Screenland (May-Oct 1931)

104 SCREENLAND not exist, especially for an intelligent man. "It's an absolute curse to be intelligent," he told me one noon, startling me with his whirlwind delivery. "And the more intelligent you are, the less chance you have for any sort of happiness at all. Life's so futile ! If you're lucky you may make a material success, but there's nothing lasting about it. About the only thing for man to achieve is an adequate philosophy, and that's almost impossible. And even though you should find a bit of happiness, sooner or later you definitely pay for it with sorrow — you pay for ever^ solitary thing you get. Ignorant people, of course, don't know when they're paying — and since what you don't know doesn't hurt you, only the ignorant are happy. Which is the beauty of being dumb." And which Menjou most certainly isn't. "You work and grow old," the suave Mr. Menjou continued, but I caught a glint in his eye. "Here I'm going on forty — ten >ears more and I'll be fifty — then sixty — then — Ah, yes, life's a very futile thing at best. And as I say, I don't know what you're supposed to get out of it — but God help you if you don't get money !" True enough — yet Adolphe. despite his handicapping intelligence, hasn't done badly. Tallulah, Herself! Continued from page 57 schooling had left its mark on me. Besides, I was terribly superstitious — still am. I still pray instinctively when I find myself in a tight place, and it comforts me. Though, mind you, I don't approve of myself when I do it. The rational part of me keeps insisting it's all wrong — like trying to bribe God." Whatever the reason, she managed to get her way. Aunt Louise departed, but Tallulah stayed on in New York. She'd land a good part now and then, and she'd rate a good notice now and then, but she couldn't have been called a startling success on the stage. Just successful enough to be able to persuade her father that she was going to be more so. But if she wasn't a theatrical sensation, she was, most emphatically and brilliantly, a social rage. New York's gayest and smartest took her to their hearts. Her radiant young beauty, her daring, her wit, her zest for life and laughter became a byword. "You are the little threads of red that run through the dull gray pattern of a Persian rug," Frank Crowninshield, publisher of Vanity Fair, wrote her. "You are the figure of Pierrot amid a company of tragic muses." Her mots and her exploits were treasured like jewels, and you weren't really in the know unless you could repeat "Tallulah's latest." She was the toast and the darling of Gotham's artistic elite. Then the inevitable happened. She fell in love. It wasn't the first time, but it was the most serious time — either before or since. It was the only time that she doesn't like to talk about. The man she loved had to go to England, and England naturally became for Tallulah the only green and lovely spot in a desert world. Therefore a letter which she received about that time from Charles B. Cochran, the English producer, came like a voice from Paradise. Mr. Cochran had recently returned to London from New York, and had shown a photograph of Tallulah to Sir Gerald du Maurier who needed an American girl for his new play, "The Dancers." "I have told the part-authoress and Sir Gerald," wrote Mr. Cochran, "that I think you are the goods. They are quite excited about you, and I think there is but little doubt that if you care to take the risk of coming over, you will be engaged. In any case, your expenses will be paid." Ten minutes after she had opened that letter, Tallulah's cable was singing its way back to London. Within a couple of hours all her circle was buzzing with the news that Sir Gerald du Maurier had sent for her to come to London, and two days later her passport was in her hands. Returning that night from a party to the hotel, she found in her letter-box a cable from Cochran: "Terribly sorry. Du Maurier has changed plans." "That is, it looked like a cable," she says. "But it was in effect a blackjack ap David Manners is telling his most enthusiastic admirer how much he enjoyed his role in "The Last Flight." Read all about the Manners lad on page 130. plied with accuracy and force to the most delicate section of my head." Mercifully dazed for the moment, she reached the room that she shared with a friend. "Tallulah!" screamed the friend at sight of her face. "What is it?" Then Tallulah's stony countenance twitched and broke, and Tallulah's anguish found expression in a storm of hysterics that brought the manager knocking in terror at her door. When the storm had died down to a series of sobs, Tallulah's friend, who seems to have been blessed with wisdom beyond her years, sat down on the bed beside her and gave her, instead of the sympathy she expected, a verbal drubbing. "What in heaven's name are you sniveling for:" she demanded. "What earthly difference does that idiotic cable make? You've got your passport and a perfectly good pair of legs, and the ship's still sailing. Go anyway, you fool!" Slowly a rumpled head came up out of the pillow, slowly a light dawned in the tear-drenched eyes and broke out over the swollen face. But Taliulah doesn't exaggerate when she calls herself superstitious. Next day she paid a professional call on Evangeline Adams, the star-gazer, and Evangeline Adams told her solemnly, "Go to England, my child, if you have to swim there." That settled it. She cabled Cochran : "I'm coming anyway," and then she went to General Coleman Dupont, an old friend of her father. She told him the whole story and when she had finished, she said : "I'm going to England. I've got to go to England. Will you lend me a thousand dollars? I'm going, if you lend it to me or not," and burst into tears. "And that dear, dear sweet man," says Tallulah, as grateful now as she was on the day it happened, "said 'all right' and gave it to me. You see. I didn't dare tell Daddy that I had no contract. I was under age and I knew he'd never let me go. As a matter of fact, I didn't tell anyone. No one knew except General Dupont and this one friend with whom I lived. I'd gone around bragging to half New York about this marvelous offer. Could I eat crow now and have them think that I wasn't good enough for the part, pitying me to my face and sniggering at me behind my back? Not this baby!" So she paid no attention to an urgent cable from Cochran, begging her to stay where she was. She sailed regardless and. on arriving in London, settled herself with characteristic lordliness at the Ritz. Next day she lunched with Cochran, who was severe on the surface but chuckling underneath. "I haven't told Du Maurier you were coming," he said, "because I didn't be