Screenland (Nov 1930-Apr 1931)

100 SCREENLAND YORKSHIRE SAUCE — Continued from page 51 vitality. She does not go in for cosmetics with the exception of powder and lipstick. While her hair is bobbed, she does not carry a comb to keep it in place but just tosses her head back and there it is. When she works, she works hard and earnestly. Her gameness is a strong point in her character. During the filming of "Bright Lights" at the First National Studio she fell and sprained her ankle but insisted upon remaining and finishing the day's work. Then she went home and was laid up for two days. She knows her limitations and is a good judge of stories. She knows what sort of role she can play. When studio officials wanted her to play the feminine lead in "The Bad Man" she refused, declaring that if the story were changed so that she would 'make' the "Bad Man" she would consider the role ! She fought with officials over a certain picture which was assigned to her and said it would be a 'flop' and she was right. She will tell vou that "I went clown on my hands and knees and begged for a role which was given to another star" and she will tell you that star's weak points when she played it and how she would have played it, and it all sounds quite logical. When a certain young director wanted to direct her in one of her vehicles she flatly refused, saying, "I'm afraid I'm not big enough for you to direct. When I'm a big star and can take risks I will be terribly happy to have you direct me. I can't afford to take the chance right now." When the Mackaill left Hollywood several months ago she was depressed and worried about her future for the first time in her career. She was debonair about it, but she was worried. Her contract ended when she completed "The Office Wife." Then studio officials saw the picture and decided that they wanted her back. But to find Dot Mackaill was no easy matter. She was seeing Europe via the air ; one day Paris, the next, Budapest, then Copenhagen, then Berlin, and so on until she had covered 2500 miles by plane. Finally, the studio emissary caught up with her and she was the possessor of a three-year starring contract. Although there is evidence of a brilliant future, Miss Mackaill refuses to be dazzled. If everything goes well it will all be very fine. If she is given poor_ vehicles and sees her star wavering she will retire. She does not want to go the way of other film flesh and cling tenaciously to her spot on the screen when she is not wanted. The money does not worry her. She has saved her money and made profitable investments. There have been reports that she will marry again. She does not deny or affirm these reports — she laughs them off. After all, Dorothy Mackaill has been one of the most consistently successful screen stars in the jumping gelatines. Her intrepid career, begun at the adventuresome age of fifteen, has trailed from the little town of Hull to a dancing school in London, to a London musical show, then to America and past the Ziegfeld line of chorus girls on through the independent producers around New York and finally to screen stardom in Hollywood. The Mackaill will amuse you when she recalls her migration to America and relates how she told her father she was promised a role in a Broadway musical show to win his consent. At New York she discovered that she could not get off the boat because she was under the required age and because a country-woman of hers had received the wrong information of her arrival and was not there to claim her. "I was just another emigrant," says Dorothy. But it happened that she had made friends with the son of Gabriele D'Annunzio on board the boat, and because he was attracted Dy the fifteen-year-old Yorkshire girl he vouched for her stay in America. When she was recently in New York she received a telephone call from young D'Annunzio and had dinner with him in the captain's suite aboard one of the big liners in port, this being ten years after the great poet's son was first captivated by the little girl from Hull. "When I came to America," Dorothy will tell you, "my accent was terribly English. It was worse than that, it was a combination of Scotch and Yorkshire dialect. It's a good thing the talkies had not come in then. I wouldn't have had a chance. And strangely enough, when my first talkies. 