Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1928 - Feb 1929)

56 He Doesn't Look Like An Actor he might be anywhere between the ages twenty-five and forty, and your guess would probably be as wrong as mine. "No place like California." He settled comfortably. "Guess I ought to stick up for the home town, Seattle, and it is beautiful up there, sometimes." He told about the hills and the lakes. "But it's as they say, 'Two seasons: rainy and August.' And New York's a great town, and I wouldn't mind seeing some shows, and dropping in to jaw with the boys at the club And I thought, when I left there, I never would get transplanted out here But, say, I'm a native son, now. A trip would interfere like the dickens with my golf." The difference in the public's attitude toward stage and movie actors interests him immensely. During his years on the stage, he said, hardly any publicity. But the minute he went into pictures, papers and magazines began to print such nice things about him that even his family sat up and took notice. "Listen, this is good. As a stage actor, I received a few good notices from the critics, which meant a great deal in New York, but nothing to which my relatives attached any significance. I had to go into the movies to win their esteem. The theatrical journals are read only by the profession ; the movie magazines are for the people. When my relatives began to read articles about me, they suddenly took an interest in me. Since my name has been in electric lights," he smiled, "I've been getting fan mail from my second cousins. "Stage doesn't mean a thing out here. Right in Los Angeles, mind you, I played the prize fighter in 'Is Zat So?' Yet, when friends introduced me, the new acquaintance looked at me disgustedly and said behind his hand, 'Stop your kidding. George O'Brien played the prize fighter.' Never thinking of the play." He confessed to a deep admiration for Jannings. "He's the only movie actor that I can say this of : that I have seen three of his performances in three consecutive pictures, and consider them masterpieces. Others give flawless portrayals in instances, but not consistently. Jannings has genius — drama, power, clean-cut gesture, gradations of expression. I'd like to watch him work. Does he speak his subtitles aloud? Rudolph Schildkraut doesn't, and he is marvelous. On the stage, it's the voice. For a picture scene, it's the thought, and that is better expressed by whispering the words." We talked of the speaking movies, of technique, and of art, a subject familiar and dear to him, as during his childhood he spent much time with his uncle, Rolf Armstrong, the artist. The progress of the play, "Is Zat So?" from a poor, country pumpkin to a metropolitan success, I found absorbing, though perhaps half the interest lay in the manner in which Armstrong told its history. When he settles back to relate an anecdote, scarcely a flicker passes across his rough, brown face. But his eyes, peculiarly set, hold you ; they are direct, piercing ; you can't read them. His graphic illustrations are a slight twist of the mouth, a still further narrowing of his eyes. "When I was in stock, Jimmy Gleason, being manager, wrote the play. I was a hero — slick hair, mash notes, some swell. I'd never done any dialect or real characterizations, but they interested me. Jimmy claimed he had a wide acquaintance with prize fighters and knew their stuff, so he coached me and it went over. Mrs. Armstrong, shown "Two years later, he decided, with with him here, was known no capital but enough nerve to weight on the London stage as his shoulders down, to put it on in Ethel Kent. Continued on page 106