Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1927)

Such Popularity Must Be Deserved The triumphant Mr. Gilbert grants a long-delayed audience and converts a skeptic. By Malcolm H. Oettinger THERE was perhaps a svupcon — approximately two fingers — of venom in my well-concealed glee upon hearing that John Gilbert, not a moving picture, would meet me. A year previous, when he had visited Xew York, celebrating the success of ''The Big Parade," I had ventured to telephone him at his hotel. The voice that answered had announced itself that of Mr. Gilbert's secretary, had sounded cautious and studied, and had gone on to say that Mr. Gilbert could not be disturbed. Regular people, however good their acting, don't flaunt secretaries, I have found ; regular people permit themselves to be disturbed, if only long enough to tell you that an audience is inconvenient. Thus it was that I set John Gilbert down as a victim for whatever time in the future we might meet. Writing people are practically human. But after meeting him, I realized that my fell purpose was thwarted. Gilbert is a fast-thinking, well-spoken fellow, gifted with poise, personality, and a rather hopeless touch of idealism that will hardly blossom under the coldly commercial Kleigs. He is magnetic, yet he does not thrust himself forward to impress you. He is picturesque in addition to being pictorial, yet he does not permit himself to posture. He is egotistical in a straightforward, unblushing, natural way; cognizant of his tremendous success, he is anxious to strike out in new fields to hold his popularity. Although there was a rumor, shortly after his first tig picture, that he had refused to meet a friend in the lobby of a Broadway hotel for fear of disillusioning his public, and had insisted upon one on Park Avenue, he evidently has passed through that phase, for we met for an affable afternoon in the business offices of MetroGoldwyn, aloft in a building above Times Square. I found him in the midst of a group of high-powered executives who were beamingly admiring their boxoffice bonanza in what has commonly come to be called the flesh. He is a tall, well-built man, with flashing eyes, a winning smile and, as you might guess, a hot temper. He is distinctly the type that women admire — handsome, fiery, explosive, impulsive. \\ e were ushered into a room of clublike atmosphere, paneled walls, underslung leather chairs, devoid of the paraphernalia suggestive of business. Through the windows we could see that "The Big Parade" was still marching along at the theater across the street. And just across the table, smoking a cigarette, sat John Gilbert, probably the foremost exponent of heroics the screen reflects at the moment we go to press. Some will break a lance for Ronald Colman, not unlike Gilbert, but lacking his fire ; Richard Dix has follow ers by the tens of thousands ; but I am tempted to believe that the girls, the women, the ladies, and the matrons — comprising a good seventy per cent of movie ?udiences the world over — go to see Gilbert first of all. He was glad of the opportunity, he said, to sit quietly for an hour or two with no orchestra blaring in his ear, no waiter hovering at his shoulder, no Black Bottom obstructing his vision. He had been in town on the loose for a week, and he had crowded in enough thea 2 ters, night clubs, and parties to last an ordinary mortal an entire season. "I may become a night-club king," he announced with a grin. "Had an offer from the fellow who runs that place the gunmen were caught in last year. 'Gilbert.' he said, 'this would be pie for us. Fifty-fifty split; I'll guarantee you a thousand a week, and all you hafta do is appear for a few minutes even night to glad hand the come-ons.' He even offered to name the club after me. But I think I'll stay in pictures a little while longer." In speaking of anything, Gilbert was impetuous, frank, reckless, and interesting. He was loud in his praise of Emil Tannings, Dreiser, Aileen Pringle, Mencken, King Vidor, and Greta Garbo ; he was little short of scathing in his denunciation of personal appearances, "La Boheme," tabloids, repression, and Prohibition. Whatever he spoke of he tackled with intelligence and a ready expression of opinion. Not for an instant did he attempt to be "diplomatic" or evasive. He glowed with enthusiasm when he talked about "Flesh and the Devil" and Greta Garbo. It was when I casually mentioned the latter's name that the descriptive tornado began whirling about my ears. "She's marvelous," said Gilbert. "The most alluring creature you've ever seen, capricious as the devil, whimsical, temperamental, fascinating. Some days she refuses to come to the studio. She doesn't feel like working, and she will not work. Never acts unless she feels that she can do herself justice. But when that woman gets in front of a camera to do a scene — man ! What magnetism ! What appeal ! What a woman !" Gilbert was talking in short blasts, so wrapped in his subject was he. "One day I talk to her and find her childlike, naive, ingenuous, a girl of ten. The next day she impresses me as a mysterious woman, a thousand years old, knowing even-thing, baffling, masklike as to face, deep. She is amazing. She has more sides to her personality than any one I've ever met. If she ever really showrs what she can do on the screen, she will be the sensation of all time !" According to Gilbert, Clarence Brown, who directed "Flesh and the Devil," is in the front rank of directors, along with Von Stroheim and Vidor. It is not generallv known that, back in the Fort Lee days, when pictures were even more infantile than they are now, Gilbert, too, was a director. "I was away from my wife, Leatrice Joy, for the first time since we had married — three thousand miles away from her. I was miserable !" He turned to me suddenly, bitterly. "You know Xew York. But you know only the theaters, the crowds, the gayety, the life. Do you know that this can be the loneliest damn place in the world if you're here alone, without friends ? I'll never forget the early days I spent here, moping, wondering what the devil was going to happen next. I'll never forget the rotten times I've gone through!" His directorial duties led him back to the Coast, where he allied himself with Fox as a leading man. soon to become a star. He appeared in any number of pictures that any number of people never saw. They were not good pictures, according to Gilbert. They Continued on page 110