Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1927)

104 He's There with the Goods Continued from page 27 " 'All right,' agreed Walsh, 'You go ahead and shoot anything you want. I've got to get back to the office.' "I told the camera man what I wanted to get over and he was all for it. However, we needed another actor to play the other drunk. There wasn't anybody around — or there didn't seem to be — and here is where little old Lady Coincidence comes in. "I had to run across the street to get my hat just before we were ready to shoot, and who should I run into but an actor pal of mine. He had been hanging around, waiting to see somebody. He was a gift from Heaven to me. I asked him to come on in and make the test with me. So the two of us — neither knowing a thing about the yarn — played the drunk scene together." The outcome, as you know, is screen record by now. Funny thing, but throughout our talk and through all the things he told me of youthful brawls, and soldiering in alien countries, and prizefight rings and prize-fight ears, and other sensational high lights in his tale of masculinity, he never once gave the effect of boorishness or even ill manners. Possibly because no Englishman can give the effect of boorishness in the recital of anything. There is something about the British vowels that lends dignity to the most riotous anecdote. He told me he had been born the son of a clergyman father and a devout little mother in a sedate suburb of London. However, in spite of the good influence of his surroundings, he ran away from his father's home at fourteen and joined the army. , "Because I was a big boy, overgrown for my age, a recruiting sergeant, assigned me to the Life Guards — the crack troup of bodyguards to the king. The first night I got my uniform, another six-foot boy and myself went down to an alehouse to celebrate. We were feeling pretty swanky and important. After we'd had about six bottles apiece we were joined by another soldier. He made the mistake of bragging that his regiment, which was not the Life Guards, was the finest in the kingdom. I resented that. I told him as much. He said he didn't give a damn. "That started the fight — the most inelegant, fist-to-fist, shin-to-shin battle that ever was before or since. We rolled on the floor, cuffing one another, swearing, and swinging wild blows like a couple of infuriated bulls, until we were exhausted and the ale had worn off. , My beautiful uniform was torn to rags. We were thrown out." Here was certainly not a drawingroom tale, but in McLaglen's telling of it he might have been the raconteur of pleasant fiction. For there is no getting away from it, no matter how many barrooms he has been thrown out of, nor how many closeups he has cussed through, he carries distinctly the marks of a gentleman. The span between his army life and his acting career is filled with tales as bizarre as can be found between the covers of the most adventurous novel. "I've been everything — I've done everything," he said. "I've nearly frozen to death prospecting the fields of northern Canada, and I've blistered under the sun of the African deserts." His checkered career has seen him farm hand, prospector, engineer, clerk, and prize fighter. It was while he was in the last-named profession that he was approached by an English motion-picture producer with an offer to try his hand at the movies. To the adventurous McLaglen here was a new field to conquer. He accepted the offer with such ultimate success that he was selected to support Lady Diana Manners in her initial film, "The Glorious Adventure." But even the honor of supporting titled heads of Europe in cinema debuts did not lessen McLaglen's appreciation of the wider opportunities of the American studios. So with his wife and small child he set out for the newer fields, and in a surprisingly short time he established himself in this country in Western pictures and Indian-guide roles. By the way, how many of you remember him as one of the crooks in "The Unholy Three?" Not many, I wager, for it was not until "What Price Glory" that he established himself as a personality to be reckoned with. The Fox people, with a weather eye on the box office, are now buying all the available material in which to exploit him. A lot of people who ought to know prophesy that the next year will see him a box-office attraction second only to one or two old, familiar faces. Certainly, "Carmen" will afford him a widely different characterization from his first hit, and an equally vigorous one. Anyway, no matter what the fans do, Hollywood will be on hand to give the picture a big send off, because "Vic" is our favorite star. We've got his photograph framed out here ! Could a Brol Continued from page 90 ming through the glass, each one in turn had reneged. "A lot of people have the idea that, as a result of trick photography, there isn't so much danger nowadays in making thrilling scenes for pictures. The fact of the matter is that there is more danger than ever because the public expect greater realism in the movies than they used to. Young men show up at a studio declaring themselves willing to do any stunt within reason, believing that in some mysterious way they will be safeguarded from possible injury. But when the time comes to do something that really involves a bit of daring, they usually beat a retreat. There is en Neck Stop Him? danger in most of the spectacular things you see in the movies." He drew forth a sheet of paper and began recounting the various injuries he had sustained in his screen career. The list was amazing. He had broken his neck, broken both ankles, broken both collar bones twice, broken -three fingers on his right hand, broken two fingers on his left hand, broken both elbows, broken his right shoulder, chipped away a piece of his left elbow, and broken three ribs on his left side. He had leaped fifty-three feet from the North Broadway Bridge in Los Angeles to a passing freight train and from the train to the ground. He had run a motor cycle into an auto Not Much! mobile truck, catapulting himself over the hood by the force of the collision. With both hands tied behind him, he had leaped over a team of horses and landed on his face. Innumerable times he has jumped from twenty to fifty feet from a building to the ground or has leaped across areaways from fifteen to twenty feet in width. And yet his broken neck has healed, the broken bones throughout his body have knit, and most important of all he has lost none of his nerve. In spite of the price he has paid for fame in broken bones, Dick Talmadge fairly bubbles with the joy of life. That is probably one big reason why he has made such a success in his profession.