Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1926 - Feb 1927)

92 Photo by W. F. Seely In Valentina's dark eyes may be read something of the suffering she has been through. A Joan of Arc from Russia Valentina Zimini, a Russian girl who fought during the war in the famous Battalion of Death and was later captured by the Bolshevists and subjected to untold hardships, is now seeking forgetfulness in the American movies. By Myrtle Gebhart THERE were the Amazons. There was Joan of Arc. There was the valiant Maid of Saragossa. And there is Valentina Zimina. In her is the same spirit that those warrior women of yore had. Cannons boomed! The rat-tat-tat! of machine-gun fire echoed from the dense woods. Closer, the whir of hand grenades stirred the air and, hitting the ground, raised spurts of soft, black mud, with now and then a helpless form shot upward. On the Russian front, men were fighting, savagely or monotonously, according to their natures. Her boots splashing and squashing through the mire, a young girl struggled through the lanelike ditches. Two men came, carrying a third on a stretcher. She gasped, and then, whitely still, followed as they carried him back — back through the hail of fire and shot that rained from hidden nests of guns, back to the first-aid station, still farther back, via an ambulance that rocked over a shell-torn remnant of a road, to the hospital. There the girl remained, to join the Red Cross, to ease the pain of suffering men, to sing for the convalescents. Later, with other valiant ones of her own sex, her uniform coated with mud, her face aflame with the zeal of a Joan, she wielded sword and gun, and fought on the battlefields. For she became a member of the famous Russian Battalion of Death, that strange assortment of girls from both cultured environments and peasant families. Valentina Zimini now lives in a state of luxury undreamed of during those awful days of war. The American movies have offered her a comfortable livelihood. Her most recent work was in support of Shirley Mason in "Rose of the Tenements." for F. B. O. But in her dark eyes lurk shadows — memories which prosperity cannot quite drive away. Her mother — where is she ? There drifted to her not long ago a vague clew — she heard of an old woman in Siberia, living in a stable. Friends thought perhaps — but they hadn't time to remain and find out. So she does not know. At the outbreak of the war she was a star in light opera, with all of St. Petersburg cupped in the palm of her hand. Officers and nobles sought her favor. Life was gay and sparkling. Then came war. Her fiance, an officer in the ambulance service, was summoned to the front. Soon word came that he was wounded. Brushing aside interference, she managed somehow to make her way to the front. There she was permitted to nurse him. Seeing the need for her there, and contrasting the pain all ' about her with the frivolities of her former life, she remained | with the Red Cross. When the Russian morale broke and the famous Death Battalion was organized, Valentina joined. At first, because of her youth, she was forced to serve in the third-line trenches, her main duty being to go forward and bring in the wounded. Being young and quick, she often was allowed to carry food and messages back and forth. Eventually, she got into the first-line trenches and was seriously wounded. When the revolution flung its red banners across Russia, she was thrown into jail, where she suffered and starved along with the men. Chivalry was not often thought of in those days ! Women who had fought Continued on page 112 By an ironical twist of fate, she who once bitterly fought the Bolshevists plays a Bolshevist leader in her latest film.