Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1926)

47 La Marr away of this unusual one. Carter It was then that she was haled before the judge of a juvenile court and ordered home, with the comment by the judge, "You are too beautiful to be in the city. Go home and stay!" But in 1910, Barbara obtained employment as a dancer in Fred Harlow's cafe, one of the most widely known cabarets in Los Angeles. An engagement in a hotel cafe in Salt Lake City followed. Mrs. Watson accompanied her on this trip. Bob Carville, celebrated dancer, doing a turn at the Orpheum, was the first to really "discover" Barbara La Marr's talent. He found himself in need of a dancing partner in Los Angeles, and so engaged her. They went to New York, where Barbara scored a smashing success. The newspapers hailed her as a beauty, and she could dance. Life to her, then, was a beautiful, gilded thing which fired her with ambition. Ben Deely met her, fell desperately in love with her, made her his partner in his famous bell-boy act, which he played over the Orpheum circuit for ten years, and finally married her. But the romance was short-lived, and they separated. Then followed one of the amazing chapters of Barbara La Marr's life. "Daddy," she said one day, "I am going to some studio and write motion-picture scenarios. I can do it \" "How do you know you can do it?" "You watch! I'm going to try." Without any previous experience of any sort and with nothing to go by hut the meager knowledge gained during her dancing skits, she wrote six scenarios in eight months and sold them for ten thousand dollars to William Fox. The first of these, "His Husband's Wife," with Gladys Brockwell in the principal role, scored an immediate success, and the four others were put into production. Only one of them, the last, has never reached the screen. The Fox Company is said to have declared that the cost of producing it would be prohibitive. Douglas Fairbanks found Barbara pounding the keys of her typewriter, and said, "You have no business doing this! Come to my studio and I'll put you in a part." He gave her a bit in "The Nut," and Barbara often said that the greatest thrill she ever had in life came when she was told she had made good in her role. Fol A photograph taken soon after Barbara La Marr had adopted her baby boy, "Sonny," who is now three and a half years old. lowing this, Doug cast her for the role of Lady de Winter in "The Three Musketeers," and it was in that that her first great screen success was made. She was destined soon to reach the peaks. The name of Barbara La Marr was heralded all over the world, and producers rushed to her with contracts. She played in "The Prisoner of Zenda," "Trifling Women," "Souls for Sale," "The Eternal City," "Thy Name is Woman," "The White Moth," "The Shooting of Dan McGrew," and many others. Her last picture, made for First National, was entitled "The Girl from Montmartre," and it was while making this that she collapsed. A year or two ago, she was called to Austin, Texas, to make a personal appearance before a national convention. During the course of her stay, she asked to be taken through an orphanage. She always had loved children. She went from crib to crib in the whitewalled institution, looking at the tiny bits of mortality and secretly sorrowing that none knew the arms of a mother. Just as she was leaving, a little big-eyed baby boy looked up into her face, crammed a tiny fist into his mouth as far as he could, smiled and cooed. Continued on page 107