Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1927 - Feb 1928)

23 Poor Little Rich Boy! Another millionaire, with everything in the world he could want, has been lured from his opulence to struggle side by side with the thousands of starving extras for a place in the movies. His name is Sylvanus Stokes, Jr., but that means just nothing at all in the life of a hard-boiled casting director. By Helen Klumph T HE goals for which others are willing to struggle and suffer and make sacrifices are all his. Leisure and money — freedom to do as he likes. He is footloose and prosperous, young and strong, mentally alert and personally ingratiating. And he has that quality that is so hard to define and impossible to counterfeit, the poise inherited from a family of power, of fastidious tastes and cultural achievements. He is a sought-after guest in the homes of the socially elect, not only in America, but in Europe. He can rove wherever fancy calls — on a yacht of his own, if he likes. The doors to adventure. are open to him. But — he wants to go into the movies. And the motion-picture producers don't care particularly whether Sylvanus Stokes, Jr., wants to work for them or not. In fact, he hasn't been able to get any of the important ones to give him even a moment's thought. He might be matching his skill against others out on a polo field, or idling down the Riviera with pleasant companions. But — he sits with twent\'-three other extras on a bench in the broiling sun, his six feet one of sleek muscle clad in an ill-fitting suit of pink cotton tights, and awaits the summons of a harassed director tr}-ing to make a quick and cheap one that will get by the exhibitors. And Sylvanus Stokes, Ji"., is happy doing this — happy as he has never been before, except when he was peeling potatoes and heaving coal in the navy. He would like to ask the director why he tells the actors to do this or that ; he wants to know the reason why the camera man shoots from one angle rather than from another; and he wants to knovv' what all the mysterious juggling of lights is for. But he dares not interrupt to ask. The casting director might get an order not to hire him again. "Keep that pest Stokes off my set — he's always asking questions!" would undoubtedly be the result. If he were so foolish — and I assure you he is not — as to go up to the exotic-looking leading lady and announce, ''My name's Sylvanus Stokes, Jr.," she would probabl} say — if, indeed, she took any notice of him at all — "Look here. Baby, why don't you pick a short and snappy one? You'll never get that one in electric lights. Oh, well, you haven't much chance. ^ ■ anyway." What is this lure of the movies that gets the rich and the poor alike ? With most people I have thought it was the promise of fantastically big salaries, or the chance to gratify their vanity. With Stokes it is neither, and he himself cannot tell you precisely what it is about the studios and their people that gets him. Perhaps it is merely that the movies are a game to him, with new and unfamiliar rules. Perhaps difficulties are glamorous to one to whom everything has come easily. I have met a thousand and one screen-struck people and heard at least as many stories of how they broke into the movies, but I have never heard a story like Stokes'. He told it to me one afternoon recently as we sat in the garden behind his charming home in Beverly Hills. The setting was that of a magnate ; the talk, that of a struggling young newcomer who gloated over having got six whole days of work in one picture. The lure of the movies, he told me, had first got him when he took a hungry youngster into a restaurant where he saw people in make-up rushing in for bites to eat, exchanging banter about their work, and hurrying eagerly away again. But we are getting far ahead of cur story. After two years in the nav}— part of which was spent as a third-class seaman on his own father's yacht, which had been loaned to the government — and after twenty trips to Europe, young Stokes decided to get a boat of his Own and go adventuring. He bought the schooner Genesee, which had formerly been owned by William K. Vanderbilt, and set out for the South Sea Islands. But the expedition was rudely halted when a storm off the coast of Florida wrecked his boat. He then spent months searching for another. You can't, you know, just order an ocean-going yacht over the teleplione, or pick one up in a day. While Mr. Stokes was still look At the studios he's just one of the extras, but in his off how s Mr. Stokes still allows himself a few of the luxuries of life. ing for one, he happened to go into a tlieater where "Old Ironsides"' was showContinued "on page 112