Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Jul 1929)

74 A Girl Who Had No Childhood From the security of her recent success in the movies, Mary Nolan, at twenty-four, gazes back upon a life that began as a charity pupil and included a Broadway scandal. B>> Margaret Reid HABITUES of the Hollywood Athletic Club are notably impassive. Gentlemen of affairs — business I mean — their principal concern is the cuisine, the stock market, and the sporting news. If they glance about, it is only to signal a waiter. As for itinerant stars, they are innured to these to the point of indifference. But I have seen them become wide-eyed and rapt, their forks halted in mid-air and dropped weakly. I have seen them let their chops grow cold while they stared, blissfully, the way babies stare at electric light. At Mary Nolan. She is like that. Optically she is gorgeous and gaudy. She can't help it, and people can't help looking at her. If you saw her on the ^ screen, especially in Lon Chaney's "West of Zanzibar," you know how she looked in black and white — a softly contoured cameo, an angel with s. a. In that curious state called real life, her beauty is more forthright, less lyrical, its pink and white and gold sharply accentuated by hand. But a pleasure to look at, any way you take it. And the sedate patrons of the Athletic Club looked with enthusiasm. Mary, however, was unmoved. "I don't see any one here to flirt with," she remarked plaintively. "Is this the best they have to offer! I need," she added with unfeigned nervousness, "something to take my mind off this interview business." Mary is also, you know, Imogene Wilson and, as the latter, her trepidation is justified when there are reporters about. At one time misquoted, misconstrued, and misrepresented by every newspaper in the country, she is still wary of the press. There were reassurances that interviews for the movie ,< \ public were different, requiring only such innocuous titbits as where she was born. Mary laughed incredulously. "It's too funny that any one should give a whoop where I was born. It's been so long ago, anyway, that I hardly remember. We might say Jerusalem, then go on from there to my favorite authors. Isn't that the way it's done ? I have read" — she arched her eyebrows sententiously — "several books. I just loved that one — 'The Bridge,' by San Luis Rey. And I was crazy about 'Shakespeare.' Who wrote it, now? Then there's my coat. Hadn't you better mention it?" She stretched out her arm graciously. "Feel it, my dear. Real broadtail. The collar is marten, but you can say it's sable. . We actresses must protect public illusion." She was, as a matter of fact, born in Louisville, Kentucky. And, as another matter of fact, just twenty-four years ago, and her favorite character in fiction is the ingratiating ^Skippy." Though cynical, Mary Nolan is a sentimentalist at heart. Photo by Freulich "And my hair is really red," she offered, indicating the pale, taffy-blond fluff beneath her hat. The only clew to its original color is in her eyes, which are green rather than blue. "If it wouldn't be thought a little eccentric, I could wash off all this mascara and show you that my eyelashes are red, too. I've been a blonde ever since I was fourteen,-and it's been a terrible expense and annoyance. It hardly seems right to have spent so much time and money on a head with nothing in it." It was at the age of fourteen that she began her career. An orphan at three years, she had been placed in a convent by relatives. Because she was a charity subject, little Mary Imogene Robertson had to work for her board and schooling. Her long, red curls pinned up out of the way, she stood on a soap box, leaning precariously over the tubs to wash handkerchiefs and stockings. As she grew bigger her duties increased to include floor scrubbing, window washing, laundering, and mending. When there was time she studied desultorily and learned to play the piano. Childhood, as a Utopian memory, is lost to her. So, too, is girlhood. At fourteen Mary abruptly abandoned her intention of becoming a nun and, instead, left the convent. Having no home and being completely solitary, she went to New York to get a job — just what kind of job she didn't quite know. After a dismal period of bewilderment, fright, and lack of breakfast, lunch, or dinner, she stumbled into the comparative sinecure of artist's model. A living, breathing magazine cover, she was welcomed in particular by James Montgomery Flagg, whose model she became. "I do believe my face has covered more territory than any other map in the world. A dollar was a dollar and a half to me, and I went after every engagement I heard of. I posed for anything from madonnas to animal crackers. I averaged three dollars a day and, overcome with having so much money, I hired a maid for two dollars a week, called my hall bedroom my apartment, and had my hair peroxided to suit my elegant, new station in the world." Mr. Flagg, after a time, generously decided that such beauty rated a wider field than modeling. He introduced Mary to Arthur Hammerstein and that impresario immediately placed her in a show. For four years Mary, as Imogene Wilson, was one of the reigning blondes along the Eastern rialto. Show girl extraordinary, she was the darling of the world that wakens to activity with the switching on of the electrics. Continued on page 116