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24
Who Will Be
Knowledge of the future may be culled from knowledge of the past, which is the purpose of this story about present-day stars when they were comparatively unknown in 1918.
Left to right: Mary Philbin, Conrad Veidt, Gary Cooper, Richard Arlen, Monte Blue, and John Gilbert.
THIS is a scientific treatise on the stars of 1938. It has nothing whatever to do with clairvoyance, numerology, soothsaying, astrology, or fortune-telling.
Don't laugh, this is serious. If you want to know something about screen favorites of a decade hence, keep on reading. The author claims no direct communication with the spirit world, or other supernatural aids, in getting together this information. It's all based on hard, concrete logic. Now, to go on with the story.
Here's how it is : Knowledge of the future comes from knowledge of the past. So, if you want to know where the stars of 1938 are, find out where the stars of 1928 were ten years ago. It's likely that those of the future will be gathered from the same scattered sources and diverse occupations that furnished the screen with its present favorites.
Let's take the year 1918 — famous in history for a war, an armistice, and the screen supremacy of Theda Bara, George M. Cohan, Gaby Deslys, Wallace Reid, Geraldine Farrar, William S. Hart, Nazimova, and Clara Kimball Young. To get the era clear in your mind, that was before the first cloudburst of Hollywood scandal and the guardianship of Will Hays. Fatty Arbuckle was on location at Gabriel Canyon, California, and Mary Miles Minter was an ingenue. Kitty Gordon's back was getting as much newspaper space as you see these days for Clara Bow's red hair.
The stars of to-day were unheard of then. They were living in forty-eight States instead of one. and their address was Main Street instead of Beverly Hills. And so today, if you want to know about the stars of 1938. don't look in the Hollywood telephone book. Keep your eye on the boy and girl next door. They may be celluloid celebrities before they're ten years older. • Now, for instance, in 1918 when Nancy La Hiff used to prop up her geography book, as protection from the teacher's penetrating eye, and write fan letters to Carlyle Blackwell, the other kids little imagined that some day she'd be a star herself. Often her new name, Nancy Carroll, is displayed in electric lights at the theater just around the corner from the New York public school she attended a few years ago.
Another metropolitan institution of learning had registered on its books at that time the name of May McAvoy. May wasn't trying to put anything over on her instructors, however. No, sir, she was conscientiously striving to become a teacher herself. Can you imagine the tiny May with a stern, disciplinary frown on her face, trying to make a classroom of
dirty little boys behave? Ten years ago Clara You'll quite agree, I Bow was a Brooklyn think, that things are schoolgirl. better the way thev are.