Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1921 - Feb 1922)

62 The Revelations of a Star's Wife brought Benito to her feet, begging her to divorce her husband and marry him. But it didn't happen in a story. Benito felt just as Mary had known he would. He had run up against the somewhat slack morals of theatrical people often enough, and thought little of them. But he would neA^er have married a girl who had such a past as the one Mary had confessed to. He had not been in love with Mary, of course, but her adoration of him and the interest which she had awakened in him during the brief scenes which she rehearsed with him could easily have turned out as I know she hoped they would. That was all over now. Alary left that night for the Coast to join her husband, who was directing pictures there. You probably saw notices in some of the papers stating that she had come back to the screen and would play character parts. That is what she is doing — playing very small ones, just a hanger-on in life now, waiting rather apathetically for what each day will bring, and caring very little one way or another. She has carried out her theory, of course — that it's better to live very hard and very fast while you're yovmg, and not bother about what happens. Like all the other girls Tve known who lived on that plan, she has found the price far too big a one for what she bought with it. And if just one of the girls who have thought they'd be perfectly haiipy if they could have the diamonds and ermine coats and automobiles that girls like Mar\ Sorello have chances to read this story about her and learn from it the^Jesson that is there I shall be happy. Hugh and I talked aliout her as we drove home that afternoon a little depressed. "There are so many girls who come into the movies that way — attracted ])y its glitter — and go out with their lives broken to bits in their hands before they're twentyfive," he said. "They sell everything for luxury, and then they don't want it. Look at Vance Eaton ; she's twenty-two, and she's been married four times, spent several fortunes, and now is likely to be mixed up in a murder trial. Didn't you know that? Well, she was in court this morning ; that was why I came up to her apartment to get you — I didn't want you to be there if a reporter happened to turn up — knew how you'd hate it. I met Bingham on the way. "And I met somebody else, too, whom you're going to be as happy to see as I was. She's going to spend the week-end with us — will be at the house when we get there. It's Roxane Laird." Roxane Laird — the girl whom tragedy had transformed from a laughing sprite into one of the greatest emotional actresses of the screen ; the girl who had forced herself to make her unhappiness a means of gaining the greatest joy in the world. I could hardly wait to see her. CHAPTER XVL You have seen Roxane Laird on the screen hundreds of times, I know ; she has been in many of the biggest pictures that have been released, as well as in ever so many of the less important ones. And from the time when Clayton Greer began to push her she has been famous. She is not one of the beauties of the screen. Tn fact, she is lovely rather than pretty, and when she is playing a big emotional scene her face is sometimes so distorted that she is actually ugly. There is a wistfulness about her face, though, that seems to draw your heart right out of your breast. I have seen close-ups of her that would sway an entire audience ; not even the most skeptical could resist them. There is a poignant, elusive appeal in her eyes that reaches out to your very soul. Hugh and I knew her when we first went to Los Angeles, and she had been in pictures for some time then. She was just a darling, giddy girl then; there was nothing haunting about her gray eyes, and her black hair was always a wild tousle of curls. I remember her lamentations because she had to do it up every night in kid curlers. "But it's the curls that get the jobs, Sally," she told me wisely one afternoon, when, sauntering past our house on the way home, she had smelled the sugar cookies I was baking and came bouncing in to sit on the kitchen table and devour them by the half dozen. "And it's the jobs I have to get, I can tell you. Kewpie and I can't make the grade unless I do — and picking's been awfully slim these last few weeks." Kewpie was her little sister, just eight years old, who had done very well as a child actress until she reached the dreaded age where her legs suddenly lengthened and her teeth began to come out. Retirement, temporary but complete, had descended on Kewpie, and now Roxane was battling with the world single-handed. "I can make a go of this inp^ if T iust p^et hold of THE PRICE OF FAME— Dancing=eyed little Roxane Laird whose capricious moods have been the joy of all who know her, has a haunting sadness in her eyes now. Most of the time she looks grief= stricken; stark, gnawing terror seems to hold her in its grip. You who have watched her on the screen have had that poignant expression of hers fairly tear your very heartstrings. Such simulation of grief does not come without knowing grief, and Roxane Laird paid a terrible price for her ability to portray such emotion. She did not do it willingly; who would? The story of how a famous director tortured her is one of the most startling disclosures yet made in "The Revelations of a Star's Wife." It appears in the next Installment. Don't miss it. the right handle," she went on more seriously. "You know I can act, Sally — honest I can. But nobody wants me to. I'd give the head right off my shoulders for a regular job that would pay for an apartment for Kewpie and me and meals three times every single day — that boarding house where we are is awful, and Kewpie's getting to have the manners of a Yahoo Indian ; honest she is. That's no place at all to bring her up." We talked for quite a while ; I knew so little of the motion-picture world then that I couldn't advise her very well, but just having me listen to her cheered her up. Finally she hopped off the table, picked up the package of cookies I'd done up for Kewpie, and stuffed them into a huge paper bag that she was carr}'ing. "Here you behold the makings of a hat that is to knock the eyes right out of the head of Clayton Greer," she announced as she fished a straw shape and some flowers out of the bag and waved them at me triumphantly. "Yes'm, bought them at the five and ten, and the hat's to be worn this evening at eight o'clock, when I dine at the Alexandria with a whole mess of celebrities. Greer's among 'em. I get taken along because somebody invited Sarah Jordan — by the way, she's changed her name to Cheri — and she got a job quite unexpectedly, and so she tttrned the bid over to me. Wish me luck, Sally — maybe Greer will give me a part in his new picture." Which, oddly enough, was exactly what he did. Clayton Greer wasn't as well known then as he is now. of course ; he had in mind the story of the picture, "Sin," which was to make his reputation, and was just about Continued on page 86