Screenland (May–Oct 1927)

director. The protagonist has reacted to the word death in an unusual manner. She tries something else.) Interviewer: Youth has always impressedme as being difficult to portray. I remember Jane Cowl in "Romeo and Juliet". Both she and the boy who played opposite her seemed to inject into their portrayals; — which, my good man, they had rehearsed again and again and had played over and over many, many times, something very vivid and intense. (Gilbert suddenly projects himself into a role. He becomes youth incarnate, but not the obvious kind of youth, not the kind of youth that writes poetry in spring. His face takes on an eager, unhappy, discontented expression. Is this youth, then? Has the interviewer failed in her directorial at' tempts? The interviewer tries to recall her own youth as against the joyous kind that she has read about. Surely adolescence is an unhappy time. There is always some causeless melancholy lurking in the background. Gilbert's expression has held the mirror up to life. In one fleeting moment he has shown youth as it is, discontented, striving, ambitious, intense, and not the youth that age contemplates in roseate hues.) (The interviewer now suffers a series of mixed emotions. She hates to give up her ideals of the stage, but she sees that spontaniety is more successful than a perfected role done night after night. Perhaps she is too gullible. Perhaps she has only imagined that these expressions have crossed the actor's face. It was all so fleeting. Yet as she watches Gilbert, she knows that she read true. She suddenly understands why Gilbert does and must work without preliminary rehearsals, without the dragging monotony of performance after performance. She has found what real temperament is, a human being alive and sensitive to emotions. Not merely a bundle of nerves, but a man capable of expressing instantaneously the mood of a given situation and expressing that mood in an original fashion, minus the rubber stamp of conventional ideas.) (The Interviewer is loath to admit that she has been wrong so . . . ) (Interviewer: Then you are, John Gilbert, an exponent of the New Art. Gilbert: If you mean by the old art pedantic ideas, set theories that a man must work like a mechanic to get an effect, I am. Emotions are instantaneous and fleeting. When you live too long with a role it is only monotony. It is ridiculous that you must live everything you play. You must simply react to the moment. I could play the role of a saint before the camera, and be, in real life, the most hienous of villains. A mood, a word, a flash. It's in the box. It's recorded on the screen. It is emotion. I hope it's real. (Secretly the interviewer knows that Gilbert is right, but being a woman as well as an interviewer she will admit nothing. She rises to leave. Gilbert also rises.) Interviewer: (Doggedly) The stage is a great art. Gilbert: It is. It simply isn't a medium. I couldn't stand the monotony. Interviewer: I will admit nothing. Gilbert: I didn't try to make you admit a thing, did I? Interviewer: You didn't try. Gilbert: Maybe I'm all wrong, anyhow. I can't abide seeing myself on the screen. (The Interviewer glows at the first sentence of this speech, but it is a faint glow. She has been convinced against her will. '* She realizes that if she stays a moment longer she will admit that she has been convinced so she makes a quick exit as THE CURTAIN FALLS) SCREENLAND 99 HOTEL AND TRAVEL HOTEL AND TRAVEL PHILADELPHIA Chestnut and 39th Street HOTEL PENNSYLVANIA Oscar W. Richards, Manager FIREPROOF Unrestricted Parking GARAGE 600 Rooms 500 Baths Rooms with Running Water from $2.50 per day Rooms with private Bath and Shower from $3.50 per day Food and Service the best Near West Philadelphia Station Pennsylvania Railroad