Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1925 - Feb 1926)

Looking On with an Extra Girl 63 Sitting cynically over glasses of imitation champagne, dancing, animating, and turning with interest as the principals enter. Joseph Henabery proved to have a beautiful disposition — he was more like a tall, lean, benignant professor than a director. He was trustingly patient through the numerous inevitable stupidities — apparently with a childlike faith that everything would come out all right. He worked with evident enjoyment — going carefully over each scene to get everything possible out of it — but not taking it hard. The entrance of Nita Naldi was a thing of great interest. We had read, of course, of her great weight-reducing act and were curious to see how she would differ from the Nita who left Hollywood a year ago. Now, don't be alarmed — you won't find a brunet Claire Windsor when you look for Nita now. She is still much like a Zuloaga lady come to life. But she is very noticeably slimmer and most becomingly so. The change has done something to make her odd beauty finer and less "hit-you-in-the-eye." And her arms and hands are perhaps the most perfectly modeled in pictures. Have you noticed them? With Miss Naldi was one of the loveliest ladies ever seen off a W. T. Benda cover. You know that weird sweetness, that sensuous delicacy he gives his pictures ? It might have been his original model who stood beside Miss Naldi,. with clear gray eyes, chiseled features, and sleek brown coils over her ears. For most of us it was the initial glimpse of Natacha Rambova Valentino. Anything less beautiful would have called ' forth catty sympathy for Rudolph, anything less charming and gracious would have invited antagonism. As it was, Mrs. Valentino's severest audience was enchanted. You know Iww enchanted when it was gravely admitted that there could be no more worthy and fitting mistress for the famous blue house on Whitely Heights. But to return to our hero. Rudy at work was a very serious person, and an untiring. There was one scene in which another man had a bit of business— an unskillful youth who toiled painfully through manv takes and retakes. Although it was past lunch time neither Henabery nor Valentino showed any impatience. Rudv, on the contrary, passed it off as nothing at all and went through each take, not only pleasantly, but helping the other man m big little ways known only to the profession. Tempermental? It is more than likely that some resentful pseudoValentino unleashed many of those rumors that drifted from the "Beaucaire" sets. Between shots .it was a boyish Rudolph who chatted on the side lines with Casson Ferguson — back in pictures after an illness and a trip abroad— and Gertrude Olmstead, a pretty little foil for Naldi in her blond wig. Now he would sit by Nita where she read quietly, and they would laugh and joke like a pair of good pals. Or now he was arm in arm with the beautiful Natacha — off to look at some new set. In one of the last scenes Valentino and Miss Naldi danced among the crowd. I sternly instructed my part During the making of "Cobra," the Valentino personality seemed as potent as ever, while a slimmer and lovelier Nita Naldi graced the role of the siren. ner to follow them closely, that I might see exactly what shade of brown The Eyes were. They are a very dark and disturbing brown, my dears, and in case your escort would be interested, Nita's are startlingly green with curled-back lashes. All in all, do you get the point ? Rudolph Valentino is a good scout, a gentleman, beside being one of the great acting-personalities of the decade. I had gone out to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio to wrest seven dollars and fifty cents from the coffers of those mighty triplets. Armed with my yellow ticket I was closing in on the cashier's office when the sound of music from a near-by stage halted me. You know — always more spiritual than commercial, and what not. But this was really odd melody — neither Liszt (heavy emotional work) nor Berlin (some heroine's lighter moments). It was, in fact, a series of transitions from "Sweet Rosie O'Grady" to "The Bowery" and "Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer True." Stepping inside I found Monta Bell, Marion Davies. and Conrad Nagel in the midst of their first day on "Lights of Old New York." It is a story of that town in the 'seventies and Conrad looked ready to burst into "Daisy" at any moment. He does not look misplaced in a costume and in his becoming beaver hat and side