Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1927 - Feb 1928)

69 A Good Trouper Julia Faye is always ready for any part, be it ever so wicked or unflattering, thereby upsetting the good old tradition that all actresses want to play sympathetic roles. By Helen Louise Walker THE lady villains of the screen. How they hate their villainy ! Loud wails rise with consistent frequency from this "vampire" or that one, protesting against always playing "bad women." Foreign actresses, imported because they are so perfectl}' suited to roles of voluptuous and exotic women, rebel after one or two pictures and there is an upheaval, accompanied by hysterics and canceled contracts. The chief objection of actresses to this type of role is apparently based upon the myth, that once having identified themselves in such parts, they are doomed to play them forever with their chances of being promoted to straight leads, practically nil. Quite a merry little row evolved recently when a well-known feminine player flatly refused to go on playing "lady heavies." She tearfully refused an offer of fifteen hundred dollars a week more than she had been receiving, and retired into the silence of her apartment tmtil a compromise had been efl:ected. "H I play one more 'vampire' part, I shall never be allowed to do anything else," she is said to have remarked. "It is a sort of doom. I cannot go on.!" And all the time there is Julia Faye. For years Julia has played character parts. And among these roles there have been a great mam^ "lady heavies." She has portrayed great courtesans and common little girls of the streets. She has played sophisticated women and flashing gamins. She has played women who were all bad and women who were only partly bad — and a few women who were hardly bad at all ! And suddenly, without any warning, shattering tradition and giving the lie to the myth about once a vampire, always a vampire. Miss Faye was cast for an ingenue role with Joseph Schildkraut in "His Dog." A regular ingenue with curls and In "The Fighting Eagle" fulia portrays the Empress Josephine. Photo by Spurr Julia Faye rather likes playing naugJity women. She thinks they are interesting. simple gingham dresses and all the trimmings. And did she give great shouts of "Hooray! Hooray!" and run about proclaiming that she had broken the spell ? Not at all. She smiled and remarked that it was rather amusing, after all these years of portraying various phases of sophistication, to be given the part of a pure and simple maid. "But I don't want to do it anv more," she told me, over luncheon at the Casa Del A'lar Beach Club where she is staying just now. "I have no ambition to play straight leads. Fm glad I did it — once — just to prove that I could. But Fm all through with that sort of thing, I hope. It would be very boring to do it often." Just like that ! This calm and efficient young woman upset an old and cherished tradition without a flutter of her charming eyelashes. "I don't mind playing bad women at all," she went on. "I only wish they would let me make them human. A bad woman w"ith a sense of humor — some of the qualities of reality. Of course we are getting away from absolute values on the screen. Black is no longer uncompromisingly black — it may be shaded just a bit with gray. And white may be clouded a trifle with color. "Virttie is no longer unadul^ terated and our villainy is be ing leavened now and then with comedy. More and more we are show