Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1927)

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Is Mother a Pest? 17 photo by Ruth Harriet Louise Mrs jrene Day adm[ts tnat sne literally forced Alice and Marceline into the movies, but they both are extremely glad that she did. She is shown above between her two daughters. various army posts, following a set routine of teas and bridge. Widowed, she found herself after the war with sufficient means on which to live comfortably but with nothing particularly interesting to do. It was not until Dorothy got the picture bee in her bonnet that Nancy came out of her polished shell and plunged into a fray that has stimulated her and kept her young. Her dormant business instinct sprang into life and it is to this as much as anything that Dorothy owes her gradual but growing success. Nancy's campaigns for Dorothy were planned much as army officers map out procedures for their troops. Seldom did her calculations prove erroneous. When an item in the paper said that a certain director was preparing to start a picture, she had photos of Dorothy taken showing her in the costumes of the period to be filmed. With these she then approached the director, and usually succeeded in inducing him to use Dorothy. Always charming, never forcing her claims for Dorothy to an obnoxious point, she managed to get her so much extra work that from the very beginning the girl was self-supporting. "I just ding-donged until I got chances for her," Nancy explains. But it must have been with charm, for she has made many friends with her crisp, cordial but businesslike manner. "If I am liked," says Mrs. Irene Day, "I believe it is because I do not anchor myself on the sets where my daughters act. I keep out of the way. The studios have managed to get along very nicely without my supervision. "One may err with the best of intentions. I know one mother who ruined her daughter's career through her overzealousness. She made herself very annoying on the sets. She kowtowed to directors and executives, she gushed and she gossiped, always with an eye toward the advancement of her daughter. But she overdid it. "When I occasionally go to watch one of my daughters make some particularly interesting scenes I stay quietly to one side. I know the director is busy and I wouldn't think of bouncing up to him to shake hands. Nor do I rave over daughter nor worry over her make-up. "Why should I hang around? Because Alice and Marceline need 'protection?' A mother's too-earnest effort to 'guard' a grown daughter seems to me an insult to the girl. My girls know right from wrong. I have faith in them. I have taught them to think for themselves. Now they are capable of standing on their own feet. "They need me, yes, in some ways — in the business management of their careers, for instance, for I have had experience in the business world and can strike a shrewder bargain than they can. They need me to look after their wardrobes and their financial investments and their fan mail and — here's my worst worry — to see that they keep their appointments ! And now and then, when things go wrong, they need mother's shoulder to cry on. "Diplomacy, good common sense and breeding are the qualities the mother of an actress needs if she would be a success in her own particular sphere. "When the girls were younger and just beginning, of course I accompanied them to the studios. I thought pictures would be a splendid career for them but I wasn't going to turn them loose in a strange world until I had satisfied myself that they would be safe there, nor until they were old enough to look after themselves." The astonishing thing about the candid Mrs. Day is that she is the first movie mother I have ever heard admit that she actually forced her youngsters into the movies. But before you judge her harshly as "a selfish, scheming mother who lets her poor children labor to support her," hear the tale of hardship which preceded the present luxury in which the family lives. Continued on page 98