'The Barker,' 'His Captive Woman,' and other pictures, were shown in London, the British critics could not get over the miracle that Dorothy Mackaill had lost her accent and was speaking like a thorough Yankee who held the trenches at Bunker Hill. Perhaps that is because I lost no time taking out naturalization papers or what-have-you." Her first job in America came when she was taken back-stage at the Century Theater by a girl friend. The debonair Mackaill exchanged characteristic banter with a gentleman who proved to be Lee Shu bert, and he was so surprised that he gave her a place in a revival of "Florodora." When that ended she made up her mind that she wanted to be glorified so she went to the offices high up in the New Amsterdam Theater and announced that "Dorothy Mackaill of London is here to see Mr. Florenz Ziegfeld." Mr. Ziegfeld was so surprised that he gave her an audience and also a job in "The Midnight Frolic." "One night when Kathleen Martin was unable to appear," the Mackaill will tell you, "I was pushed on in her place with scarcely any rehearsal and sang a very syncopated American song in my own English manner, Scotch-Yorkshire dialect and all. There were three encores and I decided I was a hit. But I was a female 'Merton of the Movies.' They were rolling in their seats because my accent was so funny when put to American music." It was when she was in "The Midnight Frolic" that Marshall Neilan saw her and gave her a role in a picture called "Bits of Life." Other roles came. Some with Johnny Hines in comedies. Then better ones with Richard Barthelmess in "The Fighting Blade," "Twenty-One," "Ranson's Folly," and "Shore Leave." Then she was given a contract by First National Pictures and she has been with that organization ever since, except when she was twice loaned to another company. She played in a series of highly successful pictures with Jack Mulhall, then she became a star in her own right. Her return to Hull this summer, ten years after living in America, was eventful in the sense that she received the welcome of a celluloid conqueror. The Mackaill prefers to tell you of the humorous side of her triumphant return. "When I rang the bell of the old Mackaill Mansion," she says, "my father was out because I was not expected until the next day. I was welcomed by my stepmother and my six year old half-sister. My sister scurried out and told the kids that Dorothy was home and they cluttered up the front yard and the alley. Then my father came home and we had a visit. "The news had spread and the theater manager in Hull appeared and told me that as I was not expected until tomorrow I would have to sneak out of the house and get in an automobile and make a grand entrance the next morning. When my father went out on the porch and told the multitude that I was not there my little sister ran out and screamed, 'She is, too ! She is, too!' I had a grand time!" NOT A PATTERN GIRL — Continued from page 34 then, it didn't take long for Fame to find her. Arthur Hopkins appearing in this role, saw her in "The Noose" and decided she was just the type for the girl lead in "Burlesque." Barbara got the part and was a Broadway star. And all because she didn't know her patterns— but her lines ! "Then," laughs Barbara, "came my big moment !" No. It wasn't names in electric lights. It wasn't reviews or bouquets over the footlights. It was 'love' with big gilt capitals. Terpsichore and Euterpe having done their parts, Fate gave Cupid a shove. Cupid in this case in the guise of a peppy piano player in "Burlesque," who was a great friend of Frank Fay's. Frank at that time was at The Palace for an engagement and it was Cupid who carried messages, sweet nothing's, tidbits and gossip from one to the other; who fanned the flame. And romance grew. It is two years later and they are still living happily after. Barbara is what they call a 'natural.' She never learned to act. Except coaching by Frank Fay, she will tell you. She also explains that she has only played one kind of role and that is the kind of girls she has actually known, but then she's modest ! She used to have yearnings to do dramatic things in a big way. She used to watch Jeanne Eagels and then come away and think 'what's the use?' She feels the same way now when she sees Ann Harding. She likes the movies, finds them interesting, feels she learns something from them, but the stage will always be 'home' to her. She'd like to settle down, just she and Frank — and only come back to do something that interested her. She'd like to do a play with Frank, like Vilma Banky and Rod La Rocque are doing in New York, and then take the play to London. She'd like to do different roles, something she's never attempted. Maybe foreign parts full of accents and things. As it is now, practically her only equipment has been to learn to say 'ain't' and drop her g's, which is not such a good habit for polite society and one which Frank tries to correct. She'd like to have a child now when she's young ; she'd like to work with Frank, so they could be together, because they wouldn't be jealous of one another in their work. She doesn't smoke — or at least she hasn't smoked in eighteen months because Frank doesn't want her to. Only when a scene calls for it, and then she doesn't cheat by taking more puffs than the script allows ! At present she is doing another girl that she knows, a taxi dancer in a dance hall who falls in love with the wrong man, but marries the right one when the curtain falls.