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51
ing, Anyhow?
fans take for granted that he is a great sonality that influences them most? This the subject, by people who should know.
erine Lipke
on my lips, I made the rounds of the studios without a real answer, until I found Jack Gilbert on location in Laurel Canyon, for "The Cossacks." His fuzzy headgear was on one side, and his face was hot and ruddy and gleamed with vitality. Jack stepped into my picture with a bang, for he was, as usual, brimming with opinions.
"Acting on the screen to-day means being vital. Success seems to rest entirely on whether you are positive or negative. The half-positive boys and girls get so far, and then stop, and the negative players are soon out — that's all.
"I've thought a lot about it. Take those who had big names a few years ago. We thought them great actors, but many of them are deadwood at the box office to-day. Something else is required now. They may be the world's handsomest men, and the sweetest, loveliest girls the camera ever turned on, but if they don't 'click' the public won't have them.
"Wallie Reid, if he were alive to-day, would be as great a success as he was years ago. He was so vivid, vital. Every boy in pictures, who is said to look like Wallie, has tried, and failed, to imitate him. But it wasn't Ms good looks or his pleasing smile alone — it was the whole dynamic something which made him 'click' inside you, whenever you saw him. No wonder he was popular— no wonder his memory lived. In a halfpositive age in pictures, he was old man positivity himself.
"Janet Gaynor is the screen sensation of today. One of the finest, natural-born actresses I have ever seen. Her curls and big eyes aren't a third of it. She's vital — that's -the thing.
"When she cries, you feel as if something were tearing inside you. Her appeal isn't insipid — it's strong. She does naturally, without knowing it, all the things the rest of us sweat for, and then don't get. She has just about everything any one needs for success on the screen, but the main thing which gets over with me is her vitality.
"The other day I saw
Acting depends on individual vitality, says John Gilbert.
Alice White clicks like castanets, but can she act?
a picture which introduced a girl very much of Miss Gaynor's type. It was a rotten picture — didn't give her a decent break — but somehow I kept thinking that if Janet had been in that picture, something, somewhere, would have 'clicked' ; her appeal would have filtered through, at least for a moment, and would have been stronger than the picture. As it was, this girl went down for the third time. Only halfpositive.
"Take Garbo," announced Jack, gathering momentum, "take Garbo, for instance. It doesn't make a bit of difference whether you like her on the screen or whether you don't — you know she's there. You don't forget her, and that's the main thing. She never lets you down. She is never half-vital. You can get out all your rules for an actress, and she may break them all, but what of it? You feel her, go away and re