Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1923 - Feb 1924)

Over the Teacups 49 Fanny pretended to be so preoccupied that she didn't hear me. "If I could look like any one in the world I wanted to," she announced apropos of nothing, it seemed to me, "I don't know whether I'd rather look like Alma Rubens or Aileen Pringle. You know, there is a prominent woman novelist whose publisher asked her for a photograph of herself to use in advertising and she didn't like any of her own so she just sent him one of Alma's. It would serve her right if Alma used her name." "Yes, on checks or charge accounts or something like that," I suggested recklessly. "If you want to know who I'd choose to look like if I had my choice " "It would be Claire Windsor," Fanny cut in. "And I don't know as I blame you." She retreated behind the cover of an enormous vanity box while she made up her lips in a long thin yellow line, but a moment later she was prattling on. "Shirley Mason's in town and the poor girl is terribly worried. Her husband was taken ill while he was directing Gallagher and Shean in a picture and he insisted on trying to go on with his work and he got much worse and now Shirley is afraid he is going to have pneumonia. And Gloria Swanson is in the hospital recovering from an operation. The last few days she was working on 'Zaza' she was so ill she could hardly stand up. Alan Dwan must think that hoodoos and jinxes are hovering over him all the time. When he made 'Glimpses of the Moon,' Bebe Daniels was stricken with appendicitis and he had hardlv started 'Zaza' when Gloria was taken ill "But speaking of Alan Dwan " Her voice trailed off into a whisper as she waved across the room to a cunning little girl from the Fox studio. "He thought he saw a ghost out on his set the other day. He was just ready to shoot a scene in 'Zaza.' Gloria Swanson and H. B. Warner were all ready to start work when in walked a ghostly figure carrying a glass of water. It was Dorothy Mackaill, | dressed in a flowing negligee for a scene in 'His Children's Children' and she had blundered on to the 'Zaza' set by mistake. That has always been one of my pet horrors — that I'd walk out in front of a f camera some time when I was going through a studio. "Mr. Dwan had never met Dorothy before. Wasn't that a funny introduction? And wouldn't it make a funny scene in a studio picture like 'Hollywood?' " "You're like that crazv character in Dickens that always introduced King Charles into every conversa tion. No matter what you start to talk about you wind up with a few remarks about James Craze's rushed East masterpiece, for a few days before Heard from the starting work on Bettys lately?" "Black Oxen." One of the most interesting newcomers to films is Ina Anson, a little dancer who is appearing in Goldwy n pictures. "Not directly," Fanny admitted. "But I heard that Betty Compson has been offered just loads of money to stay in France and make two or three pictures. And that Betty Blythe has finished 'Chu Chin Chow' and is making another. I heard she was playing 'Mary, Queen of Scots,' but I don't know how true that is. "Oh, but have you heard that Carl Wallman has come over to work in Goldwyn pictures ? He is a handsome young Swedish actor who came over winter before last looking for engagements but that was during the motion-picture slump and he couldn't get in any big productions, so he went back home," she rambled on breathlessly. "He was the one we used to see at the quaint little Continued on page 100