Screenland (Oct 1923-Mar 1924)

TRUE f[The Ice Cream School of Acting and the Virgin JS/lenace of the Screen their imaginations to answer the question. The fact that few of the lucky twelve ever arrive in electric lights never diminishes the optimism of their sponsors. Picking the baby stars is a pleasant little game, the girls like it and it doesn't hurt anyone but the little actresses who are blackballed. Just by way of making the ice cream school of baby stars a settled and definite thing, the ingenues of Hollywood have formed a circle known as Our Club. The morals of Our Club are so excellent that if the late Sarah Bernhardt had gone to Hollywood as a young actress, she would have been severely snubbed. The requirements for membership are very strict. Any girl who has been rumored engaged to Charlie Chaplin is frowned upon. Constance Talmadge, Bebe Daniels, Corinne Griffith and Claire Windsor are not admitted because everyone knows that these girls are in the habit of going to dances without a chaperone. Making Fudge at Our Club The purposes of Our Club are strictly social. The girls just love to get together and make fudge. Or they like to play games, provided the games aren't too rough. Once they took up ballet dancing but, after having their pictures taken for publicity purposes, they stopped the lessons. For a brief season, they went in for culture. They had been informed that a Mme. Jeanne Balzac was headed for Hollywood. The name of Balzac sounded vaguely familiar so they iooked it up in the library. Sure enough, there was a whole shelf devoted to the works of Balzac. To prepare for a possible meeting with the Frenchwoman, they studied up on Balzac. But when Mme. Balzac arrived, they received a knockout blow. She hadn't written all those books. The books had been written by her grandfather, a dead and unimportant Frenchman. Our Club's Social Season height of the social season of Our Club comes when they are invited to have dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Charles Ray. The Rays have achieved a great social position in Hollywood simply by hiring a butler. Mrs. Ray, who is not an actress herself, rather enjoys meeting a group of mere professionals— if they happen to be nice girls. Mary Pickford has entertained Our Club and had them on the premises long enough to have her picture taken with them. Mary endorses Our Club, probably because she remembers her own unhappy days when she was just a stage child trouping with stock companies Mary herself, never spent any evenings making fudge or playing guessing games. The only guessing game she played was guessing where her next job was coming from. Conspicuous in Private Life Anyway TThe girls of Our Club are considerably more conspicuous in private life than they are on the screen. You are more apt to remember Patsy Ruth Miller as the heroine of a thousand vivacious interviews than you are as the negative Esmeralda of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. You know that Helen Ferguson is a nice girl and good to her mother and sister, but you have only a sketchy idea of her on the screen. Colleen Moore is a lively little Irish girl who was recently married, but you have to think twice before you can recall some of her screen characterizations. Mildred Davis, of course, was Harold Lloyd's leading woman until — Continued on page 100 27 Ct,The "baby stars" of today ought to be an improvement on the older generation. O, There will be no shadows of poverty or shabbiness darkening their past. d,They are nice girls of good family. CThey have bungalows, little motor cars, good clothes and they lead the sheltered lives of high school girls. C YET— can the Mary Pickfords, the Mabel Normands, the Nazimovas and the Norma Talmadges of tomorrow come from such placid beginnings?