Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1926)

31 Teacups mid-season slump in picture-making; visitors shopping raids are conducted along Fifth Avenue. Bystander we quite forgot to be annoyed at her. Mrs. Gregory La Cava — the director's wife — had made little water-color portraits of all of us. Nearly all of them were flattering, but mine was so outrageously so that I really ought to go into seclusion and just leave mine behind, posted in some conspicuous place. "Lila Lee had an exquisite pink camellia pinned on the shoulder of her dress. It looked much too beautiful to be real — but when a husband sends his wife flowers every day, even after three years of marriage, he learns the way to the best florists. The rest of us couldn't let her outshine us, so we pulled flowers out of the centerpiece and made bouquets for ourselves. What had on our arrival been a graceful basket of tiger lilies and springflowers, looked like the Easter-eve remains at a popular florist's when we got through with it. "You know how those luncheons are — everybody talking at once, and trying at the same time to hear what their neighbors are saying. By special request, I sat between Lila Lee and Norma Shearer. I've never known Lila at all, though I've always wanted to, and it had been ages since I had last seen Norma. "She has the right idea. Every time Lois — who was on her left — said anything startling, Norma would speak up loud enough for every one to hear. 'Orchids all over the place,' she commented. 'I really believe Lois is the sort of girl who doesn't think a man is even mildly interested in her unless he sends her bushels of orchids. I consider myself lucky because I had some just once. Probably to celebrate the opening of my one good picture.' "Of course, we had to boo J her for that and assure her that she had had lots of good pictures, but all through luck and not any merit of her own. " 'Lois and I used to accept our doom as inevitable,' Lila Lee told me, getting serious for a moment, 'because every one told us that we looked like nice girls and that nice-girl parts in pictures were bound to be vapid. And then, along came Norma, and she got perfectly marvelous parts, and they were nice girls, too. So I'm not resigned to a dull film fate any more ; I'm going to weep and wail until some one finds an exciting story and engages me to play in it !' Photo by Ruth Harriet Louise. Pauline Frederick returns to the screen in "The Nest. " powers of discernment," Fanny commented, "when they say that Lila or Lois, or almost any other young girl in pictures, is sympathetic but lacking in dramatic power. As a matter of fact, the girls criticize their own work much more harshly." "You may deliver your lecture on the superior intelligence of screen players some other time," I assured her. "Tell me more about the luncheon now." "Well," Fanny began, as though she didn't know just where to begin, "Frances Howard Goldwyn bewailed the fact that her trip to Europe had been called off. Just as she and Mr. Goldwyn were about ready to go over for the London and Paris openings of 'Stella Dallas,' Mr. Goldwyn bought the screen rights to 'The Winning of Barbara Worth,' and got so interested in plans for making that that he didn't want to go away. Diana Kane was simply crowing over all of us because C. C. Burr wanted a girl who could wear beautiful she was going to Miami in a few "Critics always think they clothes in a dashing manner, for Johnny Hines' next days. She is to be Johnny Hines' are endowed with unusual victure, so every one suggested Diana Kane. leading woman in his next picture,