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45
Gone A
re
H
er
Languors
A fainting heroine no longer, Mary Astor blazes forth in spangles and tights. — with a wry smile at her screen "past."
B? William
H. McKegg
THIS madness called a film career is one of the most deliriously inconsistent things in the universe. You have perhaps heard that before, but it is always good for a repetition, and none the less true.
A newcomer will start out full of ambition. He will get his break. A smooth future unfolds itself before him — but he finds that he is not accomplishing any of the great things he had hoped to do. Do not blame him. You don't know the precarious movies. Neither does the aspiring newcomer.
As examples, take Richard Arlen, Hugh Allan, Clara Bow, and Esther Ralston. All had been in pictures several years before they won their spurs. Suddenly they flashed to the front in a particular picture, long after their first chance. It seems that a player's second chance is often the better one in the movies.
All that's a long introduction to the main issue — Mary Astor. Like these other players, she has spent several years in pictures — but only now is she flashing to the fore, and surprising the fans. Don't blame her because she was such a long time proving she could do something worth while.
"I had been kept down to the sweet, fainting heroines," Mary declared, with a whine of simulated despair. "Never would any one in the studios believe I could do anything else. I was always the meek, little girl, ready to faint at the least provocation."
But how far from fainting is the Astor of to-day ! In "Dressed to Kill" she had no chance to faint, having to keep her wits among a gang of crooks. In "Dry Martini" she carried on so gayly in Paris that she shocked her sophisticated father, who was a real Parisian bouleA^ardier at that. Mary is now, as we say, showing the world.
"When I look back on all the long struggle, it is with a smile and much amusement, about it. Yet, at the time—
Photo by Carsey
Mary Astor's dream o£ until "Dressed to Kill"
Mother and I often laugh
really acting carried her through several uneventful years, put her at ease with crooks. Now's she on the up and up.
She smoothed some cold cream over her face.
Perhaps I should have said that I was in her bungalow dressing-room, once occupied by Olive Borden, and that Mary was making up for "The Woman from Hell."
"Without stressing the old point too much, I admit that ever since I was a kid I was always crazy to act. School theatricals, or any public event, called forth my ambitions. Mother had wanted to become an actress, but she had been born in too early a period. There was tradition. The stage was bad, and so forth. However, she did not let old-fashioned ideas hamper my attempts to make a start."
The cold-cream massage over, the Astor picked up her cigarette and caused the red-gold end to blaze brightly as she drew in the smoke. Then she returned to her facial duties.
"Dad was a language professor. He was without work at the time, so we sold what we had and went to Chicago, because some bogus schools there promised a rosy future on the screen to all who enrolled. Like