Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1926)

84 Could You Endure a Test Like This? You might not have to, but Ruth Taylor did, and though it was hard at first, she doesn't regret it now. By Caroline Bell TWO great wistful eyes looked into the face of .Mack Sennett and it appeared as though a flood of tears was preparing to gush — not trickle or creep — but gush, in a bitter torrent. Little Rtith Taylor stood before him. She believed she could act. Seven hundred and fifty feet of film had been shot in making a screen test of her, and disapproval was now to be seen in every movement and comment of the celebrated producer. He, personally, was directing the taking of the tests. "You're round-shouldered !" be snapped. "Can't you put those shoulders back — where tl belong?" Ruth bravely elevated them, had been listening to pointed, j sonal comment for an hour. "Let's see you walk!" The half-frightened child moved across the floor, doing her best to poise her body easily, naturally, gracefully upon her feet. But her self-consciousness, her knowing that this worldrenowned critic was watching, with keen, discerning eye, her every movement, made her dizzy and she just sloped the floor. Her movewas indicative of a bruised flivver, groaning along with two flat tires and with the carburetor filled with water. Mr. Sennett opened his eyes in amazement. "Do you walk that way all the time?" he asked, sarcastically. Ruth's mist-clouded eyes turn toward him again and that floock holding back the tears, saggec swayed heavily on its hinares. Bu across ment though straining its hinges, every ounce of its strength. "Well, n-n-not exactly," she replied. "You see, I feel a-a little nervous. I — I can't d-do exactly as " "Never mind that!" Mr. Sennett interrupted. "How much do you weigh?" "About a hundred," said Ruth, almost whispering. "You're too thin." He didn't say it gently. He barked it. And the little blue-eyed blonde looked as though she expected the bark to be followed by a bite. More tests followed. She registered fear, hate, anger, jealousy, and all the human emotions at her command. And all the while, that great ogre sat by the camera barking out commands. Lie had the girl scared to death. He made pointed remarks about her efforts. He broke in when she was doing her best and made her do it over again. He pointed out a million faults she didn't know she possessed. He asked her where she learned that! When she was executing her best portrayal of anger and hate, he broke in with, "What are you doing now ?" She thought he should have known ! Then, when it was all finished, he looked her over again and said, straight out : If you don't know Ruth Taylor yet, watch for her in some of the Mack Sennett comedies. "You can't act !" The room swam before her eyes. The noise of passing motor cars out on Glendale Boulevard, fifty feet away, might as well have been in the Grand Canon so. far as her hearing was concerned. Her senses were numbed. Slowly, ever so slowly, she reached for her coat and hat and stumbled toward the exit door. In her mind ran the thought, "I'm a failure ! I won't do. He doesn't want me. I'm only one out of this crowd of two hundred blondes seeking this job. And he has bawled me out before them all. He told me and he told them that I couldn't ! Oh, why didn't he take me off > one side and say gently and nicely that I wouldn't do !" She groped her way toward the exit, but Mack Sennett's voice stopped her. "Can you come back here again in the morning?" he asked. "Yes, sir." "Well, be here at nine." "Yes, sir." Then she went out into the flood of California sunlight and wondered why he wanted her again, if she couldn't act. She didn't know. Nor did she know that, as soon as she was gone, Mr. Sennett turned to his camera man and said : "Great guns ! what do you think of her?" Nor did she know that he rushed a telephone and got in touch with attorney and told him to draw a contract between him and Ruth Taylor and have it at the studio before nine o'clock the next morning. And she didn't know that the one hundred and ninetynine other blondes were summarily dismissed and that Mr. Sennett passed a lot of anxious hours wondering if he had been too gruff with this little girl who had drifted into movieland from Portland,. Oregon. When she reached the studio the next morning, she found it out. Instead of being put through more grueling screen tests and being bluntly told that she was round-shouldered, couldn't walk, couldn't act, and was too thin, she was ushered into Mr. Sennett's private office and presented with a contract that called for her services exclusively for a period of five years and provided that she should be given leading roles in Mack Sennett productions. The truth of the matter was that she did not know Mack Sennett!: She did not know that he had been aiding her by working her up to a high pitch of excitement— that he had been making her give her best, at high speed. She did not know that, secretly, the great producer had been elated at the results he was There isn't a bigger, kindlier heart in the movie Continued on page 103 getting.