Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1921 - Feb 1922)

The Revelations of a Star's Wife The concluding installment of the most amazing narrative about motion-picture people ever published. ILLUSTRATED BY EDGAR FRANKLIN WITTMACK CHAPTER XXIII. SURE enough, it was Gypsy ; even as I hugged her I demanded, "What's happened now?" Something has always just happened to Gypsy. "Sal, it's awful !" she declared, following me as I went to my own room to take off my hat, and joining me in a brief expedition to the nursery to have a peep at Junior. "Honestly, it's the worst yet." "Not married?" "No, but almost, as usual. I wish somebody'd chloroform me and lead me to a justice of the peace ; I wouldn't care much who the man was ! But this everlasting— well, I told my press agent that if he announced to the papers this time that I had backed out because I couldn't bear to renounce my freedom — that's what he always says, you know — I'd fire him. If any girl on earth needs a guiding hand and wants it any more than I do — well, I wish her better luck than I've had, that's all." . I collapsed on the window seat and shrieked with laughter. Gypsy's matrimonial adventures are as long drawn out as a serial and as funny as Charlie Chaplin at his funniest, and the fact that she's so serious about them makes them funnier than ever. The motionpicture world has amused itself with them for years, but her press agent has somehow managed to keep them from the public. All it knows is that she can't be inveigled into matrimony. "I just blew in from the Coast this afternoon," she announced, running her hands through the swirl of bobbed curls that crowns her pretty little head. "Stayed in bed all the way, trying to get rested and prepare to meet my bridegroom — oh, yes, I was coming East to get married, Sally — again ! But I found a wire instead of him, saying that he'd been detained in Winnipeg, so here I am. Cross your fingers, Sally, and hope the jinx will pass me by this trip." I tried to be as serious as she wanted me to, but it was impossible. You see, Gypsy — that's just the nickname her friends have given her — is one of the cleverest comediennes on the screen ; her work is tmusually good, and she has a big following, so big that she's never been able to get out of comedies and into straight drama, which she longs above all else to do. She started in two-reelers, and then went to five, and Hugh had read me a note in one of the trade papers a few nights before that announced that she was to make a big special feature that would run much longer. That should have been good news for her, but I could imagine how she must have felt about it ; she has always yearned for a chance to do big emotional roles and have a home with an Italian garden and a husband who would be masterful, instead of one who would sit back and howl with laughter at the funny things which she does so naturally that she doesn't know she's doing them. She always falls madly in love with big, dark men with black mustaches — that is, I know of three times that she's done it — and each time she thinks she's going to have a wonderful, romantic love affair. I'll never forget the first one; it was when she was just making good in two-reelers, and Hugh and I were beginning to feel that we were well started on the way to success. We were still living in the little bungalow we moved into when we first went to Los Angeles, I remember, though we were studying plans for houses and talking about getting a new car even then. And I was absorbed in trying to decide whether I'd rather have a limousine or a grand piano, and almost resented it when Gyp came tearing into the house to tell me of the tragedy that had broken her heart — at least she thought it had. She threw her tam on the floor and plumped herself down on the nearest chair, right on my sewing, but her eyes were so red and she looked so forlorn that I didn't say anything about it to distract her attention, btit just sat there and hoped that the needle wouldn't stick into her. "He was so big and so nice, Sal," she lamented, fishing in her many pockets for a handkerchief, as her eyes began to fill with tears. "Honestly, I simply adored that man. But what do you think — we went to the movies last night, and something had happened to the regular program — a film didn't come or something — and they slipped in one of mine. Oh, it was terrible !" "Why, didn't he like it?" I demanded. "Like it? Yes, that's just the trouble. He did. He laughed so hard that I moved over one seat and tried to pretend that I wasn't with him. He'd never seen me on the screen before, and, my dear, I truly thought he'd break something inside him if he laughed any more. I slipped out finally and went over to my aunt's to stay all night, so he wouldn't know where I was, and this morning I sent him a note saying that everything was over. Oh, it's terrible !" She really felt broken up over it. Try as I would, I couldn't make her see that his very sincere amusement had been a tribute to her ability as an actress. "It's not ability," she sobbed — she was using my sewing to dry her tears on by that time. "It's just^ being a perfect fool. I want a man to love me for something fine and noble in me, whether I'm really fine and noble or not. But do you suppose there could ever be anything beautiful about our relationship when he couldn't look at me without thinking about how funny I looked when I made myself cross-eyed and pigeon-toed and knock-kneed and got hit with a bucket of whitewash?" Thus ended that romance. The next year there came another. Gyp was no longer playing broad slapstick; she had progressed to subtler forms of amusing the populace. She was demurely funny by that time, but every little while her director would tuck in some bit of buffoonery that was reminiscent of the old days, and it always caused such an uproar that one could be sure she would never be able to get away from that sort of thing while she worked for him. The second man was romantic in exactly the melancholy way that she adored. They became engaged, and Gypsy finished a picture in a hurry and departed for New York to buy her trousseau. She was going to be married in the little New York town where she had been brought up, with four of her girlhood friends for bridesmaids and a flower bell hanging over her while the ceremony was performed. "I'm going to have the wedding ring carried up the aisle in the middle of a calla lily," I remember her telling me when she ran in to say good-by just before she