Screenland (May-Oct 1930)

120 SCREENLAND Unsung Stars of Hollywood— Continued from page 23 myself I do not require more. For my family " he stopped a moment and then completed the sentence, "for my family I could wish that I knew better what to do." His wife, two children and two nieces are in a European country, making the brave fight for existence that so many of their countrymen are making. When Emil Jannings appeared in "The Last Command" and the story got about that it was from life, hard-boiled New York laughed the idea to scorn. Why, noble men and women don't earn their living. They live in palaces and are waited upon by servants! According to mass psy chology that is the way it is. Survivors are imposters — oh, they may survive, all right, but we don't want to meet them in the subway! They don't belong there. And if they were nobles they wouldn't be there, they'd be in a palace. How we love our dreams — never mind whether they are true or not. We will believe them, until something happens to us to wake us up! You'd be surprised how many doors of limousines are opened to you, how many trays of food are carried to you by men and women born to the manor if not the purpie. Not only in Hollywood, but all over the country. "The Last Command" was in reality the story of Theodore Lodijensky, a former General attached to the Czar's private bodyguard. He has become well-known in pictures, his screen name being Theodore Lodi. He was the high-priced Grand Duke that Will Rogers makes .such a hit with in "They Had To See Paris." (Do you remember how they both chucked Irene Rich's dull party and staged a private one of their own?) Lodijensky told his story to Ernst Lubitsch just as he told it to me. Lubitsch got the idea that it would make a great screen story. He told Jannings who thought so, too, and Von Sternberg also became enthusiastic and directed Jannings in it. It happened to be Lodijensky's story, but it is also the story of many of the Russians here. It is Savitsky's .story, too. With their former material power swept suddenly from under their feet they are as helpless as new-born children. The greater their former power the more helpless they are now. They have to begin all over again and with other weapons. That is the difficult thing. They don't know what other weapons or how to begin. Lodijensky's story, briefly, is this. He had held Moscow against the Revolutionists for six or seven days, then finding that the whole city would be slaughtered unless they surrendered they did so, on condition that all lives would be spared. This was promised, but in three weeks Lodijensky and many of his companions were thrown into jail. They were asked to give the names of others but they refused. Three times Lodijensky was taken out to be shot and kept standing while a dozen others paid the death penalty. This was to break down his spirit. Lodijensky had some money sewn in his clothes which had es-caped the guards. With some of it he bribed a jailor to take a note to a friend who was still at liberty. The friend was allowed to see him, also, through bribery. He brought a loaf of bread and told him that it concealed something that he would know how to use. "I shall wait for you all night outside the wall," he said. A steel saw was in the bread. It had no handle and Lodijensky's hands were torn and bleeding before he was able to saw two bars of his window which gave a space wide enough for him to crawl through. It was nearly dawn when he finished and with one leg over the ledge he discovered another dilemma. He was many feet from the ground — far enough to cause death, or at least broken bones. Desperately, he reached on both sides of the window for something to catch to and then one of those miracles happened that reads like a fairy tale. There was a rain pipe running from roof to ground just within reach. A shorter armed person could not have made it. He slid down the pipe, the buttons on his coat making a fearful racket, the metal further mangling his hands. His friend had a Mercedes all ready to go and although the noise he had made aroused the guards, the car at a speed of a hundred miles an hour bore him to safety. With his wife, he escaped to France and later at the advice of and with the cooperation of John Gay, an American university professor, he came to America. He and Mrs. Lodijensky landed with fifty dollars in their pockets. He didn't know where to get work for he didn't speak English at that time, but finally he landed a job as riveter that paid him twentythree dollars a week. In time, he saved four hundred dollars of which he was very proud. He and his wife decided to open a millinery shop. She had learned something about the trade in Paris, because she liked to do such things for herself. The shop was their home, too. It was a front parlor on the corner of Madison Avenue and Fortieth Street in New York. Trade was very bad, however, until