We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
55
Lid Off
the part of "Ponjola," and her usual about motion pictures, Anna Q. sion on this interviewer.
Gassaway iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii^
Take me just as I am and if I have to be painted up for you then I'm not worth a nickel and you aren't worth much more !"
But when she starts to talk ! I wish some inventor would find a way to make articulate the pages of our fan magazines so that we could hear the voices of all our favorites ! You would love the voice of Anna O. Nilsson. It is low and vibrant and compelling, with a strong indication of determination in it. Here is a young woman who knows just exactly what she is doing every single minute. And I suspect that she has known for a long time, ever since, perhaps, she left her little Swedish village — "because her family simply could not stop her," as she explains — and came to New York to find out why and how all the Americans who came to Sweden were so well dressed and had so much money.
"People tell me I should not play 'heavies.' They say that the fans won't like me if I do. But I love 'em — human heavies — not the kind who get into mischief for no apparent reason.
"And I get more fan letters after my heavy roles than I ever did. And I get the jobs."
She is so open and aboveboard in her statements that she seems almost abrupt. She abruptly fired this at me when we had been acquainted only about five minutes and just after she had expilained that she scrubs her face so often with soap and water that she has to grease it to keep it from cracking.
To understand why Anna Nilsson is about the most in demand of any leading woman in filimdom, we must first understand Anna O.
In the first place, she does not care to play herself upon the screen, always. Other players have made this same assertion, hut not all live up to it. Miss Nilsson evidently does not feei that her face, in repose, is her fortune. A great many suddenly boosted stars never mussed their faces — and where are thev now? Anna has done everything possible to play all kinds of parts, even to forcing "Ponjola" down Sam Rork's throat. And I'll bet he's verra g'lad she did it.
And she is particular. She works like all get-out when she's working. Just how particular she can be is shown in what she told me of her childhood days in Sweden.
When she was a little a:irl she alwavs wanted to be
Photo by Edwin Bower Hesser
Before essaying the part of "Ponjola'" Anna Q. Nilsson looked like this.
very neat and clean. She couldn't stand a speck of dirt. She hated dirt so that she used to drag her playmates to her mother and have them scrubbed before she would play with them.
"I loved the children of the neighborhood," she explained in the positive, fascinating voice, "but they had to be clean. If I went to a party and spilled some refreshments on my dress,, I had to have the spot washed out before I could go on playing."
She loves people now, but they have to pass a rigid test, I think, before they qualify to her gallery of specially selected friends. And likewise she is meticulous about her work.
She wants to pick and choose her roles.
"I've had many, many offers to tie up to some company for a long-term contract ever since I left Kalem