Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1925 - Feb 1926)

30 Over the Teacups Photo by Woodbury Almost every girl in pictures has yearned to play a Michael Aden heroine, but Dorothv Sebastian, in "The Dancer from Paris," will be the first one to do it. already made a success in pictures, they didn't engage her. Sam Goldwyn was the wise man who first gave her a chance in 'Stella Dallas.' He's not type bound." "Whatever that may mean," I prodded her on to explain. Well ' ' — Fanny hesitated — "being type bound is thinking that all ingenues have blond curly hair, that all sirens are tall and willowy and have sleek black hair, that all villains are foreigners with arched eyebrows, and all mothers white-haired. My favorite story about casting true to type is of the undertaker up at the funeral parlors where most actors end their careers. A perfectly normal, plain-looking corpse was sent there, and they wouldn't bury him because he wasn't the type." With her abundance of enthusiasm, Fanny turned from talk of death before I could remark that she came to praise actors, not to bury them. "Are pictures really getting much better or am I in my second childhood?" she asked suddenly, and before I could remark that no one had ever observed that she had outgrown her first, she rambled on. "For a while, all the motion-picture studios in town seemed just like factories. Every one was grimly intent on work, but lately, they have been real play rooms. Up at the Cosmopolitan studios, Leon Errol keeps the 'Clothes Make the Pirate' company in gales of laughter. On a neighboring set, Ben Lyon makes 'The New Commandment' people relax from work long enough for a general rough-house started as a game of tag. And over at Famous Players, mobs of people gather round every afternoon to watch Bessie Love dance the Charleston. "How Bessie can dance ! For a while she wondered if she really were any good at it or if her friends were just prejudiced in her favor. So, she went down to a little theater in Great Neck where they have amateur contests, entered under an assumed name, and won without a dissenting vote! I heard she was going to do the Charleston in 'The King on Main Street,' and I hope it's true. "The Famous Players studio is a fascinating place to visit now. Betty Bronson, Tom Moore, and Dorothy Cumming, to say nothing of a mob of pretty girls, are finishing 'A Kiss for Cinderella;' Gloria Swanson has every one in an uproar over her slapstick comedy in 'Stage Struck;' Thomas Meighan and Lois Wilson are finishing the picture they started over in Ireland ; Richard Dix and Esther Ralston are working on 'Womanhandled' out in the back yard; Carol Dempster and Harrison Ford and W. C. Fields are doing 'That Royle Girl ;' and Monta Bell has the most glorious cast you ever saw in 'The King on Main Street' — Adolphe Menjou, Bessie Love, Greta Nissen, Edgar Norton, and Carlotta Monterey. "I was over there the other day when there was a regular convention on Thomas Meighan's set. Carmelita Geraghty came over with Virginia Valli — they had just returned from Europe, and were so beautifully dressed no one could be expected to like them. Bessie Love came for a few minutes. If Lila Lee had only been there, they could have started an even more exciting argument with Tom over which one was his favorite leading woman. But Lila and James Kirkwood are out in the dog towns somewhere trying out 'Edgar Allen Poe.' Gloria Swanson had every one in the studio in an uproar over hsr slapstick comedy in "Stage Struck. " Photo by Eugene Robert T.xhee