Screenland (May-Oct 1929)

102 SCREENLAND How They Play in Hollywood — Continued from page 29 kidded a lot, pretending that the little brush she used to flick the crumbs from the iron was a paint-brush, and she would stand back to watch the effect after giving a dab to the iron. Buddy served himself last, but Mary Brian refused to give him any credit for unselfishness, declaring that he preferred practicing on us, and Buddy remarked that he had been waiting to see if Mary would offer to cook, whereupon Mary with quick Irish wit said she knew that and that's why she didn't. "Never mind," put in Theda Bara, "we'll come to see Buddy cook waffles in a window some time!" At the end, they ran a race, Buddy and Ann, and I must admit that Buddy was the quicker, but Ann was the neater. I forgot to say that that nice Jack Stambaugh was one of the guests. He and John Westwood, you know, are the only two college boys of the twelve that First National brought out a little over a year ago, who have remained in pictures. All the rest went home to finish becoming lawyers and doctors and stock brokers and writers. Jack is doing awfully well, and seems in a fair way to become a star. After breakfast we all drove over to the polo grounds, driving into the canyon with its great oaks and its ferns and streams, all beautiful under the sunshine and amid the green hills. Tom Moore was there, among the racers, wearing his green cap and tunic and looking very professional. We liked the fact that he had apparently pressed out his tunic, so that it was smooth, and not wrinkled like most of the riders' outfits. We went around back of the grandstand to take a peek at the mounts which Agnes, Ann and Frank were to ride, with Mrs. Rork shivering a bit when she saw what a tall horse Ann was to ride. Then we went up into the grandstand, which was packed. There were some whippet races, and then came the steeplechase, and we hardly breathed as we watched Agnes and Ann dash off. They took the hurdles wonderfully, though, and at the last we felt sure that Ann was going to win. "Oh, here she comes!" shouted Patsy, so that everybody looked around at her. Sure enough, Ann dashed over the last hurdle, just ahead of Agnes, and bowed as she received her silver cup. Then Frank Dazey won a cup and after that Tom Moore was to race. He did, and very nearly met with a terrible accident. It was on the last stretch of the course, and at the last hurdle we saw Tom hurtle to one side. Next minute he and his horse were both down. Nobody on the grandstand breathed for a moment, then a lot of people ran to pick them up. They lay very still, both of them, but Tom had fallen clear of his horse, and presently both were up, none the worse, except for a slight limp on the part of both Tom and his steed, for their experience. We found that Tom had swerved out of the way to let another rider who was evidently about to fall regain his balance. After the races, we all went back to the Dazeys' for tea, and there we found a lot of new guests. Cecelia DeMille. daughter of C. B. DeMille, was there, a slight, graceful charming young girl: but for all her quiet demureness. she is a great little horsewoman. Virginia Valli was there, and Russell Gleason, son of James Gleason, Florence Lake, Jerome Storm and his wife, and a lot of other people. We chatted with everybody, and then reluctantly said goodbye, after Agnes had confessed to us: "Honestly, just before a race, you hope down deep in your heart that something will happen — like breaking your leg or some little thing like that — so that you won't have to be in it!" "Oh, they're going to give Bessie Love a garter over at the Breakfast Club tomorrow night, and we're invited to be there," Patsy told me. "Garters given in public?" I demanded. "Well, it's the Order of the Garter or something," Patsy vaguely explained. We decided we just must go and find out. It seems that it makes you a Pal of the Breakfast Club to be given a garter, and Patsy remarked that she should think that anybody must be a pal to know you well enough to give you anything so intimate as a garter. We went over there with Dr. Howard Updegraff, a remarkable surgeon who is fixing up everybody's out-of-line chins and noses, and we found Bessie Love and a lot of her guests in the Dog House, that charmingly snug little bungalow just outside the Club pavilion, where you meet and say hello in order to be able to recognize who is at your party once you get inside the huge Breakfast Club room. Blanche Sweet was there, peeping, as usual, from under a lock of hair that hangs down from her bob — "just as