location as "somewhere in California." Uneasy lies the head at which a custard pie is aimed. Some fans seem to think that all a movie star has to think about all day long is how to get a larger contract. But this isn't at all true. The movie stars also think about this all night long. Time and tide wait for no man. Neither does the movie vamp when she gets going. Tough on the Hero. The old-fashioned hero who used to kiss the heroine in the last few feet of film is denied this privilege in several States where the censor is very strict. So while he may still enjoy her warm kisses in New York, the farthest the censor will let him get with her in Pennsylvania is to hold her hand. Cy Hopkins, the Oshkosh philosopher, can't understand why they call it the silent drama when so many women are in it. A Fairy Tale. Once upon a time a scenario was accepted in which the villain won the hand of the fair maiden just as it often happens in real life. Authors who are running dry on movie plots have little to worry about in comparison to the fellows who are running dry on their liquor supply. There's one thing about a curious woman and the movies, anyway. She can't turn to the last fifty feet of film on the last reel to see the end of the picture as she does with the last few pages of a new novel she's about to commence reading. We often wondered why the Turks went in for harems until we saw some of the one-piece-bathing-suit maidens in the movies. They say curiosity once killed a cat, yet in spite of that many of us would like to know just how much Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks earn a year together.