Screenland (Sept 1922–Feb 1923)

LiEATRICE JOY was a schoolgirl in New Orleans before she went into pictures, and so was Mary Alden, but before going into pictures Mary Alden was also a sob sister on a New York newspaper. She was not only a sob sister, but a cartoonist and a dramatic critic before she became the leading woman in the first five reeler that D. W. Griffith ever made. Who now remembers The Battle of the Sexes. Clara Kimball Young is the daughter of Edward Kimball, who has been on the stage all his life. She went on early, as did Lillian Gish. In the Flugrath family there are three actresses instead of two. Ever hear of the Flugraths? Viola Dana is one of them, Shirley Mason is another and Edna Flugrath is the third. Viola is the sister that had the most success on the stage. She played in The Poor Little Rich Girl. Rubye de Remer was in musical comedy, which probably accounts for the final letter in the good old name Ruby. Za Su Pitts sounds like a musical comedy name, but is not. It is the comedienne's real name. She had it in Parsons, Kansas, where she was born, and in Santa Cruz, California, where she lived before she went into pictures at Universal City. She knew nothing about salaries and when they asked her how much she wanted she said she thought fourteen dollars and seventy-five cents a week would be about right. She had figured out that it would cost that much to live. She was right, but, as they say in Parsons, "What with the war and everything," her expenses increased and it was not long before she had to have five hundred dollars a week. She got it. But not at Universal. She became a star. AnITA STEWART was a high school girl in Chicago and played first in The Goddess, which picture was being run for the benefit of a newspaper. The prestige that followed made it easy for her to get a real job. But May McAvoy, having no prestige, had plenty of troubles. It was at the mature age of twelve that May McAvoy, then living in New York, decided that some day she would be a film star. Nobody wanted her then and nobody wanted her for some time afterward. She got her first chance with a commercial film, which was made to advertise sugar. In this film was a close-up of May's sweet face peering from a barrel of sweet sugar. She borrowed the film and tramped around the studios exhibiting it, until somebody had sense enough to see that she might be able to act without the barreU Hollywood. SCREENLAND CMiG™* MaY ALLISON did not have to lug her production around with her. She exhibited her dazzling blond beauty as Beauty in Everywoman, a spectacle that ran for a year at the old Herald Square Theatre in New York. The producers came to see her. She did not have to go to see them. Even after she started she had easier going than May. She played good parts at once, while the persistent daughter of the McAvoys had to content herself with playing the stars' sisters. She played fourteen in a row before she had some other girl playing her sister. But Alia Nazimova had hard luck that beats that. She was born in Odessa and when she came to this country to appear at the Yiddish Theatre in New York she knew no English. She learned English and played in it. Then she found she could do better in pictures, and now all the English she learned is a dead loss so far as the screen is concerned. Now she earns more money in a week than she used to earn in a year. How much could she have earned if she had not taken all that time from her acting to learn a language she does not have to use? But then Mildred Harris probably learned a lot in school that she's never been able to use in pictures. Probably. And Marjorie Daw is another school girl who became a moving-picture actress. Geraldine Farrar gave her her start. Mary Mclvor, now the wife of Bill Desmond, the western star, is another. She went direct from the Hollywood High School into pictures. MaRIE PREVOST was a bathing girl whom nothing could dismay and now that she is starring in society dramas she enters ballrooms with no more uneasiness than she used to jump into tanks. Madge Bellamy, who would be a delectable bathing girl, has no bathing suits in her past. There aren't many beaches in Texas where she comes from and where her father was a college professor. Madge used to be on the stage, but it was not until she. went into pictures that her father and mother left Texas and came to live in Los Angeles. Girls who are anxious to go into pictures could do worse than to provide themselves with mothers who are theatrical costumers. Katherine Lewis took this precaution. Her mother runs in Hollywood a shop where she sells and rents costumes to actresses. Katherine, who in all probability gets a family discount, arrays herself like the lilies and is seldom without a job. 29 ALICE BRADY is another girl who has been fortunate in her parents. Her father is William A. Brady, the theatrical manager. When his daughter completed her education in a convent in New Jersey she went to Boston and studied for grand opera. She sang and danced in The Balkan Princess, which was opera of the light rather than the grand variety, and then went into pictures. Yet Louise Lovely has done pretty well without having family influence. Her real name is Louise Carbasse and her mother ran a boarding house in Sydney, Australia. Louise went on the stage when she was a youngster. It was while playing at Pantages' vaudeville theatre in Los Angeles that she went out to Universal City and got herself a job as leading woman for Digby Bell. She then became a star with' the Bluebird productions. The Bluebird for happiness. Mrs. Carbasse was so happy that she crossed the Pacific to see her daughter at work. Juanita Hansen worked in a millinery shop in Los Angeles before she went into pictures, and Doris Pawn was educated in a business college. Pearl White, who was born in Missouri, told a theatrical manager that she knew she would be a good actress. He asked her to prove it. She recited Hamlet's soliloquy. He gave her a job, but he never again asked her to recite the soliloquy. Gladys Walton , was a schoolgirl who got into pictures without having to recite anything. Mary Philbin got in by winning a beauty contest and so also did Corliss Palmer. Elaine hammerstein did not have to win any contests. Her grandfather was the celebrated operatic impressario, builder and cigar maker, Oscar Hammerstein, and her father was also a theatrical man. Ruth Stonehouse was a professional dancer and Colleen Moore intended to become a professional musician. She had enrolled in a school of music in New York, when in Chicago she met D. W. Griffith, who convinced her that she should become an actress. But Ormi Hawley did not meet anybody that told the same thing to her until after she had been graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music. Then she listened to them and went into dramatic stock, which was the school in which Dorothy Dalton got her training. Olive Tell went to a dramatic school in New York, where one of her classmates was Douglas MacLean. Norma Talmadge did not go to any dramatic school. She did not go to any school very long^ for she was only (Continued on page 6$)