The Dove (United Artists) (1927)

HOW I FIRST BROKE INTO THE MOVIES By NORMA TALMADGE (Who comes to the . next.in “The Dove”) When I was fourteen, I decided to have a career; it was so easy in day dreams, like playing on a win¬ dow-pane. Almost any piece of music seems easy to play until one reaches the piano. I started gaily out one autumn afternoon to the Vit- agraph studio, but the nearer I got Ui the studio, the further away it IPemed. The wall which surrounded it grew higher and higher. It re¬ minded me of the Chinese wall we had been reading about in school— and that didn’t make it any easier. When I got inside, all my prepared speech flew from my mind. “What can you do?” said the cast¬ ing director. “I can recite,” I murmured in such a faint voice that I wondered if it was mine. “Recite?” he said, in surprise, and suddenly it struck me as funny. I went through the usual formal¬ ities of registering, name, height, weight, coloring, age, etc. I was told that they would send for me. A week later they asked me to come to the studio to have a test made. While I had never been in pictures * and therefore had no experience in acting bfore the camera, I had posed before the camera. In the early days in moving pictures, when they were still being exhibited in stores and make-shift theatres, part of the en¬ tertainment was usually an illus¬ trated song. Colored slides would be thrown on the movie screen, rather like the old magic lantern pictures. I posed for some of these songs. Last winter, one evening, after the theatre, I “swapped beginnings” with Irving Berlin. He was telling of his days on the lower East Side in New York, and I was telling him of my past when I was an illustra¬ tion for songs. Of all the songs r there was only one that I remember and I told him it was called, “Stop, Stop, Stop.” “Yes,” he answered, “I know the song. I wrote it.” That work taught me something. I learned the value of poise. The value of expressions. A few days after the test they sent for me to join the Vitagraph Stock Company. I shall never for¬ get the excitement that that letter caused me to the last day I live. I used to go to the studio early in the morning, in fact I was so eager that I arrived at the same time as the scrubwoman. I was there for a week before I had a chance to go on the set, but during that time I learned a lot about make-up and got in the atmosphere by watch¬ ing the others. At last I got a small part— but it was a great part to me. When they asked me what I wanted I told them I thought I was worth j Eighteen Dollars a week. I had decided upon this sum, as it seemed so important and large to me. I was greatly surprised when I got my envelope for the first week to find that there was Twenty-five Dollars in it. I have never felt so rich since that dav. A Page of Publicity I WANTED TO BE A CIRCUS QUEEN By NORMA TALMADGE (Star of “The Dove,” at the .Theatre) My first ambition was to manage a circus—to be the leading lady who rode on a bareback white horse, trained the animals and cracked the whip in the middle of a ring. At no time did I desire to be the clown. I could generally see myself in a fluffy Tarleton skirt, enveloped in a cape and being led into the center of the ring, where a beautiful white horse stood pawing the ground waiting for me to leap up on his back and throw kisses to a vast audience breathless with suspense as to what my act would be. I had only seen one circus in my life but the memory of that was so complete and so colossal in its effect on my emotions that I seem to have remembered it in every dramatic detail. We lived in Brooklyn when we were children and when my mother realized that height and intensity of my ambition she recklessly donated the cellar to Constance, Natalie and myself, as a playground for rainy days. Every animal, well or ill, was dragged by us into that cellar—worms, eels, fleas and fish played their part there to say nothing of stray dogs and cats, who strangely enough, never fought with each other. The dogs and cats were decorated in old hair-ribbons, and dolls’ hats and dresses. Constance, with her dress off, ran around in a petticoat, her face covered with flour in imitation of a clown. Natalie was partly the boy who took in the tickets and partly the wardrobe mistress for the animals. The audience consisted of every child we knew in the neigh¬ borhood. When I look back now and think how solemnly I took this circus, how carefully I planned it all out, and what pleasure we got out of it, I am sometimes envious of that unconscious joy that only comes to children. Once in a while since I’ve been grown up I have captured for the role I am acting that same desire to be the person I am pretending to be, though nothing I suppose ever comes near the first golden dream. I haven’t become a circus rider. I have never traveled with a circus but I haven’t ever missed one if it was within fifty miles of where I happened to bel NORMA TALMADGE ONE OF ELITE AMONG HOLLYWOOD’S “FIRST LADIES” STAR OF “THE DOVE” AS CHARMING A HOSTESS AS CAN BE FOUND Norma Talmadge, whose first United Artists picture “THE DOVE,” comes to the .next .. has been called one of the most exclusive stars in Hollywood, and yet one of the most charming hostesses. Once inside the doors of her large house on Holly¬ wood Boulevard, one enters into a spacious foyer, rather like a hall in one of the great houses of England. Norma Talmadge, like Marie Antoinette, has a desire for a small house as well as a large one, but it is the small one that she loves best. It