Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1926)

86 Leslie Fenton w Margaret Livingston I [AT did I do, you ask, when I got my first big salary check ? After paying off some debts, I sauntered down the Boulevard feeling like Rockefeller, and wondering how to use all my wealth. I spied a car in a dealer's window and proceeded to buy it — the quickest sale that man had ever -made. That is, I made a down payment, indorsing my check over to him, and then spent almost my last nickel on a telephone call, asking a girl I knew to go for a long ride. J had learned to drive — more or less — in friends' cars, and ached to get my hands on a wheel of my own. Fortunately for me, the girl suggested that she put up a lunch for us to eat out in the country. Also, she refused dinner at a cafe when we returned. 1 had to wait for my next pay check before I could invite her out to dinner. Margaret Livingston My first fairly big movie check melted so fast that I hardly had a chance to kiss it good-by. Instead of scurrying to the furrier's or to the modiste's, I hurried down to my landlady and paid two months' back rent. The rest of the money went to settle a long-overdue grocery bill. 1 had been engaged by a small wildcat producing outfit with no capital other than a great idea and a shoestring. Pay day arrived, but the cash "expected" from New York didn't. Only after three months did I finally receive my check, firmly forced out of the producers by the law. With checks that came later, I satisfied a childhood dream of walking haughtily up to a fruit stand and buying one of those long stems of bananas ; and I listened to the honeyed words of an oil man who graciously permitted me to invest in a well that never spouted oil. Eddie Gribbon Nine of us will never forget mv first big movie check. It was just after the war an'd we were all buddies from the navy. Every clay we used to take stock of our joint financial strength, and then split somebody's dollar nine ways. We had crabbed about the navy grub, as all gobs do. but even beans and onions occupv a hallowed place in your memory when all you have for supper is a glass of water, with a toothpick for dessert. Came the day when Mack Sennett got tired of listening to me talk and gave me a job. When I brought home my first "Molly-O" check, the nine of us marched into Armstrong & Carlton's cafe, and ate! Armstrong told me the other day that he is still paying pensions to cooks and waitresses who did so much work on that eventful occasion that they have been worn out and useless ever since. Eddie Gribbon LlLYAN T ASHMAN How I Spent My Interesting accounts by some of the players them received their first big salary checks, and of the Lilyan Tashman No, I did not give it to mother to put in the bank for me. I spent it on an antique cabinet of Renaissance design. My heart had been captured, some time before, by a particularly rare specimen of workmanship in a New York shop. As the price had been high, I had an idea that it would remain unsold for some time. I moved to California, and when I was finally able to buy the cabinet, I sent a money order to the New York shop, fully confident that the piece would be shipped to me immediately. I was never so disappointed in my life as when the order was returned to me with the information that the cabinet had been sold. Hoping to chance on something similar, I made a round of the Los Angeles stores and curio shops, and finally found one of identical Renaissance make. I snapped it up. and it is now the most treasured piece in my drawing-room. George Magrill The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth herewith follows : I made a resolution, on the day I signed a Famous Players-Lasky contract, that the moment I received my first salary check, I would get rid of a tenacious insurance agent and sink it all in an endowment policy. I even was so rash as to let the agent in on the secret. But the momentous dav came on the second birthday of Marilyn Magrill, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. George Magrill. And the check was deposited in the bank to open a savings account for wee Miss Marilyn. P. S. — I lost the friendship of the insurance agent. Majel Coleman In my early days of screen acting, when a contract seemed far away, I used to visualize myself in snappy clothes, and to plan what I would do with the gobs of money I hoped to corral. But, gee whiz ! When I finally got my first big check, and sallied forth to spend it, I discovered that I had lost it — onlv half an hour after receiving it, too. It wasn't until a week later, when I mentioned the loss at the studio, that I was told I could have a duplicate check. So I finally got the clothes. And I'm very careful now, guarding those slips of paper ! George Magrill Majel Coleman