Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1928 - Feb 1929)

26 Roughnecks Preferred are on noble purposes.' Fade-in showed me, riding the skip, and concentrating. I looked at my , buddy and asked, 'Hey, who was that dame you was out with?' We kept our balance on top of the world's highest dam, but when a skirt blew into town, how we fell ! Sweet little school-teacher. Treated us like a tornado treats Texas." They make up many comical bits of business after they are in a scene. "We aren't a team," Hale qualified. "Bill's the star. Unless you notice the billing, you'd not know it. He gives me half. We've learned each other's reactions, until it's like playing into a mirror." "Half the time I forget what I'm supposed to do, but give that bird anything — a glass, a carpet, and he improvises." Bill is generous in giving credit to his partner. "He can play four hundred feet with a match box. Lots of times we kid around with whatever we can grab. Once the director was sick for two days, but we never missed him. We just kept knocking around and doing things, and the camera man trailed us." Once, high on the girders of a skyscraper, Bill forgot what he was to do. Alan went through his act and did Bill's scene, and Bill sat there and grinned at him. How many stars would chuckle while watching another play a choice scene that should be his own? "We have to watch each other in self-defense, too," Hale broke in. "Once, in a scene, that bozo couldn't think of anything else to do, so he gave me a wallop that bowled me over." They've developed a Damon and Pythias friendship. Neither has ever been as happy before. It's never "my picture," though sometimes Hale remembers and politely says "his," only to be kicked, or slapped, or otherwise mauled until he becomes himself again. "Say, we can have more fun just driving along, speaking to everybody we see — we aren't particular — than most folks can at a party, plus dynamite lemonade. Riding to location in my new car, dressed in these clothes, we pretended we'd stolen the car and the cops were after us." They are ready all the time with quick, pat rejoinders. Many of their jokes they admit having plucked from some slinger of smart patter. Many, however, are original, and always spontaneous. Bill's jovial manner, might lead the casual observer to think that he takes life too lightly. This impression of irresponsibility, however, is merely the surface. Though gloom is utterly foreign to his nature, he is not without a strong sense of obligation. He simply doesn't talk about it. He has a lot of common sense, saves and invests his money, and never kicks at hard work. He remembers the time, as an orphaned, hungry kid, when he worked in a grocery store until he got fired for eating up the profits, nor has he forgotten picking oranges for a living, or working in the oil fields. While he makes fun of the Mertons, he is ambitious. Perhaps the deepest disappointment of his career came when he was refused the lead in "The Ten Commandments," because Paramount thought his name did not mean enough. His sense of responsibility toward his work is great. Comedy, as you may surmise, is his favorite. Free days are spent sleeping and golfing and dropping into the studio to tell everybody, whether or not they want to hear, what a good time he had on the last picture, and how certain scenes were done. Judging by his conversation, he seems unaware of the fact that he is receiving the biggest fan mail, ten thousand letters a month, of any one at the Pathe studio, though he is so interested in his work that this must be a source of secret gratification. I never query him about things like that, because he would explode. I recall a young reporter, who asked him how it felt to be a star, and his growling reply, "What d'you mean, star?" When, under pressure, he makes a personal appearance, or is recognized on the street, and people make a fuss over him, he gets ludicrously embarrassed, though he will never admit it afterward. While he and Elinor believe that many marriages fail, because too much is made of their seriousness, and therefore regard theirs without any somber thoughts, it has had a tremendous influence in settling him. On a lazy drive through Santa Ana, he and Elinor Fair suddenly decided to get married on sixty cents, without even enough money in their pockets for a ring. Before, his irresponsibility had been much more pronounced. Marriage has steadied him a great deal, underneath his lightheartedness. You could never make Bill admit anything like that. Of Elinor he merely says, "She's the laziest woman on earth." But she has only to rest those languid, dark eyes on him and hint, and she gets what she wants. He calls her "Mom." Golf and swimming are his sports, though he goes in for gym exercise spasmodically. He is a radio fan, and many a time has spent the evening getting Chicago or Timbuctu, and then has gone to sleep. The oldest clothes he has suit him best. The only "doggy" thing he has is a new car, shining, low-slung, Continued on page 114 Bill is supremely happy in the oldest clothes he can find.