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22
He Trains His Babies for Stardom
intelligence can be trained for the theater. A child is always acting — it lives in a world of make-believe. The parents' problem is to retain this faculty as the child grows older and to make it a conscious process. All the little details — every one of them important— of technique and control can best be taught to very young children. Then it becomes a part of them, and they never forget it.
'An example of this is the matter of crying. When one of the children falls and bumps her knee we have trained her to stop crying at will. We count three and she knows if she doesn't stop then she will be spanked. The children have learned, in this way, that it is possible to stop crying abruptly. They even experiment with it themselves — we will see them suddenly cutting off sobs, studying their faces in a mirror, and then starting up again — not because
they are still grief-stricken, but because they are interested.
"Every day we line the three of them up before a big
mirror and patiently coach them in the expression of emotion. They love it. Mary Kathleen, being just two, is still only an onlooker, of course. But she mimics the others
Photo by Woodbury
The old-fashioned pastime of making faces in the mirror is part of the O'Malley system of training, but with more definite results.
she doesn't yet understand what it's all about. We teach them not to grimace but to feel. Not how to use their faces, but how to use their minds and emotions so their faces will express what is within. It is remarkable how quickly a child's mind will grasp this.
"We are giving them everything that goes with a picture career — swimming, tennis, gymnastics — to keep them physically fit. Elocution and dramatics, to give them poise. A thorough education — to give them breadth of mind. Dancing — to give them grace. But I shouldn't like to see any of them become dancers. That is such a brief career, and there are only one or two Pavlowas to a generation. The possibilities are not nearly so great as for an actress — who can still follow her profession at eighty, and just as competently as at eighteen.
"W hen Eileen first slarted going to school I had her read to me a story out of one of her books one day. She read it as it was written, just following the words. When she had finished I said to her, 'But, Eileen, are you cold-hearted? Don't you realize that Johnny Skunk got his foot caught in the trap and that he's crying and wants his mother? Aren't you sorry for him?'
"She read the story again — sort of feeling her way, discovering that it wasn't just some letters thrown together to make words, but that Johnny Skunk was actually caught in a trap. When she got to the end she hurried back to the beginning and read it through Continued on page 106
With father directing, and mother cranking, a little O'Malley learns early to overcome any trace of camera-consciousness.