Screenland (May–Oct 1927)

SCREENLAND 99 The Joy Girl (Continued from page 52) "I can't cry, Mr. Dwan," she blurted out suddenly. "I'm terribly sorry, but I just can't cry. I've tried to before. When I feel like crying, I only get hysterical and angry. I'll have to look sad instead." So that's how the scene was taken. Later, in her dressing room, she told the story. It began back in her earliest child' hood when her father died, and she went with her mother to live in the big house in Virginia which had been her mother's girl' hood home. Mrs. Borden had been a Shields — one of the best known families in Dublin which sent seven sons to America, one of whom became a famous general in the Civil War. They had settled in the south, but Olive's mother had married a northerner — a Borden from Massachusetts. From her, Olive inherited all the dreams and emotional qualities of the Irish, but from her father, she got the strength and determination to make her dreams come true. Mrs. Borden, with the pride of all true southerners, was eager to give her daughter the best education possible, so the tiny bank account dwindled steadily through the early years when Olive was sent to an exclusive convent in Baltimore. When she came home, more money went for party gowns, and to meet the ever increasing demands of social life in a southern town. It's an old story, but always a tragic one — this valiant attempt of an aristocratic family to keep up with the traditions of earlier, prosperous days. Olive felt the tragedy keenly, and though she laughed and danced happily enough through the lazy, southern days and evenings, she never could escape the sinister shadow of poverty that always hovered close at hand. One morning, she declared quite sud' denly that she was going to work for a living, and was going to start at once. Her mother, sewing on a pink crepe party frock that Olive was to wear that evening, looked up in consternation. Olive work? At what? There was nothing she could do. She had been trained in the southern way — to make a good wife, and manage a lovely home. What chance would she have in a world of work? Olive didn't know what chance. She only knew that the butterfly existence had ended forever. It was nearly a week later that the Hollywood plan was conceived. Olive thought that she'd like to be a motion picture actress, and if others could do it, she could do it too. They reached the coast in 1922 just at the time when the moving picture industry, sadly in need of financial backing, was passing through the most trying period of its history. Many of the producers were battling desperately for their existence, and some of the best known actors in America were idle. The "extra people" were on the edge of starvation, and it was an "extra" that Olive had hoped to become first. Day after day, she did the weary round of the casting offices, and day after day, the Borden finances reached a more precarious state. 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