Screenland (Apr–Sept 1923)

brakes? Result: a burned-out brake band and lining and locked wheels. After her grand entrance, poor Vi had to see her beautiful new toy towed away to the garage, because she had a hunch and didn't heed it! EL .unches do not keep union hours, according to June Mathis, probably the best known woman scenarist in pictures. Miss Mathis acts on hunches, even in the wee, small hours of the morning. But when a gorgeous idea comes, Miss Mathis doesn't jump out into the cold to jot it down, like many writers. She snuggles deeper under the covers and ponders the idea, letting it grow and develop. Later in the day she puts the idea on paper, for you and me to enjoy in the darkened theatre later. One specific hunch is related by Miss Mathis: "When I was in New York on my last trip, I had a most difficult time trying to find books containing information about the costumes of the times as for Ben Hur. Tom Gallery believes in hunches. I had searched and researched without success and was at my wits' ends. I was walking down the street, and suddenly, apparently without any control over my mind or body, I turned into Brentano's a large book company on Fifth Avenue. As though led by an unseen force, I walked to a certain counter and asked to examine some old Bibles on the shelf. They were Bibles printed on Dutch copper plate in 1771. I told the clerk that those books were illustrated ; how I knew, I cannot say. The clerk said they were not illustrated, but on opening them I found they were, containing illustrations of the very costumes I was searching for." Marie Prevost waxed facetious when asked about her belief in hunches, and the answer she gave was no doubt true: "When I was doing bathing-girl stuff in the Mack Sennett comedies, every time I was called' for a bathing scene, I had a hunch that I was going to get my feet wet. And every time I did!" REID MEMORIAL w ■ ALLACE REID'S monument will be a sanatorium for the cure of the drug evil, it has been announced by his widow, Mrs. Dorothy Davenport Reid, after completion of plans of a propaganda film, to be made at the Ince studios, in which Mrs. Reid will play. The proceeds will be devoted to the sanatorium. "I have been receiving telegrams urging me to do this from club women and women's organizations," said Mrs. Reid. "We will start work on the film immediately." The sanatorium will be located near Los Angeles. C. Gardner Sullivan will write the scenario for the picture. "Please make it plain there is no commercial interest involved in this picture," said Mrs. Reid. "The entire funds will go to the Wallace Reid Memorial sanatorium. No individual will profit from the film in any way." Club women in Los Angeles have promised their cooperation. "We have talked things over with the biggest men in the film industry," said Mrs. Reid, "and we are assured of their cooperation also. The picture will be intended to teach a great moral lesson." WallaceReid died after months of fighting to regain his health, shattered by the drug and liquor habits. Mr. Ince, who is to produce Mrs. Wallace Reid's "dope" picture, announces through his press agent that the production will have its premiere in Chicago. Universal, with its huge picturemaking facilities in California, has purchased a picture for release. In six years this has never happened before. So "Driven," by Charles Brabin, must be a remarkably good production. Harold Lloyd announces that Mildred Davis will retire from the screen after she has become Mrs. Lloyd. It is estimated that 15,000,000 persons visit the motion-picture theaters daily in the United States — more than in all the other countries of the world combined. After eight weeks of unusually hard work on her new picture, "Slander the Woman," Dorothy Phillips is now resting at her home in Hollywood. It is said she spent long hours in sn'owdrifts waist high and tramped miles through ice covered underbrush, while out on location. Now she believes she has earned a short rest. Mr. Lasky has announced that Rob Wagner, humorist, author of numerous stories based on studio life, artist, and for the past year a member of the titling department at the Lasky Studios in Hollywood, is *o become a Paramount director. 56