Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1923 - Feb 1924)

A Candle Flame which may some day flare into a beacon. By Myrtle Gebhart IF you have seen "Merry-Go-Round," that brilliant picture of the butterfly-life of Vienna in the prewar days, you will regard with amazement the work of little Mary Philbin who, by past performances, seemed slated for the oblivion in which most such beauty-contest winners end their screen days. There are flashes of poetry in her performance, keenly vitalized by something puzzling. That thing that you can't quite put your finger on in Mary's portrayal of the little organ-grinder who loves not wisely but too; well, is an unvoiced rebuke of circumstances that are ! doing their very best to ruin the talent born, by "the (graceof God, into this girl. One day I watched a "Merry-Go-Round" scene in its initial stages. Out at Universal had been recreated the i joy pool that was the Prater of Vienna before -the war. Young dandies of the nobility, with the license of their class, flirted outrageously. In the corner, grinding the hand-organ, stood a little girl, forlorn. So tired of futile dreams were her eyes ; now they shone like pools of mystic dark-blue water in the light reflected from the gayly colored incandescents of the whirling merry-go-round. Her thin, tight little lips relaxed, pouted in the merest suggestion of desire ; she was restless, eager. Nobody's face was smeared with ludicrous make-up ; there was about this scene a certain realism that made: it seem scarcely a picture set. Darting here, there, everywhere, the dictator of it all. A booming voice, a sharp rebuke, a guttural command. The scene bore unmistakably the imprint of Von Stroheim's masterly hand. He dominated. Once a motherly figure seated at the side lines rose as if to retaliate for a cutting reprimand to the little organgrinder who drooped tinder its harsh lash. A gesture from the director sent her, though ill at ease, back to her chair. Again the incandescents twinkled — again the girl's eyes grew sad with unfulfilled dreams — the scene went on. Months later I saw Mary Philbin again, working in a Fox picture, "The Temple of Venus." But there was little response; the fragile figure had a certain restraint, stolidity ; the blue eyes that sometimes lighten until they seem a dull, apathetic gray, were 'Strangely perplexed. The talent that had glowed that day on the "Merry-Go-Round" -set, brought out of its cocoon by a buffeting yet sympathetic force it scarcely understood, had flickered out. Mary Philbin is like a candle, an uncertain, pale light, easily smothered1, as easily surcharged to a higher flame. The candle is there, but alone it is apt to die out; its life depends upon circumstances. Three years ago a Chicago newspaper ran a beauty contest. A number of girls were assembled for Von Stroheim's final selection. There were beautiful young creatures there, vivid personalities. Way down the line stood a little person of some fifteen or sixteen summers. People wondered how the dickens she got in there — for she was very shy and, though graceful, bore no mark of distinction. But before her the director paused, questioning. He dimly perceived that in this fragile piece of girlhood there breathed some flame. And so he insisted that she be one of the two girls chosen for an opportunity in Universal pictures. Three years have passed since that day when, after a frenzy of packing, Mary and her mother boarded the train for California. All this while Mary has been working and, I must in frankness state, failing to register especially. Though photographing with a childlike prettiness, she seemed to lack the depth of feeling of which successful pantomimes are made. Not as shallow and vapid as they thought her, it was just her inability to give expression to the thing inside of her, the thing that beat its futile wings against barred1 doors. "I wanted to act but somehow it wouldn't come out," she told me at luncheon the other day. Like a prim child, very careful of her manners, she appeared in her lavender frock, her brown curls down her back, palpably proud of the ivory bracelet set with tiny diamonds that a girl friend had loaned her for the occasion of her first interview. "I could feel it inside of me, what they wanted me to do, but I couldn't make my face show it. "All the while I was trying so hard and failing so terribly, I thought Mr. Von had forgotten me and it made 'me miserable. But he hadn't. One day he told me he had written a story called 'Merry-Go-Round' with a part just for me. When he described it to me, I knew I could play that girl. The other directors didn't understand things the way he did. He'd talk to me for hours, explaining things. And when he'd' be cross with me, I couldn't help crying. "Then when Mr. Vcn left some said I'd never do anything under Mr. Julian's direction. I made up my mind," her thin little lips pressed firmly together, "I'd show them. I tried to remember all the 'things Mr. Von had told me. I felt all keyed up. Sometimes I knew I wasn't doing well and it seemed as if my heart would break." It is that nervous feeling that Von Stroheim awoke to expression from the plastic clay of little. Mary's soul that gave to her role those high lights of realism, that undercurrent of leashed frenzy as of a girl-soul starved. She idolizes Mr. Von; he is almost a god to her. He took her from the monotony of her childhood; he gave her this" "big chance. • After he left, nobody understood her. And I think a lot of credit should be given her for trying to keep the light shining that he had touched aflame in her. Mary Philbin's talent is utterly unconscious. Not a thing of the mind, of technique, rather a capacity for feeling, born into her, over which she as yet has little control. It is shut in. has no chance to develop,' for she is denied1 almost every contact which would teach her the things she should know about life. Her mother, tenacious to her faith in her daughter's talent, self-sacrificing, devoted, saw ahead a fulfillment of hopes, a release from the drabness of their Chicago life. Many have been her hardships, her denials, that Mary might put her best foot forward. Her concentration upon Mary's career is to be commended. But in some respects her overzealousness has retarded the development of the very one for whom she would give her life blood. Realizing as mothers do the dangers that beset the path of innocent young girls, Mrs. Philbin has guarded Mary even too closely for her own good. She is seldom allowed to go out alone or with other young people. In most girls, that fetchContinued on page 92