Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1921 - Feb 1922)

Flashing Back to Romance 85 Continued from page 21 slowly. "I told the girls what a task it was to be an extra. I warned them. Now if they are anxious to stay in the pictures, I think they should turn out fairly well. They are eager to succeed surely. And that, coupled with beauty and grace, helps tremendously." Recalling the flood of letters that I had seen in Picture-Play last month electing her one of the Eight Eye Fillers, I mentioned the fact to her. Dropping her eyes, she smiled in embarrassment. "I never knew that I was a beauty. But it is wonderful to be appreciated. I don't think any one realizes how I love the letters sent me. They mean so very much ■ — especially now." Her voice softened. "Mother is in the hospital. Dorothy and I have been terribly worried about her, and these sweet letters and tokens of admiration have just kept me buoyed up sometimes when eA'erything was bluest." Sweet, ethereal, dainty, this emotional prima donna is lilylike, fragrant, slender, retiring, graceful — -a far cry from many of the screen heroines who become varnished disappointments off the screen. Her dreamy eyes, her tiny, round riiouth, her clear white skin, all are symbolic of the girl herself — girl, I add, rather than woman, though in experience she is indeed no longer young. As we were chatting, Mr. Griffith strolled over to explain the action of the impending scene to the blond Duse. "And I wish you would disarrange your hair, Miss Gish," concluded the gelatin genius, after the details had been covered. With a smile, the Annie Moore of the unforgetable " 'Way Down East" left us. "This is the thing that the whole world loves," said the creator of "The Birth," as he calls it. "Romance ! Excitement, thrills, love, and climaxes — not one, but many. When I make a picture I am making it for the world, not for myself. If I were making pictures for myself there would be more 'Blossoms' and fewer 'Dream Streets,' but" — gradually a smile appeared — "my business sense, poor though it is, tells me that 'Dream Street' is adjacent to Easy Street. "I must attune my work to the masses as well as the classes. The man in the street must be fascinated just as much as the Wall Street broker and the Greenwich Village highbrow, so-called. And in 'The Orphans' I believe I have the universal story, with its romance, its comedy, its thrills, its heart interest, and, do not forget, far more opportunity for spreading beautiful sets than ever I have had before. Do you think that I will fail to take advantage of the opportunity?" Dorothy Gish jumped from comedy to tragedy in this f eatvire, portraying the highly sympathetic character of the little blind girl. Creighton Hale will have the comedy moments, and, as we have already indicated, the fight for the final fade-out rests between Morgan Wallace and the talented, exotic Schildkraut. That reminds me that he told me Romeo will be his next role with the Theater Guild, opposite his present speaking-stage inamorata, Eva le Gallienne, an actress of no slight power. "What I want to do," said Schildkraut, just before I entrained for the lights of Manhattan and a ringside seat at the Follies, "what I should love to do is Ibsen. He is the master mechanic, the complete playwright. He is so easy to do, you see, and yet one receives such extraordinary credit for doing him. Then there is always Schnitzler. And several of the English Maugham's plays are masterly. It is my intention to stay here in America, dividing my time between the stage and screen — under the direction of the Guild in the one instance, and, of course, Mr. Griffith in the silent drama." On the way to the studio bus, Mr. Griffith showed me the village street in old France — Mamaroneck — complete in detail to the last cobblestone. Many of the mob scenes will be staged here, those spectacular mass effects that have placed D. W. second to none the world over. He told me that Lillian Gish was far and away the premiere actress of the silver sheet, that photography he considered second only to story, that "The Two Orphans" would take longer to make than anything he has ever done — with the possible exception of "Intolerance" — and, startling statement this, that any one can act who is not an "actor." "Give me a plastic person who will let himself go, without thinking what he is going to look like on the screen, and I will make a real player of him. The hardest person to work with is the self-opinionated trouper with 'ideas' on everything from the death scene in 'Camille' to the off-stage shriek in 'The Jest.' One of the saddest losses the screen ever suffered was Clarine Seymour. Another was Bobbie Harron. Neither knew anything technical of stagecraft. They were simply born actors. And so few people are! "The born actor needs no stimulation— no music, for example. We use it very rarely. It serves only to confuse in most instances. In doing a romance like 'The Orphans' there's something akin to a lyrical swing running through the whole thing — abroad, tender, appealing." And if I were picking an artist to breathe reality into the romance of eighteenth-century France, I should not hesitate in my selection of this same David Wark Griffith. The man is as big as his ideals. There was an enthusiasm in his voice and manner that argued well, it seemed to me, for the success of the picture, and I was told, confidentially, by one of his aids that Griffith has appeared to be much happier in the making of this picture than he has for some time. All of which has made me eager and impatient to see the finished production— a feeling which I am sure that countless thousands of Griffith's followers will soon be sharing. Continued from page 46 I As for the claim that German pnoney, through some devious course, 'found its way into the making of [this sinister film, no one can truthfully say except the powers that be at Universal City. And their mouthpiece, which is the publicity department, is at this writing working night and day to combat certain rumors started ill-advisedly some months ago and which they are now trying their I Stroheim and Mrs. Gru best to choke — in regard to its daring features. But it doesn't seem logical to the average denizen of Hollywood that if German money — for no reason that I could discover in viewing the film — wanted to hire a director to put over German propaganda they would choose Eric von Stroheim, who is acknowledgedly an Austrian by birth and who at various times, since coming to this country in 1908 or thereabouts, has been sus idy pected of being everything from a common spy to a personal emissary of the kaiser. Even Mrs. Grundy couldn't find any Hun hashish in "Foolish Wives" itself as it will be released to this country. If you want the most breath-taking entertainment ever offered from an American studio, go, by all means, to see "Foolish Wives," but take your gas masks, and leave Madame Grundy at home.