Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1927)

60 Manhattan Medley w.0p.b£eiy At the surprise shower given for May Allison after her recent marriage, she refused to spoil the party. "The screen is eventually going to be the greatest agency for portraying life — life that's grubby, happy, exalted, vulgar, tragic, playful. We are getting nearer to it every day. There is fresh evidence of it every day, and we are just seething with vitality waiting for the general trend that will permit us to let loose and expand. Perhaps I won't live to see it, but at least it's grand to feel a part of the great development that is taking place in such a powerful factor of humanity as the movies are." "Who would you say," we asked, "is doing most toward this development of realism on the screen ?" "Chaplin and Von Stroheim," replied Gilbert. "They are both alive to life, though there is a 1 vast difference between them. \ Chaplin portrays the vulgarities in such a way that you smile ; A^on Stroheim sickens you, even though you recognize his truth. They are both honest with themselves first, and they bring that same honesty to their work." All of which shows you that Gilbert is one of those fellows — rare in this effete day and age — ■ who do not believe in artificialities. He is the sort of fellow who puts his feet up on the table the first time he meets you, simply because it's the comfortable thing to do. He unburdens himself to you on any subject whatever that comes into his head, if he feels like it. And if, in a hot and stuffy room, he felt like dispensing with his coat and loosening his collar, your presence probably wouldn't stop him from doing it. Paul Bern, that most gracious and understanding of beings, believes that Gilbert has done more for the advancement of the screen than any one person acting in films to-day. It is not because he is "true to his art," but because he is true to himself. He once threw away a big chance, and a weekly salary of four figures, to follow a girl he was in love with. Those who knew Jack Gilbert and Leatrice Joy during their venture into matrimony whisper in low asides, "Jack and Leatrice still love each other. They always will. They'll end their days together, even if by some terrible mischance one or the other gets lonely in the meantime and marries some one else." And Jack says, "I'm pursuing a dream, a beautiful, wonderful dream. I don't know if I'll ever capture it. Sometimes I think I've caught it, but it always eludes me. It's an elusive thing, this happiness, but you can't find it — not really — outside of those four walls we all call home. A home is the only place where one has that solid base from which to reach out and conquer the world. It's fundamental. I haven't one now — I've just a house. But maybe I '11 have the home again some day. "In the meantime, my motto is, 'Vamp until ready!' " Life Is Beautiful, Says Lillian Gish. It would be a surprise, wouldn't it, if you asked for "Diana Ward" at a hotel desk and had Lillian Gish, in person, answer the summons? In one of those shy, retiring moods characteristic of her, Miss Gish came to New York incognito — under the above name — for a change of atmosphere just before she essayed the role of Pauli in the film version of Channing Pollock's stirring stage play, "The Enemy." A demure little figure in her black furs and conservative toque, she might have passed for any of a dozen inconspicuous Miss Wards had it not been for her large solemn eyes and delicately modeled hands. Miss Gish, the mature }roung woman of to-day, is a well-poised, well-balanced being, with a becoming dignity and reserve found only in cora On Vilma Banky's first return visit to New York since her arrival in this country, it was generally agreed that she had the greatest of all gifts— womanly charm.