Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1925 - Feb 1926)

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74 The Talk of Several Towns Accustomed as they are to the royal sums paid to motion-picture stars, the profession and the public gasped at the figures of the Paramount-Gilda Gray contract. But she's worth the money; here is why. By Helen Klumph ABOUT two years ago Allan Dwan wanted a spectacular cabaret scene for one part of "Lawful Larceny," so he persuaded Gilda Gray, then the reigning favorite of the Ziegfeld "Follies" and a night club, to come and do her South Sea Island dance before the camera. It was a brief bit and people were surprised at her willingness to do it, for the money meant little to her and the time it took meant a great deal. But Gilda Gray was curious to see how she filmed. If she was any good, she intended to give up all her other interests, and devote all her time to making pictures. Usually conservative critics saw her one close-up and declared that she filmed like an angel. That settled that. She was going to be a picture star. But motion-picture producers were not standing around waiting for her with bulging money bags and a glad hand. They argued that while she might go over big on Broadway, the rest of the country didn't know her. So Gilda set out, as soon as existing contracts would let her, to prove that she did have a public throughout the country. She went on a dancing tour, and just to show that she had faith in herself even if others didn't, she took a percentage of the house receipts wherever she played instead of a guaranteed salary. ,By about the fourth week of that tour, she had earned the tftle "The Golden Girl." Not because of her sunny hair and disposition, but because of the fortunes she brought into box-offices wherever she played. The story of that tour is one of the most sensational ones in all theater history. In twenty weeks she played eighteen theaters, breaking attendance records wherever she appeared. Over one million two hundred thousand people paid to see her, and her share of the earnings was one hundred and eight thousand nine hundred dollars. By the time the tour was about half over, motionpicture producers were ready to talk real money to her. Paramount finally signed her at a reported salary of six thousand dollars a week, and a share of the profits on each picture. There are only a few of the most popular motion-picture stars who get as much. She who laughs last, laughs best, as no one needs to point out to those men who laughed at the idea of Gilda Gray becoming one of the highest-salaried picture stars. Naturally the Paramount company wanted to get for her first picture the most dramatic and fascinating story they could find in all literature. Search as they would they couldn't find one to their liking. They had to turn away from books and dig into the materials of life itself— proving again that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. The story they chose was Gilda's own. Glancing back over the two years or so that I have known Gilda Gray, and realizing that the most significant events in the drama of her life were enacted before then, it seems to me that they will have to make a series ■ — not one picture — if they are to portray the fullness of her life at all. There are so many Gilda Grays. There is little Gilda Gray, aged seven, a Polish immigrant with a shawl over her head, arriving in New York harbor and weaving with childish fancies all the marvelous stories she had heard of the promised land. She never has been able to describe the feeling that swept over her then, but years later when she heard Dvorak's "New World Symphony," she said, "There — that's it! That's how you feel when you come to America." Her father went to work for the Cudahy Packing Company in Milwaukee, so Gilda traveled what seemed halfway across the world again and started in a school where they spoke a foreign language, and where children romped about carefree with none of the reserve and dignity she had been taught in the old country. She was hardly more than a child when she married. And then came heartbreaking disappointments ; poverty, sickness, entire lack of understanding. Her husband went away, leaving her with her baby son and no means of support. She had a husky, vibrant voice with a peculiar note of sadness in it that was just made for singing the "Blues," which was just becoming popular. She practiced it and got a job at twelve dollars a week singing in a Polish cafe. Hardly had she started singing there when the old mantle of sadness that had hung over her like a pall ever since her unfortunate marriage began to lift. She became ambitious the first time she saw a dancer of primitive Indian dances. She imitated his undulating, swaying motion and that night when she sang she delightedly danced a little. The proprietor ordered her to stop. She didn't impose her dancing on his patrons after that, but every night when she reached home weary and aching from singing almost continuously for hours, she practiced dancing before her mirror. Then came a"n offer to sing in a Chicago cafe at the magnificent salary of thirty dollars a week. It was down in the lowest section of the city where audiences are made up of characters from the underworld and from slummers in search of a thrill. When they saw Gilda dance, they got it. The dance, which seemed to be introduced simultaneously in all parts of the country, was known as the "shimmy." Gilda got the idea for her version from the notion of a rhythmic, ever-moving, bodily marcel wave. Soon she became so famous that anything that shook, from a Ford car to a dish of gelatine, was nicknamed "Gilda." But even then there were hard times ahead. Urged to go to New York to try her fortunes she went and enjoyed one successful season in a cabaret. But summer came and there was no work to be had and Gilda often went hungry. She got a job in a show and that closed. She went through all the agon} of be-ing alone and poor and weary in New York, the most trying city in the world. Eventually success came and she caught the attention of Gil Boag, one of the most successful restaurant and cabaret exploiteers on Broadway. He became her manager. Together they forged ahead until she was not merely a success ; she was the talk of the town. He bent every effort toward advancing not only her career but all her private interests. He helped her delve into the sources of weird, primitive music which gave her the inspiration for her dances. He surrounded her with interesting friends. Then one day he even helped her to divorce the husband who had deserted her years before Continued on page 104