Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1925 - Feb 1926)

100 The Movies and Love Continued from page 18 Obviously, the thing for her to do was to find work which she would want to do, work with which she could fall in love. She liked going to movies, provided the picture shown was one in which women wore beautiful costumes. She said that she could almost feel the delicate silks and velvets beneath her hand. She enjoyed any picture in which there were beautiful sets and lovely costumes. "Do you ever go into the costume department at the studio?" I asked her. "Have you ever thought of studying costume design ?" She hadn't ; she knew nothing about sewing or designing. She went in, one day after that, and was so happy just handling the beautiful fabrics that were used that the answer to her problem lay right there before her. She gave up her position and took one in the costume department, that brought her much less money. Most of that money, incidentally, she spent on clothes for herself, clothes made of the fabrics which she liked to handle. It might have seemed useless extravagance to one who did not understand, but it really was economy. She was happier in fabrics that she liked than she was in the cheaper ones that she had bought when she was putting all the money that she could spare into the bank. She was saving her own ability to work, her own power. She advanced rapidly in her new work because she cared so much for it. Every moment that she was at it, and even after she had gone home at night, her mind was going back to it, as the mind of a man or a girl who is in love goes out to the beloved one. Therefore new energy, new intelligence, was released to go into that work. To-day she is a remarkably successful young woman, with an establishment of her own. The work with which she could fall in love has brought her everything that she has always wanted. You may feel that life hasn't been quite fair to you, that you haven't had the opportunities you should have enjoyed, that things have been difficult for you. Ifi" you could really understand yourself you would real ize that the fault has Jain with'1 yourself, because you did not k>^JW how to use the ability which r'ea''-y was yours. It lies within vo..irself, but you have not known how to release it. It is like the ability to love, which does not have its full expression in the majority of lives. In many cases, things which have happened during childhood, conditions which have prevailed at that time, have resulted in the bottling up of one's ability. This ability has never been released. It is a gold mine that lies within. The key to your own character is within your own reach, if you know how to take hold of it. Through analyzing your own preferences in motion pictures, through seeing what you like best in the pictures to which you go, and why you like certain people or certain things, you can see what you have been missing, what ability you have used only partly, perhaps, and perhaps not at all. It is there before you, if you know what to do with it. Because a Woman Believed Continued from page 33 again, she came back to me. I had to live down that reputation for undependability. Finally, Bernie Fineman gambled on me and let me direct two Evelyn Brent films. What a great feeling it was to be in harness ! I slaved like a Trojan, and once the word got around that I was running even again, I felt a gradual change in the attitude toward me, more friendliness. "But still it was hard. I had to fight my own cussed disposition, the impulse to flare up, to disagree. I had to beat my cantankerous spirit into subjection, into calm cooperation. But I won. I schooled my tongue and eventually had my temper under control. "Then Irving Thalberg sent for me. Irv had always believed in me — we had worked together on the U lot — but he had to fight harder for me than for anybody or anything else he has ever gone to the mat for. Say, there's nothing I wouldn't do for that boy ! "M.-G.-M. took me on. The story, question came up. For seven years I had wanted to do 'The Unholy Three.' It had been owned by almost every film company. Many directors had considered it, recognizing its novel theme and interesting characters, but every one of them had discarded it as one of those things the industry is afraid of. It had certain gruesome possibilities that might be offensive. It wasn't pretty and light and sentimental. Even Irv balked, but when I told him the treatment I planned, he wired to his New York office to buy it for me. "Hollywood laughed, and shrugged me aside. 'Here he's got a big chance to come back, but he's up to his old tricks,' they said, with the air of washing their hands of me. 'Tod always was a fool and always will be one.' "I got a little scared, myself, realizing that all my 'hopes of reinstating myself rested upon the success of this one picture, and also that its failure would reflect upon Irv's usually canny business instinct. I didn't want to get him in bad. "But Alice backed me up. When she met the producers' wives at teas and luncheons, and the} repeated, 'Joe says this can't possibly succeed — why don't you make Tod drop it and try something else?' she just smiled and replied, 'Why should he? I believe in it and he believes in it.' "She had always thought the story had possibilities, and it meant the fulfillment of a seven-year dream to me, besides bringing me back. I had a novel theme and story, splendid actors, but most of all, faith in what I was doing — and carte blanche. It was to be Tod Browning, sink or swim. And if you look back you will see that most of the best pictures have been to a great extent one person's inspiration. Too many minds are bound to cause conflict." So that is the story of how "The Unholy Three" came to be filmed. Into his unusual picture he introduced adroit humor ; and the characterizations were uncannily clever. It brought something distinctly new to the screen, an eerie quality made into entertainment without any of the usual trimmings. Even the hackneyed courtroom scene had a breath of novelty. And the man proved himself a genius at sustaining suspense until the moment of a swift and logical climax. True, his actors contributed skillful and human performances, but the picture is really Tod Browning — the Tod Browning that one woman had known once and believed might be reborn. It is a success because she had faith in it, and in the man who made it. He will next film two of those stories that he salvaged from his moody weeks at the typewriter, when he was shut in from the world, wallowing in melancholy self-disgust. One deals with a criminal's regeneration, the other is an expose of fake spiritualism. Oh, yes ; the sequel is a happy home, over which a charming woman presides, to which every evening a man huries as fast as his new car can take him.