Screenland (Nov 1939–Apr 1940)

Steffi Duna, above, plays chiquita, cafe dancer, in "Law of the Pampas." were with him when he began to talk — we can't quit him now ! Not even when he quits us. Well, the next year I played an important part in "The House of Discord" with Lionel Barrymore, Blanche Sweet, and Antonio Moreno. That picture set me up on the pedestal in the parlor ! They began to talk about me and write about me. The sweet music of "Hollywood Is Calling" was in my ears. In those days we used to shuttle back and forth between Hollywood and New York. In 1914 I was in Hollywood. In 1914 the old Biograph went out of business. I had the choice of going back to New York or staying in Hollywood. By that time, I was married. The heir-apparent was on his way. I hadn't any money. I decided I'd better stay in Hollywood. I hadn't any money, as I say, but I had packed all my highest hopes in my knapsack. I had visions of big dramatic roles down on their knees begging for me. But I was down on the bottom again. Hollywood didn't see me as a dramatic sensation at all. Hollywood saw me as a great gift to slapstick comedy. The Irish Mulhall map became a pie target. When the sight of blackberry pie made me squirm I decided it was time for me to quit. So Universal gave me $50 a week to play in all kinds of Westerns and underworld stories. The second week they raised me to $60. Before I knew what was happening to me they asked me would I like to sign a contract? I left the floor right .then and there. I was to begin at $75 a week the first six months, $100 a week the next six months. Then Famous Players-Lasky offered me $200 a week. Now I was the Wonder Boy — why, Wally Reid was only getting $100 a week then ! When Paramount put me under contract, and it was a fifty-two weeks contract, too, at $300 a week, or $18,000 a year, I began to look down on Morgan the Magnificent and the House of Rockefeller! I soon had $1500 saved up in the bank. I used it as a down payment on a little house, paid off the balance at $125 a week. Well,_ the Star was sure rising — and it was rising like a streaking comet! I made "Molly O" for Hal Roach, with Mabel Normand. And my salary jumped to $525 a week. Lowell Sherman, God rest his soul, was in "Molly O" with us. I did "Should a Woman Tell?"— Jack Gilbert and I were in that together; I played the lead, Jack was the heavy. Well I remember one night when Jack and I were on location, at some little hotel at Laguna Beach. We got to bragging, as actors will. I said, "I'm getting $525 a week now and I'm going to get $1,000 a week for my next picture !" Jack was then getting $300 a week — well, when I said that I must have driven him crazy. He kept muttering it over and over and over: "$1,000 a week, he says, $1,000 a week, $1,000 a week!" Then out he went, pajamas and all, and didn't come back in all night! The War had come along. I signed up for the draft but I had a wife and my kid, then, and I wasn't called. Well, then Wally Beery comes along — he made those war pictures and he was in terrific demand. When two or three companies are really bidding for you, as they were bidding for Wally, things happen. What happened was that salaries began to go up. The days of the Big Money arrived. And we can thank Wally Beery for the beginning of the big salaries. I played a heavy to Wally's juvenile, in a two-reeler for Selig, it was, forget the name of it. The breaks came hard and fast. "Within the Law" with Norma Talmadge ; "The Goldfish" and "Dulcy" with Connie — and when you were with the Talmadges, in those days, you were sitting right where fame and the money bags meet at the crossroads. Boy, was the Mulhall star rising ! I was getting $1,000 a week for doing a serial at Pathe ; $4000 a week for a picture at Fox. I signed a contract with First National at $2500 a week, with a rising scale calling for as high as $3500 a week. I worked with Corinne Griffith, Colleen Moore, Dorothy Mackaill, Billie Dove, all of them — all of them were making thousands of dollars a week, too — all of us had rubbed Aladdin's Lamp and if the glare of it blinded us a little, you can't blame us too much for that. This was a Gold Rush town, a bonanza, and all we had to do was grab up our pokes and presto, we dwelt in marble halls, with minions to do our bidding, and that we didn't end up in padded cells is the wonder of it. Sure, it was work, hard work, too, but not as hard as the work we were bom and raised to, most of us. Misfortune may get a man down but such fortune as that, so sudden, so without any precedent in the economic history of mankind was enough to send a man clean off his nut ! By this time I had married again. My first wife died when my son, Jack was four years old. Later, I married Evelyn Wians, my present wife. She was headed for a brilliant career of her own when she married me and gave it up to be Mrs. Jack Mulhall. And I'll say for her that she's been a wonderful sport. She didn't desert the sinking ship, not she ! When she said she'd rather lose that genuine Bolivian chinchilla than have me lose my sense of humor, she just about said it all! Well, so picture followed picture and contract followed contract. Now we had our Beverly Hills "mansion," with all the trimmings ; now we had cars, chauffeurs, butlers, white ties every night. I bought a lot of real estate, sold it, bought more. I bought one big chunk of a corner on Wilshire Boulevard worth over $300,000. I put $90,000 in it — cash. I invested in stocks, good stocks they were, too, at the time. I never got the big head, never forgot that it wasn't Mulhall making movies but Mulhall and a couple of hundred other guys. I never kept a book of my clippings and pictures in my life. But — we were in the Movie Star Class. We were "keeping up with the Jonesses" to some extent. And when the Jonesses happen to be named Fairbanks and Pickford and Colman and Powell and the such "to some extent" is enough to bust the bank at Monte Carlo. So I slid along the greased years in my merry limousines. In 1931, at the expiration of my 1931 contract, I went to Europe BACKACHE, LEG PAINS MAY BE DANGER SIGN Of Tired Kidneys If backache and leg pains are making you miserable, don't just complain and do nothing about them. Nature may be warning you that your kidneys need attention. The kidneys are Nature's chief way of taking excess acids and poisonous waste out of the blood. They help most people pass about 3 pints a day. If the 15 miles of kidney tubes and filters don't work well, poisonous waste matter stays in the blood. 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