Screenland (May-Oct 1929)

SCREENLAND 101 her career and settle down as Mrs. Jack Gilbert. It was arranged that I drive home with her one afternoon for tea, when her work was done, to talk it over. We climbed into a stunning black town car at the Pathe studio and breezed through Beverly to the top of Tower Road, passing John Barrymore's house and new aviary he is building for the foreign birds he brought back with him from South America, on the way. (I might say here that the aviary is larger than the average home.) "Over there," Ina waved toward the back of the house, "Jack is going to build a wing for me. Then each of us can have perfect freedom and a chance to get away by ourselves if we want to — a thing far more important to the happiness of married people than most of us realize. There I can have my maid and my piano and make all the noise I like when Jack wants to read or write. He has the greatest capacity for enjoyment of anyone I have ever met, but he has moods of seriousness." I had already discovered that Jack had a serious mind. He reads an enormous lot. He has a standing order with Brentano in New York to supply him with lists of all non-fiction literature, and he orders quantities of rare books, old and new. He has a broker in New York who keeps him in touch with all the worth-while plays produced there and who sends him manuscripts to read. He loves to play tennis and has a court on his hill-top, and a swimming pool, too. He loves to drive his own Ford through the hills or by the sea, but now that he has found Ina I guess a good deal of that lonely prowling is cut out. "Well, has the beauty and peace of this place affected you to the point of tossing your career to the winds?" I asked Ina Claire. She shrugged her shoulders. "No, but I want to rest. After all, I've been working since my thirteenth year. I have these pictures to do for Pathe and then I am planning to take several months off for a trip around the world." "What! And are you going to drag jack from his work and make him go with you?" She looked at me with a twinkle in her very beautiful eyes. "No, I'm not going to try to make Jack do anything. And I don't expect him to try to make me do anything. But I am planning the trip and if he wants to join me I'll be ridiculously pleased!" And Jack, on his side, is arranging his schedule so that after "Olympia" he will be given a long vacation. It looks like a honeymoon, belated though it may be. We talked a little about her work. "Pathe is paying me three times what other studios offered — why, I have not the slightest notion! And then they ask me to do 'Paris Bound'! I ask you. Why? The girl in 'Paris Bound' is a straight lead, a perfectly nice wife and mother. I have made my reputation by playing sophisticated women. In 'Paris Bound' I wouldn't be any better than any one of a hundred actresses; not as good! Now why should they pay me this enormous salary to play something that any straight actress could do and which the fans would rather see played by one of their tried favorites? All I can bring to pictures is the sort of thing I have helped to make popular on the stage. And with the same incomprehensible wisdom they put screen actresses not trained to sophisticated drama in sophisticated plays. No one has ever yet been able to fit a round peg into a square hole and I dare venture film executives will not be able to puzzle it out either. It was finally decided that I play 'The Awful Truth,' which is a little better than 'Paris Bound.' " She refused flatly to be billed as Mrs. John Gilbert. And with reason. The charm she has for her stage audiences will win her as many friends on the screen, I am sure; yet that is not the only reason she refused. "My personal life is one thing and business is another," she said as we sat on the veranda of her new home, which overlooks the California world as far as one may see it. "Metro wanted me to play with Jack in 'Olympia.' It is a small part and not suited to me. I wouldn't play it for two reasons. One, purely business. It is wrong for one star to play an unimportant part in another star's picture, even if that star happens to be one's husband. I wouldn't let Jack do it in one of mine. That is not good business and it often creates trouble in a home. The other reason is that I think it is cheap to make love to one's husband in view of so many people. I wouldn't mind at all if we weren't married, but because we are so newly wed and there has been so much publicity about it I just couldn't do it and Jack feels the same way about it. (\ The Moore, the merrier! Here are Tom Moore, Mai St. Claire O'Hara, and Owen Moore. The brothers are playing in St. Claire directed and O'Hara wrote for Radio "You know," she said, with a half-shy little laugh, "I don't know so very much about him. But we seem to understand each other so well, almost without speak' ing, and we have the same reactions to things. It is that that makes me think we might make a go of our marriage. And then we are both Irish and that makes a difference too, I think. He really is a nice person," she said, her blue eyes wide and with the look of a precocious child that has stumbled on a great secret. "In fact, I think he's swell!" Jack appeared on the scene and announced that a fire had been built in the living room. "Aren't you both cold? Ina, you haven't a coat on! Better come in where it is warm." "I'm so glad to get a breath of ozone after being on that sound stage all day that I hadn't noticed it was chilly." Theirs is a beautiful living room. It is enormous, with about a thirty-foot ceiling, and balconies all around it. It is richly and colorfully furnished with deep cushioned lounging chairs and an enormous couch before a blazing eucalyptus fire. On the table was a cage with a grey parrot. I promptly went over to him and offered to scratch his head. He saw me coming and obligingly bent his crest, ruffling his neck feathers in anticipation of a comforting scratch. "Oh, look, Jack — she isn't afraid of him, either!" cried Ina, and came over to help me in the scratching process. "Can he talk?" I asked. "Yes," said Jack, "but I'm afraid his vocabulary was acquired on shipboard and you know the reputation sailors have. I don't think Poll has missed a word." Ina is small and a natural blonde with the creamy skin that goes with such coloring. Her eyes are very blue and dark and she has a trick of looking at you every once in a while like a little girl who is not so sure she isn't going to be scolded. Nestled up against her husband's shoulder, with his arm about her, that blonde head looked very attractive in contrast to the coal-black one just above it. Time will show, of course, whether these two strong personalities will be able to adjust their lives to matrimony, but both have had experience enough to help them in this adventure that they have embarked upon with so much joy and so much hope of happiness. And I am sure that thousands will wish them bon voyage! Jack and Ina will have a real honeymoon in Europe as soon as each finishes a current picture. Jack is working on "Olympia," while Mrs. Gilbert having finished her first talkie, "The Awful Truth," is starring in "Negligee." Along about the Matt Moore, George last of this summer "City Streets"" which they will be sailing Pictures. for the continent.