Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1926)

45 William Powell Their Ideal Girls asked what they like in a way of a girl, and favorites as well as their favorites in real life. William Powell One's ideal heroine? What a delightful question to muse upon. And particularly if one be a screen bad man who loves and pursues and loses them all. Doomed to be beaten, bruised, and knifed, at the very moment of anticipated conquest. For feminine fragility and ethereal charm, who can surpass, or even equal, Lillian Gish ? Magnolia skin, hair of pale gold, shy eyes that would like to be merry if only they knew how, and sad little drooping mouth. You want to bring joy into her life to curve it into a smile, that hurt, rosebud mouth, instead of bruising it with your villainous kisses. Her wistfulness breathes the spell of lavender and old lace. That delicacy appeals to man's protective instinct. And yet the hapless villain must make her life miserable on the screen. She reminds me of an altar piece of Lorenzo Lotto's that I saw at Santa Spirito. He painted the rare good that whitened the licentious sixteenth-century Italy. Cool and lovely and pure, a spiritual inspiration. In personal life? My ideal, if I could fashion her from nebulous dreaming, would be a bewitching composite of personality and fascination. Culled from the qualities of the lovely ladies whom I have lured and lost on stage and screen, and known as friends the while, she would combine Lillian Gish's wistful charm, Dorothy Gish's vivacity, Bebe Daniels' piquancy, Alma Rubens' stately beauty, and Elsie Ferguson's indefinable allure. I must sigh and think of her no more to-day. She is too elusive, this ideal of mine, and not for the villain to win. Leslie Fenton I have five qualifications for my ideal girl. A brunette. Brainy but not brilliant. Not under five feet two inches or over five feet five. I don't care for half portions, nor do I feel at ease with a girl taller than myself. She must dress well but never showily. I want her to be attractive to other men, but I must know where I stand, because, though competition is interesting, too much of it is bad for one's peace of mind. I consider Madge Bellamy and Betty Compson the prettiest girls in the movies. I have worked with Madge, and like her more the better I know her. She is good fun, but with reserve. I imagine that when she was quite small she used to sit on the front steps, all prim and starchy white, and smile little boys into fighting over the privilege of carrying her schoolbooks, probably giving them both a stern vamoose after the fray was over. Leslie Fenton John Roche John Roche Choosing an ideal heroine in a business largely made up of heroes and heroines is a task as difficult as selecting the most beautiful woman of all time. For Hollywood's beauties rival the charmers of history. And any woman who has arrived at success on the screen is a heroine, because the road is a long, hard one. About four years ago, I met a very beautiful and cultured young lady just then embarking upon a picture career. When I realized that she also possessed pluck and common sense, I learned to admire her greatly. As I watched her fighting her way, yet always displaying perfect breeding, she became my ideal in real life. She has that rare combination : a practical firmness under the gentle manner of the true aristocrat. My screen ideal is lovely Norma Shearer. Want to know something" interesting? Norma Shearer is that girl I watched start in pictures. So my screen and off-screen ideal are one and the same delightful young lady. Gilbert Roland I like a girl who is sensitive and sensible. I would prefer her shy, with a spiritual understanding and appreciation of things, rather than a sophisticated slant at life. I have little preference between blondes and brunettes. I care more about disposition than I do about complexion. Above all things I admire sincerity in a girl. I like beauty, too, but I think that a girl may have great personal charm without being beautiful. I do not know either Mary Philbin or Mary Astor, but each is typical, in a way, of the girl that I like best. Don Alvarado What has become of the sweet, old-fashioned girl ? Has she gone away, never to return, this tactfully witty, intelligent, but reserved lady? Now she has gone and got herself a boy cut and short, flippant skirts and a jazzy manner. I wish some wizard would stand her in a corner and say "Hocuspocus" over her and change her back into her real self. ' Of screen charmers, I love most to see Nita Naldi, Aileen Pringle, Patsy Ruth Miller, and Alice Terry, for I have varied each, in her answers. I like to fancy in them incarnations of fiction heroines, typical of various authors. Nita Naldi is Sappho in a gown from the Rue de la Paix. Explosive, quick to anger, deep of feeling, with force and power— the effective siren. She has vitality, a magnetism that stimulates you. You fancy that, were she to talk to you from the screen, her darts would fly with arrow speed — scintillant cuts of sharp verbal steel. And the next instant she would whisper [Continued on page 96] Gilbert Roland impulses which shadow reflection. Don Alvarado