Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1926 - Feb 1927)

21 Childhood Adventures in Hollywood Many of our younger readers wish, no doubt, that they could live in Hollywood. After reading the following reminiscences, they will wish so more than ever! By Dorothy Manners Illustrated by Lui Trugo MY mother, who is quite fond of me, and therefore likely to be a little prejudiced in the matter, tells me that I was quite a child — as a child. Unusual. Always doing something clever, like winning croquet tournaments at school and failing in arithmetic. She says she could sort of count on me for things like that. Looking back over it all, I can see how true it is. When I think of some of the things I thought of as a child, I think I will never think again. As though I wasn't crazy enough already, being at the time of these reminiscences at that craziest of all ages for a girl — leven, going on twelve — I was complicated by a severe attack of "movie fanitis," amounting to nothing short of devil worship. During that particular ailment, I was living in Hollywood, where with several hundred other students I attended the Gardner Junction Grammar School, which is still operating in spite of my scholarship. So far as I know, I am the only movie fan who ever went to school in Hollywood. Of course, Carmel Myers and Bessie Love, and a few others, went to school here, too, but they grew up to be stars, not fans, which makes me prettily distinctive in that respect. To aid and abet my enthusiasm, I lived in the center of a neighborhood of celebrities. Rozika Dolly, one of the famous Dolly sisters, then on her honeymoon with Jean Schwartz, lived on the same premises. So did Doctor Frank Crane and Harold Bell Wright, the latter growing up to write for the movies. Right across the street, in a rambling brown house, resided Geral But she was a local champion at croquet! Dorothy Manners was not very good, she says, in arithmetic. dine Farrar, while Norma and Constance Talmadge lived just a few blocks away, at the Hollywood Hotel. Mabel Normand, Thomas Meighan, Francis X. Bushman, and his brood of many children, were within walking distance. I spent a great deal of that period of my: life standing. Standing on their front lawns waiting for them to come in or out — I didn't care which. I even favored some of the more amiable ones with visits. When Rozika Dolly, who was on the Coast to make a picture for Griffith, with Lillian Gish (the title, I believe, was "The Lily and the Rose"), moved into one of the apartment bungalows at the Formosa, I was the first to pay her a social call. Hospitable, that was me. On that memorable afternoon, I got myself all done up in a pink hair ribbon and strolled over. My ring was answered by the famous DqJIv herself. "Good afternoon," I said. "I have a letter for you." Oh, I was a smart child. I wasn't going to take any chances on having the door closed in my face, so I had intercepted the postman and looted her mail. "Thank you," smiled Rozika, who talked like a child, with a faint touch of her native Hungarian accent. "That's ver' nice of you to bring it over." "That's all right," I told her cheerfully. "If you aren't doing anything, I'll come in a little while. I live in the apartment here," added the little pest. "My name is Dorothy." Rozika said she would be glad to have me come in. I don't know whether she was or not, but I went in anyway and didn't come out until I had been served with lemonade and cake. After that, my visits there got to be a regular thing, and whenever Rosy didn't have anything to do in the evening, she'd take me down into Hollywood to a picture show. She was an adorable girl and, with wonderful insight into a child's psychology, always fed me well. She used to make a chicken goulash herself that was one rare dish, and she never forgot to send some to my mother and me. There was a croquet court right next to her bungalow, and Rosy used to invite me down