Picture-Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1926)

104 Advertising Section "That Has Real Stylej; "And I made it all myself 1 Thanks to the Woman's Institute, I can now make all my own clothes and have two or three dresses for the money I used to spend on one! For the first time in my life, I know that my clothes have real stylcl" No matter where you live, you, too, can learn right at home to plan and make stylish, becoming clothes and hats at great savings, or earn money as a dressmaker or milliner. Mail Coupon for Free Booklet and learn what the Woman's Institute can do for you. WOMAN'S INSTITUTE Dept. 59-E, Scranton, Penna. Without obligating me In any way, please send me one of your booklets and tell me how I can learn the subject I have marked below: □ Home Dressmaking □ Millinery O Professional Dressmaking □ Cooking Name.. (Please Bpecify whether Mrs. or Miss) Address.. Learn Classic Dancing At Home! Only Tod, like thousands of others, will find it amazingly easy to learn classic dancing at home by thiB wonderful new method. 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Sen{, for FREE BOOK Just printed — a new book which describes the latest developments and wonderful opportunities in Commercial Art. and gives roll details of this quick, easy method of learning to draw. Tells all about our students — their successes — what they say — actual reproductions of their work — and how many earned big money even while learning. Write for this Free Book and details of special offer. Mail postcard or letter now. WASHINGTON SCHOOL OF ART Room 235-D, 1 1 1515th St., N. W., Washington, D. C. He Said "No, sir," to Cecil De Mille Continued from page 83 "On these two thin dimes in my pocket ?" Bill swung around and made for the door. "No, sir! I haven't that much time to waste. And what would I use for money? I've walked right in and now I'll turn around and walk right out again." Interested, De Mille bade him sit down and started what became a habit — giving Bill Boyd advice. The upshot of the interview was a note to Lou Goodstadt, casting director, who engaged the somewhat but not decidedly humbled Bill for extra work. After four days of this employment, he was sent to a smaller company and given a role in a serial which occupied him for six weeks. Reporting back at the Lasky studio, he found that Goodstadt was sending a mob of extras North. His name was not on the list. "We need men for this picture, not boys," Lou told him. "In a week I can raise a beard that will scare you to death," the youngster bristled. "If I lick any man you pick out of that bunch, does little Willie go?" "Now, now, wait a minute, be calm. All right!" He went. Then he was placed in stock at Lasky 's, on a five-year contract calling for the payment of thirty whole dollars a week the first year, fifty the second, seventy-five the third, one hundred the fourth, and one twentyfive the fifth. Bill began to think he was up in the easy-money class. At that time, however, the public did not welcome new faces, so that pictures starring the established favorites, with popular leading men in support, offered few opportunities for newcomers. The producers were afraid to take chances with the beginners in stock, and beyond sticking him in, here and there in brother and friend roles, Paramount did nothing with Bill. When three years of his contract had elapsed, he got out of it and launched upon the hazardous seas of free lancing. The year that followed almost took the buoyancy out of his sails, but it always revived. He joshes about it now, but there must have been days when even Bill Boyd's good spirits lost faith in the silver lining — particularly when he thought his idol had forgotten him. During his Lasky sojourn, De Mille had been forever advising him about his reading, his clothes, his contact with people, his work, and numbers of other things. He suggested that he play certain roles, re gardless of their unimportance, just for the experience that a wide range would give him, cautioning him against unwise steps, and promising to do something for him some day when he would be ready for a bigger opportunity. But during those months of idleness there was no word from De Mille. "Maybe," he thought, "1 shouldn't have said 'No' to him those times." De Mille doesn't resent a man's expression of his own ideas, however, nor does he forget. He made it his business to keep informed of what the boy was doing and of how he was faring, without Bill's knowing of it, and when he thought the youngster had had enough of the seamy side, summoned him. A bit in "Triumph," cleverly done, convinced him that Bill's talent was ripe for a bigger test. "Lou Goodstadt called me and told me De Mille was going to put me under contract. Cabs being taboo because of financial disability, I got out there as fast as the street cars could make it, and demanded of Lou, 'Where's my contract?' " 'Here it is, boy,' he said. 'Now, here's what we plan for you ' " 'Nevermind anything,' I groaned, 'but gimme that paper quick!'" Without reading the document or even knowing what his salary would be, Bill signed his services to De Mille for five years. His work in "The Road to Yesterday" won him the lead in "Steel Preferred," a Metropolitan production for which De Mille loaned him. He played the steel-mills worker with a dirtv face that only once was washed — for the scene in which he called on the gal. He now has the leading role in "The Volga Boatman." He longed for this big chance more than he had ever wanted anything in his life, even though he dreaded having to marcel his hair and let it grow in ringlets on his neck. Bill — nobody ever calls him William, of course — -has much the same big-boy quality that is Rod La Rocque's main charm. He isn't handsome. But he's the best tonic ever prescribed to relieve a dull evening for a young lady. He has that happy faculty of making a good time out of everything. And a boy who has the nerve to "No, sir" Mr. De Mille, and be heard from again in cinemaland, can't be long abashed by anything.