Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1927)

74 1 Is Mildred Davis Making % Mistake? For the first time in four years she answers the call of her first sove — the screen — but makes it clear that her husband and baby mean more to he£ than a career By Helen Louise Walker MILDRED DAVIS LLOYD has returned to the movies after nearly four years of domesticity. And if I ever saw a happy girl, that girl is Mildred ! When Harold Lloyd married his petite, golden-haired leading woman, it was announced that she had retired from the screen forever. The Lloyds were going in for the good old-fashioned manner of living. Harold wanted his wife to stay at home and look after the house and comfort his leisure hours. There would be no difficulties arising in this family over separate careers ! I For the first year or two, Harold's expectations were, to all appearances, completely fulfilled. Baby Gloria arrived, and Mildred's energies were devoted to her. The Lloyds moved to their millionand-a-half-dollar estate and took up an existence apparently idyllic. Mildred — woeful thought ! — waxed plump. Quite plump. Domesticity was beginning to tell upon her. Then murmurs began to be heard from time to time in the film colony about Mildred's desire to return to the screen. The simple life, it was said, had begun to pall. Vague rumors were bandied about now and again that Mildred was to play in this picture or that one. She was to be featured by one studio and then another. Nothing definite happened, but it became known that she was making strenuous efforts to reduce. Then, finally, it was announced that she was to make a picture for Famous Players immediately. The news was hardly out before work on the picture was under way.. Mildred was again in make-up. I wandered onto the set where she was working in "Too Many Crooks" a few days after she had started. "Isn't this thrilling?" she cried, as I approached the divan where she sat, feet dangling several inches from the floor — Mildred is only four feet, eleven inches tall — while lights and cameras were leveled at her face for close-ups. "Don't you love a motion-picture set ? Something exciting is happening every moment ! Oh, I have never been so happy in my life !" "How did it happen ?" I wanted to know, sitting down beside her and trying not to feel self-conscious under the glare of lights and the proximity of two cameras a foot or so from my nose. Richie y Though Gloria, the daughter of Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis, is only two and a half years old, her mother is sure she will be an actress. "Oh, I don't know. It was just one of those things. I can hardly believe it myself. I happened to see one of tne officials of the studio and I said, 'I wish I were back in pictures.' He said, 'Why not? You can start any time.' And I went home and asked Harold what he thought and he said, 'Sure! Go ahead!' "I was never so surprised in my life. I never should have done it, you know, if he had really objected. Much as I wanted to return, my husband and baby and home mean more to me than anything else in the world, and I should not have made a move to come back if he had not been perfectly willing. But he has just gradually got over his objections. We had not discussed it for quite a long time. That's why I was so surprised when he gave in without the least struggle. Of course, I had been hoping, and I had been reducing so that I could come back. He saw that I wanted it so much, I guess." Some one called "Camera!" and I moved hastily off the divan and stood by while Mildred registered surprise and indignation and then surprise again. "Too Many Crooks" is one of those pictures in which the heroine is surprised and bewildered and baffled right up to the last minute, when everything is suddenly made perfectly clear. Mildred dilated her eyes and opened her mouth with astonishment so often that afternoon that I became concerned for fear the expression would become permanent. During the pauses, she dimpled and fluttered and giggled— she positively burbled with glee — at anybody who was near her. The entire set became infected with her high spirits. Hard-boiled property men and electricians, and those blase and mysterious bystanders whose inevitable presence on every motion-picture set I have never had explained to me, went about making quips, and chuckling and grinning at anything at all. The place was quite agog with innocent merriment. Later we talked again. "I have been so bored and felt so out of things !" she sighed. "I am not domestic, really. I love my home, but the details of housekeeping irk me all to pieces. The days were so empty. When we went to parties in the evenings, we were naturally with picture people, and their whole conversation was of the studios. Continued on page 97