Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1921 - Feb 1922)

Broadway's Famous Castle She comes back to the screen every so often, does the fair Irene, this time in a thrilling tale of lumber camps and Broadway called French Heels." By Emma-Lindsay Squier I THOUGHT the fact that I was at the Algonqnin on time for my interview with Irene Castle — that is, with Mrs. Treman — proved be3'ond a doubt that I am becoming New Yorkized. The fact is that I was late, but she was later, having spent a hectic afternoon at Lucille's, concocting a new and startling costume with which to invigorate Broadway. Anyliow, I had reached there with a minimum amount of questioning, reducing my query handicap to three and a half — the half being supplied by a small newsboy who told me scornfully that if I looked up I'd see the hotel sign right above my head. I waited in the lobby for the chic Irene, feeling quite at Hollywood with familiar faces drifting in and out of the door. There was Charles Gerard, looking as sleek as a trained seal ; Ward Crane, very black of hair and pink of skin ; Winifred Westover, as blond as ever, and Max Linder, the immaculate, somewhat handicapped in speaking French to the clerk because his hands were full of packages. When Irene came in there should really have been an orchestra to give an entrance blare of trumpets — "Ta — da — d-a-a-a-a !" For she is, in an atmosphere of wellgroomed women, easily the most distinctive. It isn't so much her costume as the way she carries it off. Her mode of walking has been copied by flappers the country over, deteriorating into the "debutante slouch." If only the flappers would remember that the only person who can with effectiveness emulate the bobbed Castle is the fair Irene herself. She was dressed in black satin — don't pin me down too closely concerning the details — with startling flat paniers over the hips. There was a white vest, edged with fur, and there was a touch of vivid red at the throat and at the cuffs of the sleeves. There was a sort of girdle, ending in a varicolored tassel that swung against the sheen of the skirt. The skirt length was — well, come to think of it, there was very little length. Around one slim ankle a tiny chain was clasped, the thin golden line half veiled by the gauze of her silken stocking. And the crowning touch of the costume was a close-fitting black hat that almost hid the bobbed glory of her red-brown hair. Two sweeping sprays of feathers • — probably osprey — flared from either side and met under her chin, framing her face in a semicircle of blueblack plumage. Her eyes were blue, and curiously young. Her mouth was a vivid curve of crimson, heightened by rouge. She did not apologize for being late ; she merely waved a bottle of Lucille perfume under my nose, assured me it was the latest delectability from the famous shop, and invited me to come up to her rooms. Her voice is strangely at variance with her appearance. You expect a sweeter, more gentle quality. It is low-pitched, almost rough, as with a slight cold ; it is the sort of voice one would recognize anywhere as belonging to a theatrical person. Her rooms were littered with trunks, traveling bags, shoes, photographs. In a huge vase a gorgeous bunch of American Beauty roses was distilling fragrance with right good will, and in a cage on the floor a small, sadeyed monkey hooked his tail around the bars and comz menced to jump up and down, stiff-legged, in a simian dance of welcome. Two pop-eyed Belgian griffons, shaggy as penwipers, dashed out of an inner room, barking feverishly, springing up on the couch and down again in an ecstasy of delight, and the monkey, stimulated by their example, accelerated the tempo of his dance to an allegro fiirioso that threatened to ruin the shape of the cage. Irene, quite calm in the midst of the hectic turmoil, waved me to a place on the couch, and seated herself in a rocking-chair near the cage. She busied herself with soothing the monk, who chattered up at her, blinking his eyes. "Is that the monkey you had in France?" I asked her, remembering pictures I had seen and also recollecting the fact that in her first screen production, "The Whirl of Life," a little simian actor played a prominent part. "Oh, goodness, no !" she laughed. "This is about the seventh since that time. I am crazy about monkeys, and I always have at least one. This one I bought from an organ grinder. His name is Virginia." I looked startled and rather dubious. "Yes, I know it's a queer name for a gentleman monkey, but that's what the organ grinder had named him, so I let it ride. I think he named him after his wife." It did not take much conversation to discover that Irene's two enthusiasms in life are her husband, Robert Treman, and her large and assorted collection of pets. "We live in Ithaca," she told me, "on a perfectly darling estate, where I can have all the pets I want. I come in to New York to make a picture or to do shopping. But I'm always glad to get home again. I had so many years of hectic night life, up until three a. m. for month after month, that I am happy in the peace and quiet of our country place." "Then you don't intend to go back on the stage or to professional dancing?" I asked, having heard rumors that she might return to the footlights. "No, I don't think I ever will," she said positively. "Bobby has his work at Ithaca, and I don't want to be separated from him. Of course I get a hankering for the footlights sometimes, when I see a good play or a musical comedy, but pictures pay better, and they let me have the home life that I want." She switched off on the subject of Virginia, the gentleman monk again, telling me that her mother made his clothes. Gingham wash dresses for every da}', and red and green "organ" clothes for street wear. Virginia meantime was continuing his stiff-legged staccato dancing, apparently quite happy in a state of primitive tmdress. "I brought two canary birds home from the studio over the Fourth to -give them a nice week-end," she said suddenly, apropos of nothing, "but they both died. I guess the city life was too much for them." She fondled the monk through the bars of his cage, and I thought, watching her, that she was a curious combination of child and woman of the world. Her eyes are the eyes of seventeen, naive, audacious, young. The rest of her face is much more mature, older far than Continued on page 102