Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1926)

12 book about fifty times, I guess, of pretty near. I'm crazy about stories that tell all about things that happen on the sea and adventure tales where they go to the South Seas and there's a lot doing. I know some of it's made up, but it must be pretty exciting down there and I guess when I grow up I'll go traveling and maybe be an author. That's the kind of authors I like, the ones that go and have adventures, not the ones that just sit and write. I like O. Henry, excepting one thing. His titles never seem to match his stories. Still, that makes it more exciting, because you have to read it all through and can't figure out beforehand what it's going to be about. I think Sherlock Holmes is the smartest man that ever lived. I try to guess what he's going to do next but hardly ever hit it right. I have a nice set, the Books of Knowledge, that tell all about everything, but they're not dull. They help me with my lessons, and I read them every day. I like "The Sea Hawk" because it's got lots of thrills in it, and the "Tarzan" stories and Boy Scout books and I guess that's all. Colleen Moore. Though I read some fiction, the greatest appeal for me lies in those minds that seem to be reaching out for facts and truths and philosophical deductions which are applicable to life to-day, and to our problems. I dote on history of all periods but am especially fond of ancient and niedieval happenings, and I delight in travel stories. I have no more predilection toward poetry than I have toward fiction, but I wade ■ through Tolstoy, Haeckel, ' Kant, Freud, and Swedenbors;. Some of it I confess I don't understand, but as I grow older and have more real problems to face it gradually becomes clearer to me. And besides, these men show more of themselves in their philosophy than perhaps they realized. It's fascinating, to delve beneath the theories and ideals they present and discuss, and see the human nature of the author. Gentle, sublime Swedenborg, for instance, or poor, misshapen little Kant with his big brain and unhappy heart that are revealed in his critical speculation. I have made many attempts to read Dickens but never cared much folium. Though his characterizations of types are undoubtedly fine, his work bristles too much with minute and detailed description thai always reminds me of the "shop talk" of a continuity. What Do the Players Read? Patsy Ruth Miller. There are so many wonderful books to choose from that it seems unfair to wed yourself to a few favorites. Though, to be sure, I always come back to Voltaire and Anatole France. It hurls to have to confess this, when I am supposed to be an ultramodern product with llapperistic tendencies, but let the truth out: I have a weakness for poetry — but for the versifiers who reflect the moods of our own day, the trend of our frank thought. Carl Sandberg -is redolent with vigor and truth and an individual style, and the lyrics of Johnny V. A. Weaver intrigue me. I also like the "Rhymes of a Red Cross Man" by Robert Service. Donald Ogden Stewart's humor never fails to amuse me, and I have a crush on Arlen. He flings words around with a superb carelessness, a light flippancy through which I seem to see, or fancy I do, something hurt. I wonder if he has a tragedy? I love authors with tragedies — they are so interesting ! Sometimes Arlen annoys me because he gives me but half a laugh, half a tear, feelings that flicker out with a sigh. I have a curious hunch that he is slyly winking at himself for fear of revealing too much of what his heart holds. I mean, I have a vague feeling that there is depth in him, beneath his light surface, a pathos that is suggested but escapes me in most tantalizing fashion when I look for it. Am I right? Some day I am going to meet that man. i And maybe I shall find out i f he has a tragedy. Claire Windsor. Stories of a romantic theme have ; always intrigued me. Tennyson is romance, matchless in cadence, and adds to my pleasure with each suc1 cessive reading. Sabatini's books I read as soon as they are out. My life is rather tranquil, and my personality inactive ; the law of contrast may account for the way Sabatini draws me. Just now I feel a slight prejudice in favor of "Bardelys' the Magnificent." His work, while suggested by history, does not have that moth-eaten quality which invests so many of the swashbuckling tales of other ages. His people are real and human, though they lived long ago. Robert Frazer. Modern fiction does not appeal to me. I believe the only novel I have read in the past six months is "The Wife of the Centaur." What time I find for reading I spend in studying books of science. Anything pertaining to radio helps me with my very engrossing hobby. When 1 am asked to discuss books 1 have a guilty feeling. Inevitably some one remarks that the actor who scorns fiction is making a pretense at being highbrow. As a matter of fact, I am very lowbrow, confining my assemblage of authors to those like Millikan, who is not a literary master but a writer of very plain, dry, scientific facts. When I was younger I had an avid appetite for the Greek plays and the okl classics but that period lasted only a few years. Norma Shearer. An actress' time is so occupied with duties that are absolutely necessary to her career that she seldom reads anything without considering its possible screen utility, either as a vehicle for a film or as a means of studying the art of acting and the drama. When I occasionally have time for my own amusement, I read Byron, with whose work I have been familiar for years, but of whom I never tire. Of the modern authors, I indulge in two very violent extremes — George Bernard Shaw and Donald Ogden Stewart. Anything that I could say of Shaw must necessarily be superfluous, as one either likes or dislikes him strongly. Stewart, I think, writes the most cleverly satirical studies I have ever read. They are gems. Any man who can turn out such continuously humorous stuff must be a genius. Lew Cody. My taste in authors is not original, for I have several million to back up my judgment which votes honors to Dumas, pere, and Joseph Conrad. Dumas' tales take the place of the romance and intrigue so sadly missing from our boresome, everyday life. They make us almost regret being born in this age of cross-word puzzles, radios, and screamingly sensational and crude headlines. In the old days even a murder was done with a certain finesse ! Conrad is at his apex in his "Nigger of the Narcissus," though "Lord Jim" runs a close second. His "Nigger" is the greatest example of the strength of the weak ever penned. An event so improbable could be made possible only by a man of Conrad's genius, which is perhaps best summed up in these words, "the power of simplicity." It is the only book that I have ever read twice. Pat O'Malley. What's better to read aloud, as the missus and I do of an evening — meaning she reads and I listen — than Rupert Hughes, who knows more about our life to-day than we do ourselves ? Continued on page 121