Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Jul 1929)

54 His Face Is His Misfortune Ricardo Cortez, with Lina Basquette, in "The Younger Genera tion," a Columbia picture. ticularly in the scenes between Cortez and Carol Dempster the director almost dispensed with direction, asking Ricardo to follow his own inclinations. These scenes, it developed, were among the most charming in the picture. After "The Sorrows of Satan" Ricardo hoped that others, too, might be open to the suggestion that he was not a sheik. "Wouldn't you think," he said lugubriously, "that after all this time I'd be cured of optimism? But I'm not. _ Every picture I begin looks vaguely promising. My judgment has become so rattled that I can't tell a good script from a bad one any more. It always seems as though the next picture is going to be better, and when it turns out to be worse I still see the one to follow in a rosy haze." Things really haven't been quite so bad as all that, but he is capable of a great deal more than roles where emotion is subdued so as not to obscure the cut of his dinner coat. In proof is the fact that no matter how puerile the role, Ricardo's work is as sincere as if it were a masterly one. He never glosses over details, or skimps on concentration. And against that day when he does finally graduate, he has in readiness a wealth of knowledge and technical assurance, earnestly acquired through these years of enforced apprenticeship. Added to this is a nice feeling for characters, a quick sense of their foibles and meaning. His heart was set yearningly on the part of the bootlegger in "Broadway." And when "Lulu Belle" is produced on the Los Angeles stage, if he can arrange for time between pictures he wants to do the man in this. Free-lancing since he severed connections with Paramount, Ricardo goes from one picture to another with scarcely breathing space in the intervals. Despite his high salary, he is in constant demand by directors who have learned that they can depend upon his intelligent, polished trouping. His fan following has remained, among the dizzy ascents and "dizzier descents, stable and inflexible ; his rating at the box office has never fluctuated. Even if the circumstances he deplores have worn the luster off Thespian ambitions, they have not injured his popularity. It is especially ironic that, a few years ago, Ricardo missed what would have been the psychological moment by a scant twelve hours. Rex Ingram, after "The Four Horsemen," was looking for a leading man to succeed Valentino. He interviewed hundreds of possibilities and one afternoon Cortez was among them. Ingram considered him carefully but said nothing, and Ricardo thought the incident closed. At five o'clock of the same afternoon he was peremptorily summoned to Paramount and Jesse Lasky's office. Lasky was cordial — he had seen Ricardo at the Coconut Grove on the previous evening and was convinced that he showed great promise. When Ricardo left the studio an hour later it was with a five-year contract, signed and sealed, in his pocket. And at nine o'clock the next morning Ingram sent for him, having decided that he was the only logical choice. Told of Ricardo's contract, the director flew into a towering Irish rage which subsided only after Ricardo explained the circumstances. Later Ingram signed Ramon Novarro, while Ricardo was consigned by Paramount to the type of role which he feels he has duplicated in almost every picture since. It is one of Hollywood's many incongruities that Ricardo Cortez should be exploited as a sheik. For, outside of being good looking and dark, he has not one of the accepted attributes. He is a thoroughly regular person — the sort other men like for a good scout. Extremely conservative, he shrinks from the professional ostentation of the film colony and does not participate. "We ought to feel embarrassed, I suppose, that we don't live in Beverly," Ricardo apologizes for the oldfashioned house he occupies with his wife, Alma Rubens, in a secluded section of Hollywood. "But our justification is that here every inch of ground and every stick of furniture is paid for. Even our cars run no risk of being attached. We try not to boast, but it is rather gratifying in this town of mortgaged mansions and badtempered creditors." Their dearest possession is a diminutive, highly pedigreed Aberdeen terrier named Andrew. Andrew is the despot of the household, with the freedom of any tapestried chair or brocaded counterpane he fancies. Ricardo thinks he looks like George Bernard Shaw. He is shaggy and volatile and, when the mood is upon him, goes through a repertoire of tricks with a faint air of bravado. A lover of dogs, Ricardo admits that he finds it easier to wax sentimental over them than over people. He reads every known text book dealing with canines and is an authority on their care, education, and characters. Secondary weaknesses are golf and tennis. On Sunday mornings he is up at six and on the links till midafternoon. When Cochet, the French tennis champ, played in Los Angeles, Ricardo and Alma entertained him. Continued on page 111