Picture-Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1926)

94 The Pauline Frederick Legend Continued from page 43 Gracious offers of food and cigarettes. A friendly hostess. Not at all the manner of the subject of an interview — which, if vou haven't already guessed, is the manner of one who has something to sell. "My dear child, I am so sorry. What did you want to ask me ? Don't ask me anything about technique. People are always asking me about that, and I haven't the faintest idea what it is. Charles, my dear Charles" —she turned to him, her hands clasped as though in utter despair— "won't you tell me what technique is, so that I will know, the next time I am asked?" ''Just what you are doing now," he answered decisively. "Technique is to fit perfectly the gesture to the emotion. Look at your hands, the intent way you are looking at me." There was a perfectly good beginning for an argument, but she airilv disposed of it. "You writing people can explain anything. Isn't that a gorgeous part in Will Rogers' book where he says he wishes that some of these sport writers would tell him what to do when a polo pony bounces him in the air — come down or wait for the horse to come up?" She was irrepressibly gay — a natural reaction after three weeks of intense work. "I've never made a picture so quickly before. I hadn't the faintest idea I could do it. But that Will Nigh! He is a wonderful director. He gives you the greatest confidence in yourself. He makes you feel that you could do anything. I'm sure I have done my best with him. I was so keyed up all the time " Turning suddenly to me, her jocular manner changed to one of earnestness. "You can't realize, unless you have worked with them, how few directors there are who are like that. Some of them won't even listen to you. They give you a few cut-anddried directions and seem constantly to be trying to repress you rather than direct you. But Will Nigh! Every time you make a suggestion to him, it makes him think of a better one, and then you're stimulated to try to improve on his. Oh, there's satisfaction in working like that." "But tell me, Miss Frederick," I asked, "if those happy engagements are so rare, why do you go on ? You have won fame and money, and you have plenty of absorbing interests outside your work. What else is there in it for you?" "Hope," she said, without hesitation. "Hope of another 'Madame X.' Each successive picture holds out that promise. People say I reached the heights in that — I want to again. I am free now, free of contracts, and I need do only the pictures that promise to bring me some feeling of achievement." That, I think, is the key to her greatness. She has no desire for money for itself, though she demands tremendous sums for her work. She knows the measure of respect in motion pictures. She has no simple desire for power, that can be satisfied by seeing her name in electric lights. She has no self-conscious feeling of a duty to her public — only of one to herself. When I left her, buoyed up as I have not been by any one else in a long time, I met a man who has long been prominent in the motion-picture industry, and I asked him why we all admire her so and hold her in such awe. "Because everything about her is big," he told me. "She is a consummate actress, but not only that — she is a personage. We know that one great part would make her the dominating player on the screen. And we know that, even if she doesn't find it, she won't keep herself in the public eye in trivial ways. We all have to look up to her, because she never comes down to our tawdry level of self-ballyhooing." Continued from page 18 asking him to get up and entertain a crowd. He dances quite a little better than some of the professional cabaret knights — quite a bit better, in fact, than you expect any one to. And humor always flourishes wherever Johnny goes. Hearing an orchestra playing "My Old Kentucky Home," he dubbed it "The Censors' Charleston," and now I suspect several people of bribing orchestra leaders to play it so that they can spring that line as their own. A new cafe that attracts many professional people, both at the dinner hour and after the theater, is Twin Oaks, just east of Broadway on Forty-sixth Street. Arthur West, an affable master of ceremonies, who made the acquaintance of most of Broadway's pets during a sojourn at Barney's, is there to receive them and explain, as he did to Monte Blue, that the applause that has just greeted them really doesn't mean a thing. Twin Oaks is far more picturesque than most New York cafes. It is built like the courtyard of an old inn, with cottages on the sides, and massive oaks growing out of the Hie Gang's All Hen dance floor. The tables are on a flagstone terrace and on an overhanging balcony. Another attraction that has caused word to be passed around to all the visitors in town that they simply must go to Twin Oaks, is the dancing of Teddy Francesco. Every film ingenue who Charlestons — and who does not ? — studies him in the hope of learning the secret of his nimble feet. Teddy Francesco is a jockey who wore the colors of the Lavin stables at the Tia Juana track last season, and now he is dancing, to keep down his weight while he recovers from an injury that is keeping him out of racing temporarily. A place where all the picture stars in town go is the Mayfair Club, which meets at the Ritz every other Saturday night. Only members can attend there, and the requirements are strict. In fact, it is so exclusive that even the men who organized it are not eligible to join. The membership is made up of stage and screen players, and of writers. The club opens at about midnight and closes by three. There, one finds Dorothy Gish and her husband James Rennie, Adolphe Menjou, Lila Lee and James Kirkwood, Thomas Meighan, Richard Barthelmess, Alice Joyce, Diana Kane — the stunning sister of Lois Wilson — Mrs. John Harriman, known as Alice Laidley on the screen, Betty Jewel, and any other screen celebrities who happen to be in town. When a taste for slumming and rowdyism hits our excursionists — and not infrequently, that taste is developed by a visit to Mayfair — they go to Harlem and the black-and-tan cabarets. But a visit to the Cotton Club, the most flourishing of the night clubs up there, may have its aftermath of depression. Leaving a show where all the inborn grace and melody and vitality of the negro have been exploited, where the spirit of youth and success have brought exhilaration, one comes on a lonely figure out at the door, calling cabs. It is Jack Johnson, once heavyweight champion of the world, once rich. The sight of him makes some of our favorites who are now at the pinnacle of success, pause and ask themselves. "What is ahead of me?" "Which road escapes ruin?"