the General happened to meet Karl Kitchen who wrote an article for his paper called "The Russian General who turned his Sword into a Needle." "If I had had capital then I should have made a lot of money, for trade boomed overnight," General Lodijensky told me. "We moved to more fashionable quarters and looked very prosperous on the outside but lack of backing defeated us." Borrowing from a friend they started the wellknown Russian Eagle on Fifty-seventh street, a restaurant that became very prosperous. Gradually, his story got about to the habitues of the place of which Gloria Swanson was one. She asked him to do the technical work on her picture which Allan Dwan was to direct. Dwan gave him a part in the picture. The next with them was "The Coast of Folly." Hollywood was inevitable now that he was in the picture business. He has served on many sets as technical advisor and actor. Among them was "The Cossacks," "Love," "The Midnight Sun," "General Crack" and "They Had To See Paris." He started the Russian Eagle restaurant out here on Sunset Boulevard and it became the hit of the town, for the food was excellent, the music extraordinary and the atmosphere fascinating. One night when the place was packed and more than a dozen film stars present — I remember Charlie Chaplin and Lily Damita were two of them — there was an explosion and everyone barely escaped with their lives. A man who owned a shop next door had moved everything out and set fire to the place to collect insurance. He is now in San Quentin. Lodijensky was taken to the hospital and for days was not expected to live. It wiped him out financially, down to his last dollar. A wealthy man whose name I have been asked not to mention, gave him enough to start over again, and on another site the new Double-Headed Russian Eagle was opened, and soon became a success. But again fate steps in. The city is widening Sunset Boulevard. The new line will cut the restaurant directly in half. Once more Lodijensky will have to move. But as Natalie Golitzin says, "We Russians are so used to wandering about that another move doesn't mean very much." Natalie or Natasha Golitzin, as she is called on the screen, is one of the fortunate refugees, in that she and her family are together. It took years for them to find each other but they are happy now, and live in a charming home on Hollywood Boulevard. All but one sister who married a multimillionaire and is living in London. Her husband was eager to toss a couple of millions to his wife's family or have them all under his roof but the Golitzins wouldn't hear of it. "We couldn't do that, you know," said Marina earnestly. She is Natasha's older sister. "My father is now a physician, you see, and he has a good practice. My mother has a little business. She does all sorts of embroidery and I help her. An agent sells them for us. My younger brother is going to school here and Natalie does some work in pictures now and then." That gentle though firm independence showed their blood, as proud as any that ever flowed in Russia. Both princesses, and having a strain of Tartar blood, none of the family will have their title recognized now. "It is too foolish," Natasha smiled. I remember an afternoon spent on the "General Crack" set when Natasha was pointed out to me. In the coronation scene .she was right in the foreground of the scenes taken facing the altar. Not every girl who is a princess looks like one, but Natasha does. She had on, that day, a very beautiful ruby velvet gown with a coronet, necklace and bracelets of brilliant stones. She was dressed as she would have been dressed had not misfortune overtaken her family. It is a sentimental reference, but several people spoke of it that day. Natasha herself seemed quite unaware of it, and she never mentions her 'family' to strangers and politely changes the subject if they try to lead her into conversation about it. "Being a prince or a princess is a business, really, and we are no longer in the business of being princes and princesses," one of them said. David Mir feels the same way about it. He has even changed his name and few people, even the Russians, know who he really is. There are a few who knew him in Russia but they are as secretive as he is about disclosing his identity, which he declares does not matter. "I am an American citizen," he told me. "My life in Russia is past — wiped out. It does not matter who my father was. It only matters what I can make of myself now, how I can adjust myself to the new conditions." As David Mir you have seen him in many pictures. He played with Bessie Love in "The Idol Breakers" just before she did "Broadway Melody." He played the lead with Baclanova in "The Secrets of the Czarina" and in "Bringing Up Father." He did the technical work on "His Hour" starring John Gilbert and on "Four Flaming Days" in which he also designed the costumes and played the part