is at Santa Monica and she designed and furnished it herself. Spanish in outline, the doorway “gives access to enchantments new every day,”- for it is built on the sands, close to the lovely sea-green of the Pacific Ocean. Miss Talmadge might be called “The Lady of the Sea” for it is there that she spends most of her leisure hours away from the studio. It is simple, this Spanish haci¬ enda; a place so close to the ocean would hardly dare be anything else. Nowhere does one see the sophisticated touch of an interior decorator. It is wide, deep and comfortable. The sun streams in, the glare dimmed to a golden light by a special glass process used in the window panes. The main room is not exactly a drawing-room nor a library, but rather a combination of both. A heavy antique rug al¬ most completely covers the floor. A colorful Chinese rug is used in front of the fire-place. The mantel¬ piece, low and wide, has on it di¬ rectly in the middle, a fluted, fan¬ shaped vase, and on either side delicate candlesticks with tall, taper¬ ing yellow candles. These are its only ornaments. It is furnished with comfortable chintz-covered furniture, a huge sofa with many pillows is near the fire-place, close by is a tea-table. There are books, many books and but few pictures. Miss Talmadge designed a new family album, made on the idea of the old-fashioned one, but different in outline and covering. It is done in chintz and is eleven by fourteen inches, and holds about thirty pic¬ tures, which can be inserted in the pages. Another novelty that is in Miss Talmadge’s bedroom is a dress¬ ing-table chair, made from a piano stool that belonged to her mother. This old-fashioned little stool is now dressed up in fashionable chintz and makes the most practical kind of a chair for a dressing-table, be¬ cause it can swing completely around. The bedrooms might be those of a Spanish convent, simple with a quiet distinction. One particularly lovely guest room has primrose yellow walls, sky-blue ceiling and flowered chintz hangings, trimmed with narrow pleated ruffles of sea- green taffeta. One of the bath¬ rooms, whose stuccoed, walls atre painted in old-fashioned' pink, is large—there are no small rooms in the house—and is a boudoir as well. A bureau, a comfortable chair, hooks on the door—generous ones on which to hang clothes. Only a homemaker realizes the power of details. One of the great hostesses of Europe found that out when royalty came to her house. King Edward was her guest and when he was leaving, she said to him, “Sire, is there any¬ thing we could have done to have made your visit more comfortable?” The King smiled and said, “Yes, a hook on the bathroom door would have made it perfect.” Then there is a bath dressing room, whose wall decorations are executed in fresco. Cranes with their long slender legs in white bar re¬ lief, fly across the sea-green walls or stand on one leg gazing pen¬ sively toward the shore. The floor is tiled in vague blue. The side wall is lined wjth closets whose doors are mirrored. The curtains are of moire—the same vague shade of blue as the floor. There is a dressing table and bench done in the same moire as the window cur¬ tains. The small round tub is of cream color marble, sunken in the floor. Three steps lead into it. The faucets are dolphins. A French farm kitchen is done in black, white and red. Gingham cur¬ tains hang at the windows—the floor is covered with black and white checkered oilcloth. A large table with a red and white checkered tablecloth is in the center of the room. The window above the sink gives out on the Pacific. This little house also has a large out-door pool. It is here that Miss Talmadge gives her bathing parties. A number of extra bathing suits are always on hand so that unexpected guests may dive into the Pacific or swim about the pool should they so desire. Surf boards, rubber horses —in fact, a menagerie in rubber sprawls about the pool. There is a loveliness about this house that has taken on the, quality of the life lived within it. Miss Talmadge knows that color is the very charm of life and throughout her little home by the sea, one recognizes her exquisite sense of values. No one color predominates. The entire scheme of things is like a bowl of wildflowers. There is pink and blue, green and rose, laven¬ der and yellow, but so naturally blended that one is conscious of only the beauty of color, rather than their exact shades. A shadowy spot in the garden with rustic chairs and tables, is used for breakfast and tea in the after¬ noon. Close by stands a sun dial on which is carved in old English letters, “Others may tell of storms and showers, I only record the happy hours.” When looking at “The Dove,” which is being shown at the. , it is difficult to believe that Norma Talmadge has been appearing be¬ fore the motion picture camera for nearly fifteen years. True, she started as a child, but even at that, she appears but little more than a mere girl today. And this is due in large measure to her sensible at¬ tention to her physical condition. While tennis is her favorite form of outdoor recreation, she is an ar¬ dent lover of golf and swimming. She spends most of her time, both winter and summer, at her Santa Monica beach house, spending long hours in the surf, and daring the California sun to do its worst in the matter of tan. She has no set diet, being one of those fortunate people who never gain flesh no matter what they eat, but as her favorite dishes are spinach and avacado salad, perhaps there’s a reason, as they say.