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66
The Successful Mr. Menjou
Poise will be poise— and it's been a great asset in Adolphe's career
By
Hale Horton
Menjou s imperturbable poker-face. Is he plotting some fair one's downfall, or merely wondering what to order for dinner?
AFTER several adequate portrayals, Adolphe Men
/_% jou finally rode to fame on "A Woman of Paris," / \ directed by the genius who took three years to make "City Lights."
Up to this time his career had been somewhat speckled. And his initial entrance into pictures was the result of an idea put into his head by Major Carlisle Mason, bon vivant and star customer of a high class French restaurant owned by Albert, father of Adolphe, which at the time, 1912, was located in New York at 93rd and Broadway. Here it was that Adolphe, himself, worked as a waiter; and I gather he was the suavest waiter that ever juggled a soup tureen.
"Menjou's mannerisms," the Major recalls, his face glowing with good health and things, "are precisely the same on the screen as they were in the days he waited table ; suave and impeccably polite — " Which leads one to suspect that the Major missed "The Front Page."
However and nevertheless, Menjou's career started off on a gallop on that certain evening when the Major dropped around for a gourmet's banquet. "The cscargots might be nice tonight, Adolphe," he confided, "and some of that delicious onion soup, and filet mignon with — by the way, there's a fortune in pictures for a good-looking young man like you. In fact, I've spoken to my little friend, Dorothy Phillips, whom I sup
"The Great Lover" is a role after Adolphe's own heart. Here he is doing his stuff with Baclanova in the picture of that name.
pose you've seen in pictures and — " "Mais oui I" Menjou agreed, in one of his five languages. "You mean the cinema star — "
"That's right," the Major nodded. "She's over at Yitagraph ; and if you'll go around tomorrow and ask for her, she'll introduce you to a director who will give you a part — and I say, Adolphe, upon further considering the matter 1 think you'd better turn my filet mignon into a tetc dcveaii with vinaigrette sauce."
One imagines that when Menjou scampered back to the kitchen he was giving considerably more attention to Dorothy Phillips and the picture business than to the Major's succulent escargots. He reflected no doubt that up to that moment his career seemed to have misfired. Of course his father had sent him to Culver Military Academy — and yOu may take it from me that's no school for a sissy — and Cornell. During his vacations he had worked in his father's Cleveland restaurant. (Cleveland having been the home of the Menjous for many years before they finally moved to New York.) And while living in the same city he had spent a couple of years in stock. Perhaps this last experience had so whetted his histrionic appetite that the mere allusion to theatricals thrilled him to the toes. At any rate, after turning the Major's proposal over in his mind and viewing it from all of its various angles, he found that it rather appealed to him, especially the fortune part of it.
So on the next day he located Dorothy Phillips, met the director, and caught a part. Two weeks later he taxied back to his father's restaurant and sought out the Major who as usual was dining well, wisely, and with much {Continued on page 102)