Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1926)

83 Georgia, Unlimited Of the younger actresses, Georgia Hale is one who really has omething to her and whose future possibilities seem unbounded. By Dorothy Manners DO you remember the scene in "The Gold Rush" where Chaplin, as the little tramp, stood staring wistfully at the dance-hall girl, known to the Alaskan saloons as "Georgia?" He was in love with her — which was pitiful, because she didn't know he was on earth. He just watched her and wondered if she would possibly look at him when she turned around. Well, she turned around finally, but she didn't look at him — just moved indifferently away. The little tramp sighed, for he was very much in love with that lovely lady named "Georgia." In real life that lady's name is Georgia Hale. She is a comparatively new "discovery." Which doesn't mean anything. What is more important is that she is a young actress of such charm and beauty and dramatic power that I am going to make a personal opinion into a prophecy about her that can be taken for what it is worth. With the and is going a wav as of beauty that is as underAnd she can can act. Talmadge s. she was conscious of meeting a distinct barring grace of Fortune, accidents, this girl to know fame in such only a handful of other screen women have known it. You know the one about some people being born to fame, others acquiring it, and others having it thrust upon them? Well, Georgia was born to it. She is a marked girl. Unless all the good guessers in Hollywood have guessed wrong, she is to be a vital feminine figure before the camera. Not to-day, nor the day after, but in the years to come, that are necessary for any real achievement, will this girl be seen somewhere near the head of her very glamorous profession. I sound like a press agent and I know it. But I like to get enthused about people and I really am enthused about Georgia. She is so unlimited. You can usually see where most of the girls who are hailed as "big bets" are going to stop. For instance, there is a very talented little girl whose gift for acting is close to genius, but she is being made into an imitator of Lillian Gish. There isn't room for the two of them. Another lady is limited by her vampy exoticism. She is too Oriental, too caviar, for our national palate. A certain recent find, hailed to the skies in a flare of publicity fireworks, bears too close a resemblance to Anna 0. Nilsson to be really distinctive. These can go just so far — but no further. They may have adaptabilitv to featured roles, but Georgia has a flair for stardom. You aren't being constantly reminded of another personality when you see her. She has a dark, interesting type standable as — say — Norma act. Glowingly, smolderingly When I met her I person. Such a thing is not so common in Hollywood as you may have been led to believe. These debutantes are usually just nice girls, with a nice talent, nice homes, and nice parents. You can count on one hand the really vital people. But I was impressed byGeorgia. I don't mean that she dazzled me with her brilliance, or her philosophical squibs, or her priceless wit, but she had depth. Already she was rebelling against sugar-coated philosophv and the stereotyping of her individuality. We sat in a picture show, sunk deeply, comfortably, into the leather loge seats, and Georgia was all in white, every time I have has been we white sport clothes or eveningclothes, seldom relieved by any touch of color except -that of her dark hair under a close-fitting hat. Because there was no one near us to be disturbed and because we shouldn't have cared if there had been, we whispered through the gloom. Incidentally, seen her, she white, either Georgia told me and her rebellion against it voungest Photo by Paralta of how she had been criticized for an interview recently published. In that story she had described the meanness of the poverty of her childhood, the penny-pinching, The daughter of a large family, she had been the dreamer, the ambitious one, and she had wanted something better ior herself than the routine life of a shop clerk or a stenographer. She had wanted a career. A Chicago beauty contest that had also paved the wav to films for Gertrude Olmstead, had been her big opportunity. She had won the contest and also the prize of fifteen hundred dollars. Instead of turning the money over to her family to be trekked out in the pinch of daily living, she had come to Hollywood on it: The storv of how she was discovered by Josef von Sternberg and drafted for the role of The Girl in his sensational photoplay, "The Salvation Hunters," has been told too often to need retelling here. But it was the beginning of the realization of her dreams, and "The Gold Rush" and the subsequent contract with Chaplin, the culmination. All of this had been told frankly in that criticized interview, without any effort to glorify her experiences, and I had thought, when I read it, how sincere it was. Continued on page 104