Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1925 - Feb 1926)

Over the Teacups 31 "But speaking of try-outs" — Fanny's voice rose to a shrill crescendo of enthusiasm — "every one envies me. for I went up to Stamford and saw Mattel Normand on the stage in 'The Little Mouse.' Mabel is simply darling. She was nervous about making herself heard, but she needn't have been, because you can hear her even in the back of the theater, and her voice is quite lovely. She implored me not to come — she was nervous, and preferred appearing just before strangers. But I simply couldn't stav away. And when I went backstage to see her, instead of being annoyed, she chuckled, 'Oh, you darling !' and heaped my arms full of orchids that she had had sent up from New York for me. "Just before the curtain went up for the first act, a woman slipped in unobtrusively and sat in front of me, and who should it be but Geraldine Farrar, who had come to applaud her old coworker at the Goldwyn lot ! She had motored over from her summer home, forty miles away. "Later on, when the play comes into town and settles down for a run, Mabel will make pictures again. In the meantime, people are simply flocking to see her. After all, no one else has ever been adored quite as Mabel is." "But tell me," I demanded eagerly, "can you see her feet on the stage?" "Yes, and they are just as cute and expressive as they ever were on the screen. They're never still for a minute. She certainly has exclamatory legs. "I wonder sometimes if any of the new players, like Greta Nissen and Betty Bronson, will ever build up the tremendous following that Norma Talmadge and Mabel Normand and Mary Pickford had. It's hard to tell, because now you can't go to see your favorite in a new picture every four weeks, as you could in the days when fans were fans, and girls became bitter enemies because they disagreed about their favorite movie stars. "Paramount has two new players for whom they have high hopes. I can see a future for one of them. That's Ruth Wilcox. She is a lovely looking girl, very reserved in manner and patrician in type. She has just finished playing a bit in 'Stage Struck,' and now she is being sent to California to make a picture for William de Mille. ''Incidentally, she and Dorothy Sebastian both came from George White's 'Scandals,' and now it is up to them to prove that the 'Scandals' is — or should it be are — just as great a cradle of film talent as the 'Follies.' They roomed together and often used to discuss going to Hollywood to break into pictures. They couldn't both afford to go, so Alice Laidley, otherwise known as Mrs. John Harriman, is playing in Griffith's "That \oyle Girl." ) i Pboto by Maurice Goldbercr Photo by Eugene Robert Richee Bessie Love wondered for a while whether her friends were just kidding her or whether she really was good ,,\ at the Charleston, so she entered a contest incognito and won it without a dissenting vote. Dorothy went, and with her success as encouragement, Ruth Wilcox tried her luck here. Neither of them has had any of the heartbreaking struggles that most beginners go through. "Gloria was awfully nice to Ruth Wilcox, gave her every encouragement and lots of good advice. By the way — Gloria has been working simply frantically in order to finish 'Stage Struck' in time to go abroad for a three-week vacation with her husband. She may sav that she is going to Paris to buy clothes for her next picture, but / know that she is going to buy a box of games that Allan Continued on page 112