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52
SCREEN LAND
What do Screen Stars Think About?
WHO said picture people never talk about anything serious? Who said they never think because most of them can't? Who said Hollywood was dumb? It is a tense game of the survival of the fittest, this professional racket ! The players are constantly up against all sorts of trickery, petty meanness, generosity, life's emotions at highest and lowest peak. They rub shoulders with every class of life's children, at their worst and at their best. Each must sink or swim on his own merits. No one cares what happens to the other fellow. It is no game for a weakling and certainly no game for a lazy thinker!
Professional people have perhaps the most solid and definite ideas on life of any class, because to most of them it has been a constant struggle against odds of one sort or another. Professional life is eternal conflict.
Knowing all this and hearing the conversation on the set that afternoon, I started out on a quest of professional philosophies first hand.
Richard Dix was my first victim. He defined philosophy as "one's individual reaction to life.
"Then it must, of course, be as changeable as the events and the circumstances of one's surroundings and one's age," he said.
"Life is an interesting adventure to youth, an conflict and
battle against odds as one grows older, and in old age it is usually a mellowed understanding of its futility and a sort of resignation, half religion and half fear!
"We live, we read, we associate and absorb ideas. From this we unconsciously form definite convictions and we try to live up to them or preach them to others. How sincere and practical we are in these convictions depends on the broadness of our minds and how willing we are to drop the old convictions and adopt new ones as we advance to broader mental horizons." . In other words, Dix believes one's philosophy of life should include the best of opinions and impressions of the world we contact, and that we should never be completely smug and satisfied with our own little philosophy, but reach out for greater understanding of life, and its meaning, in daily contacts.
"Pshaw!" says the terse and matter of fact Helen Twelvetrees. "The only solution to this old existence is 'keep your sense of humor' ! That's all anyone can hope to do; and if successful, one has at least a refuge always from every emotion. Life is a laugh if you never get serious over it."
"Ah, but that is impossible," said Neil Hamilton quickly. "One must get serious occasionally over some things in life — for after all life is a rather interesting question if we do take it a bit seriously and try to work out each problem — up here," pointing meaningly at his head.
Constance Bennett looks on life as an exciting game to be played intensely, in
Constance Bennett looks on life as an exciting game, to be played intensely and intelligently.
Billie Dove says: "Do not expect too much of life. But leave your mind open for the good things."
Neil Hamilton believes one must get serious occasionally— but Neil is smiling when he says it!