Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1926)

Sti Should Be a LIGHT, haunting, minor-chorded gypsy music drifted out through the full-length windows of Margaret Livingston's home to be cut short a moment later when I rang her bell and she came to admit me. Garbed in a full-skirted gypsy dress of brilliant colors, she had about her such a throbbing, breathlessly vital atmosphere of other lands as to make the modest little English doorwav seem incongruous. Still flushed from dancing, for this had been the reason for the music, she bowed the way into the low-ceilinged room where the central rugs had been cleared away for a lesson. "There's positively no excuse for this dance mania of mine," she laughinglv explained. "But I love it. I suppose that's the way with manias, isn't it?" This last was punctuated with a mischievously pensive little nwne. "Do you like my dress? Just think how heavenly it would be if we could wear clothes like this all the time. I detest modern styles, everything is so stiff and straight. Nothing is frilly and full. Just look at these gorgeous colors," she said, indicating the riot of reds and greens and blues that were traced in a pattern around her skirt. "You know." she continued, "I can dance much better in costume, even when I'm alone. It sort of takes away Margaret Livingston weighs the role rather than attempting too By Mona the self-consciousness. I suppose, though, people would say it's the atmosphere." As she talked, her long, sensitive fingers fluttered from one part of the varicolored embroidery to another, in gentle little pats. Her present dancing craze, she explained, had come suddenly, though she did admit, with an apologetic giggle, that, as a child, instead of delving into the intricacies of mud pies, she had spent her time entertaining the other children of the neighborhood with her capers — all of them impromptu and executed away from the disapproving eyes of her parents. Since that time, some twelve or more years ago, the innate desire to danc.e has been secretly fermenting within her. Consequently, not much was required to bring it to a head. A short while ago, she lost a part, on which she had set her heart, simply because she couldn't do a Spanish dance. She streaked out of the studio, and within two hours, had hired not one, but two, dancing instructors, and ever since then has been making them trot out for her every variety of step in their repertoire. "You know, all the signs are against me," she said airily. "Can you imagine it. me prancing about in these dance steps and trying to make a success as a motionpicture actress when my veins are flowing with a mixture of pure Swedish and Scotch blood !" Scotch and Swedish! Ye gods! could this quiveringly sensitive little firebrand, with her saucily bobbed" red hair and her chameleon-colored eyes be created from such staid, unemotional, phlegmatic stock as that of the Swedish and Scotch? "Everybody seems to think you have to be Irish or French to be good on the stage nowadays, but I'll fool 'em. Have you any children ? Naturally, this brought the answering gasp that the prefix was ''Miss." "Oh, well, that doesn't make any difference," she said, with a nonchalant shrug. "I'm a 'Miss,' too, but I have one. I adopted him. Every one adopts children these days. I love them. When I make some money, I'm going to adopt some more. You see, I'm more sensible than a real flesh-and-blood mother would be, because real mothers always think their children are perfect and I can see Emerson's faults. "He's just eight and the sweetest little thing vou ever