Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Jul 1929)

49 Madame X heads the procession of new stars follows her brilliant debut in great drama of mother love. Schallert This was not a talking film, and was something of an experiment on the company's part to determine her photographic personality. She registered favorably, and the next step was the talking lead in "The Doctor's Secret." At the Jannings party she was accompanied by Tullio Carminati. She and her husband, Ralph Forbes, were at that time passing through a mild state of temperamental differences, which I believe are now entirely smoothed out. The "differences" may easily be attributed to their persistent separations, owing to their respective work, shortly after their marriage. Ralph just would enter the movies, when Ruth so loved the stage. Now Ruth is striking big in the films and Ralph is making a huge hit on the local stage, giving a beautiful performance of the young professor in "The Swan," opposite Lois Wilson. Such are the vagaries of the show business. Perhaps they will appear together some time in a talking film. . ' . Miss Chatterton, as Jacqueline Floriot, who later becomes Madame X, is consoled by Miss Besserer, as the old servant. Raymond Hackett, Miss Chatterton, Eugenie Besserer, Holmes Herbert, and Lewis Stone in a scene from "Madame X." They made a captivating pair when they played in the stage version of "The Green Hat" in Los Angeles. A peculiar, almost ominous silence pervades the sound stages these days. Gone is the clatter and clamor on the sets that was typical of silent pictures. The absolute quiet and stillness that are part and parcel of sound films in the making, are bringing an unconscious dignity to studios. One senses more of the spirit of the theater. This was particularly manifest on the "Madame X" set, what with Miss Chatterton and Lionel Barrymore, who is directing the picture, besides Lewis Stone, Raymond Hackett, and Mitchell Lewis in the cast — each at one time or another a distinctive figure of the stage — players who have been trained in the ways of words and articulation, and in the technique and tradition of an old art that is blending with a youthful one. Miss Chatterton was robed in a shabby dressing-gown that tightly hugged her slender figure. On her feet were old, felt slippers. She looked pathetically small and thin. Her face was seamed with lines of make-up, emphasizing the marks degraded living were leaving on the once-beautiful face of the young mother who, because her baby had been taken from her, was tobogganing straight toward hell. The scene was a hovel in Hawaii. She was leaning forward in a dilapidated rocker, holding a half-empty glass in one unsteady hand. At her f,eet a Hawaiian boy sat singing plaintive tunes to the accompaniment of a steel guitar. When his song ended, her voice rose in a hoarse, broken whisper : "Oh, that's But very sad." Large tears dropped from her eyes, while she rocked her head in her hands. Then with a startlingly swift, pantherlike movement, she leaped to her feet, screaming in frenzied tones, "Get out of here ! Get out ! You and your sad songs — get out !" Her voice changed again to a whisper, which she does surpassingly well. Not a throaty, guttural sound, but something reminiscent of an unexpected, eerie wind sweeping across the desert. "Come here. Don't be afraid of me — come here." This was followed by a low, tragic laugh. Continued on page 104 beautiful ! — beautiful !