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{( Dix in his own private piece of Paradise at Mdlibw Beach, California.
^He's big, brown, and brawny — athlete, movie star, and gentleman!
-xtra, Extra! Richard Dix ready to Leave the Screen! But Then the Talkies Came Along and Made him Change Ins Mind. Read This Frank, Revealing Story in Which a Famous Film Star Actually Says What He Thinks. Meet the Real Richard Dix.
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WAS ready to quit pictures cold!" said Richard Dix. We were walking up the broad oak stairs of a famous old New York restaurant whose bowed windows overlook Saint Patrick's Cathedral. "Ready to quit cold," he continued, "when talking films came along."
He took off his heavy, woolly overcoat, the kind a woman instinctively wants to stroke to see if it can possibly be as soft as it seems — and sat down at the table. Healthy, tanned, full of the devil, Richard Dix looked better than he ever looked in his life. And he seemed to have something on his mind that he wanted to pass along to me.
"You know," he said, "a man tells the truth once, maybe twice in his life: just before he dies, and sometimes— just before he marries. Well, I'm not thinking of getting married and I'm certainly not thinking of pushing off, but Fm going to tell you the truth today. This is my Swan Song. The truth about this or anything else you want to know!"
I looked Richard Dix square in the eyes. I have interviewed a variety of men in a variety of places: offices, drawing-rooms, chanceries, barrooms, prisons, hospitals, speakeasies and trains. But I never had one speak so frankly before. Maybe he was posing! But he returned my look with a steadiness which is difficult, even for an experienced actor, to simulate.
"All right," I answered, "but I think I ought to warn you that anything you say will be used against you. It you tell me the truth, the truth will be printed.
"Go ahead. I wish to Heaven you would! If ever a man was sick to death of working in Glorified Quickies, that man's name is Richard Dix. And Glorified Quickies are all I've been playing in for the past couple of years. Plainly, Richard Dix meant what he said. "Tell me," I asked, "why has the advent of talking pictures changed your mind about quitting the film game?"
"It was like this. I had made up my mind to quit making Glorified Quickies, to go to Hawaii, or some other tropical place, to eat, grow a paunch, maybe, and be merry— because I couldn't stand the kind of pictures I was continually being forced to play. Beating up ten villains to protect the village gal, jumping off of chits on the backs of Chinamen, and all that sort of tommyrot' I was on the stage for years. I know good drama when I see it. But the fans kept writing m and asking: 'Why do you play comedies? We want to see you in dramas.' It was too much. Dramas! The only two film dramas I ever played in were The Vanishing American and The Christian.' Both a long time ago. Today, 1 have licrht little pictures that neither give me a chance to do what I want nor to play the parts the fans want to see. For that reason I made up my mind to quit
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