if," remarked Patsy, "she were looking out of a little window in her house before opening the door, to see if she wants to let them in." She is looking radiantly well, but said that she had a bruised arm due to managing somehow to hit that member with her racket while playing tennis. Mary McAllister was there, and John Colton, the playwright, Gwen Lee, Julanne Johnson, Paul Bern, Howard Hughes, the producer, Gregory Blackton. Gus Edwards and his wife, Lila Lee, who came with John Farrow, the writer, Johnny Hines. Polly Moran, Sally Phipps. Doreen Pastor, Dorothy Burgess — Dorothy had come with Paul Bern — Billie Dove, Irvin Willat, and a score of others. Norman Kerry brought Sally O'Neil, and very cute Sally looked, too. Howard Hughes, the producer, had brought Bessie Love, we learned. By the way, Bessie Love admits she is engaged to somebody back in Chicago, but nobody can find out who the lucky man is. Poor little Bessie had broken a rib a day or two before, doing a dance in a picture, and declared she was all done up in adhesive tape, but she managed to get through the evening without wearing a pained expression on her face. Polly Moran sat opposite me, and observed we ought to have a set of telephones in order to be able to communicate with each other down that long table. When the orchestra played some William Tell music, Johnny Hines did a pantomimic juggling act as he sat at the table, and when the William Tell selection got into its sweetest part, Johnny exclaimed. "Ah, peace has broken out in Mexico!" After dinner we found out about the garter. Maurice Dumond, president of the Breakfast Club, bestowed the article on Bessie, the intimate garment turning out to be a dainty little affair trimmed with a fluff of ostrich. "Why don't they give you a pair of garters?" Polly Moran called out. "Sh! It's the Order of the Garter." Bessie admonished her, but Polly kept right on — "And why do they always give cups and no saucers?" Then there was dancing and more fun, and the party broke up very late. "Ive been going so hard and so fast I'm tired," declared the hardly-ever-weary Patsy the Party Hound. "I saw Mrs. Mitchell Lewis the other day — she used to be on the New York stage as Nan Ryan, you know, sister of Mary Ryan — and she and Mitch are going up to Arrowhead Hot Springs for a rest over the week end. They want us to meet them there." "Sounds awfully nice," I answered. So we packed up and took the seventyfive mile ride from Hollywood in Patsy's car, to the Springs, which are just in the shadow of the mountains, but high enough up so one can take wonderful little rides on horseback and smart little hiking trips to discover lovely canyons with their ferns and their streams and their sycamores and oaks interlocking overhead. We found Jack Mulhall and his wife there, and learned that they had traveled on horseback over every trail in the country, and Louise Dresser and her mother had come up for a rest. We found that Lew Cody was living down in one of the beautiful little Spanish bungalows which belong to the hotel. He had gone there to recuperate, and we called him on the telephone to see whether he wanted company. We found that he did. and hastened down there to say hello. We found Norman Kerry there, keeping him company. Norman was on the way to location at Banning, to play in a picture in which he was being starred, but had stopped off to see Lew. Lew was sitting up in a big chair, looking very cheerful when we arrived, and not at all the pale invalid we had expected to find. He and Kerry kept the ball rolling, about the gay times they had had in Beverly Hills, with all the kiddish prankthey had played on each other. Once Lew had taken a braso band to Norman's house in the middle of the night and walked into his bedroom playing, whereupon Norman had retaliated by an elaborately planned joke. He took all the beautiful vases out of Lew's house whe" Lew wasn't there, replacing them with duplicates in breakaway stuff like they use in the studios in pictures. Then Norman and Buster Keaton had called on Lew, and 'accidentally' upset all Lew's wonderful vases, breaking them one by one. It wasn't for half an hour at least that Lew got onto the joke. "Here we came to cheer Lew up, and he's cheering us up instead — if we needed any cheering," remarked Patsy as we left for a walk with Mrs. Lewis. On the path we met Ronald Colman and William Powell, who had gone up there for a rest over the week end, and who were living in a bungalow. They had been playing tennis, and were just going in for a steam bath, they said. ' After dinner there was a picture show.