Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1928 - Feb 1929)

106 Advertising Section >■>... WHILE at the George Inn in Vermont, Anette meets and falls in love with Roy Legarde. She is engaged to Mark Seccombe, but even as she writes to break off A Modest Chap Continued from page 51 Having been bitten by the acting bug, he will never leave the game. His real ambition is to direct. "I'd hate to think I had to spend my life with this mug stuck in front of a camera," he will exclaim. But he admits to a thrill the minute he steps on the set — the thing, whatever it is, that makes actors want to act, and act. He has a cyclonic way of arriving. For every girl he has a pretty compliment that smacks of a certain Celtic stone, and has too much kidding in it to be convincing. One evening, tall, gayly smiling, he swooped into a girl friend's home. "Two of my masterpieces — we worked all of six days on one — at one theater, and both for fifteen cents ! Main Street ! Come on and see how rotten I am. You'll never again see so much bad acting for fifteen cents. Nope, you can't go, child," to another. "You have to wait until I get into a twenty-cent theater." His popularity in Hollywood is not to be wondered at. He isn't hard on feminine eyes and he has a vital, fun-loving personality. You see him, correct, polished, at premieres and social functions. Everything just right. That easy, untrained Tightness which is a heritage. Or, in old clothes, he will amble along the crooked streets of Chinatown for an inquisitive and diverting evening, or walk along drab Main Street. The things that are most genuine and important to him are matters to be discussed only with his friends. His work comes in that category, and of it he will talk indefinitely. He has his stake among the independents' diggings, and is panning gold from Poverty Row quickies, at a salary that few of the better-known leading men are receiving. None of those "discovered" within the past year come within a good many yardsticks of his weekly checks. He is choosing these finger-snap movies deliberately, in preference to hanging around the big lots between pictures, waiting for some executive to notice him. His idea, rather new and startling, but after all reasonable, is to make the public acquainted with him. If other actors didn't believe it a loss of caste to play in the quickies, there would be fewer idle actors in Hollywood. Con, however, isn't annoyed by, or pleased by, or otherwise acquainted with, the fact that his name means anything, so he peddles it and his face where the work and the cash are found. He has faults— plenty. The sort your brother has, and that you'd like to shake him for. If it weren't for them, he might be the model boy he is afraid some one will call him. He doesn't know I have written this. How he will take the surprise may change for me the tenor of the day on which he comes across it. He was finally persuaded that a photograph in Picture Play would be a fine thing for him ; that's how I got that. If I haven't said anything nice about him, he will like this article. And I haven't, have I? The Prodigal Returns Continued from page 21 her engagement, she hears he is injured for life in an accident. What does she do? Does she give up the man she really loves and marry Mark? Read The Inn with the Red Blind By Georgette MacMillan in the December issues of LOVE STORY MAGAZINE Every Week 15 Cents per Copy in front of it. Then, too, the task of combining two mediums, pantomime and speech, is no easy one. On the stage it is different. There, your work is directed at a mass. You don't have to be constantly careful of the right angles, and the right timing and approach of the 'mike.' It means the beginning of new methods. In the end I think they will be more natural ones, since the scope has broadened." There are persistent rumors of the possibility that Miss Frederick will remake "Madame X" for Vitaphone. This provided her most popular character on the stage and screen, and the title role has come to be closely identified with the actress. The success of its revival is already assured, but Miss Frederick is reluctant. "I wish I never had to think of the part again," she said, suddenly vehe ment. "Madame X is a curse to any one who plays her. You don't control her — she controls you. Whenever I play her I feel old, hopeless, drab. I can't bear to go out, and I mope and am generally insufferable. She is too absorbing. It isn't healthful." Miss Frederick hopes to be allowed a variety of roles and types. Her restless nature can never be satisfied with two consecutive pictures or plays in the same mood. But whatever she does will be thankfully received by the public. She has been away too long, but not long enough for the fans' devotion to lessen. Such warm, vibrant and powerful personalities as Pauline Frederick's are rare. Only she can fill the gaping void her absence caused. And now, inadequate substitutes need no longer be accepted.