Silver Screen (Nov 1931-Oct 1932)

58 Silver Screen for March 1932 Sau&itWaulb Tireless energy, sparkling eyes, laughing lips, rosy cheeks bring success and popularity. Free your system from poisons of constipation, the cause of dull eyes, sallow cheeks, dragging feet. For 20 years men and women have taken Dr. Edwards Olive Tablets a substitute for calomel. Non-habit-forming. They help to eliminate the poisons without bad after-effect. A compound of vegetable ingredients, known by their olive color. They have given thousands glorious health. Take nightly. At druggists, 15c, 30c and 60c STAGE RADIO TALKIES A PRACTICAL GUIDE for Amateurs and Professionals By JAMES MOORE Leading tenor of B'way's sucoesees. BLOSSOM TIME — STOOENT PBIftCE — ROSE MARIE — DESERT SONG — NEW MOON — CONTENTS — Vocal culture — diction — breathing — art of acting — radio and talkie technique— television — atage-frignt — ^make-up — obtaining engagements— addresses of producers and agents. BOOK SENT POSTPAID ON RECEIPT OF $1.00. JAMES MOORE, 317 W. 56th St., New York "Sorrow Was Her Teacher" [Continued from page 44] FORM DEVELOPED By an Easy Simple Method that has stood the test of 26 years Successful Service. The Direct Method for a Symmetrical Figure — Development where needed. Neck, Chest, Arms, Legs— in fact ANY part of the Body. You need not send me a long letter. Just write "/ enclose 10c. Mail me a Large Box of I PEERLESS WONDER CREAM Sealed and Prepaid, and tell me how to Develop a Beautiful Rounded Form by your Simple Hrnne Method." That is all you need say, and I will return the dime if you wish, but send it NOW. MADAME WILLIAMS, Suite 123, Buffalo, N. Y. Would your BLONDE HAIR attract him ? HE'S mad about blondes. But the dull, dingy, colorless ones never get a second glance . . . Only sparkling, glowing, golden blonde hair registers with him. To be sure your hair is always bewitchingly beautiful, take the advice of thousands of popular blondes. Use Blondex rcg ularly. Blondex is a powdery shampoo that bubbles instantly into a searching, frothy lather. Contains no injurious chemicals. Created especially for blonde hair, Blondex brings out new sheen and brilliant lustre— uncovers the glowing golden lights that never fail to attract. Try Blondex today. At all drug and department stores. mother decided that I might enter the American Academy of Dramatic Art. She said that if I was determined to be an actress, I had to have enough training to be a good one! "I wasn't too enthused over going to dramatic school. I wanted to look for a job at once. But it so happened that I had been attending the school only a couple of months when I was offered a small part in 'The Road to Yesterday.' That was the beginning of the end." .\fter a succession of parts of varying importance in several Broad^^'ay productions, she went to Denver and played in stock for a while. She was learning the technique of her trade. The ready gestures, the exits and the entrances. She was becoming a "trouper." But there was no soul to her work. She was still a little girl playing with her toys— an adolescent dressing up in her mother's clothes and strutting upon a stage which happened to be real instead of make-believe. It was during these months that the boy who was later to become her husband entered her life. "i'oung Clark Twelvetrees, son of the well-known illustrator, was a member of that Denver stock company, too. Just earning his dramatic spurs like Helen. The two youngsters met, and loved, and married. Theirs was a real boy and girl romance— but a romance that was not destined to " last. Much has been written— more has been said— of the disastrous end to their marriage. Maybe Clark did drink too much— maybe they did quarrel over their careers. They were both temperamental, hot-headed and in love, as only extreme youth can be in love. At one time Clark tried to commit suicide by jumping from a window of their New York hotel— after a quarrel, it was rumored. But regardless of causes and reasons, the fact remains that Clark and Helen separated. It was the scar left by that wound, the broken dreams and illusions of first love, that Helen carries to this day. The mark which changed her from a mere pi aver of parts into an actress of depth anci sincerity— and left her with the fleeting shadow which one sometimes catches in her eyes. She was anxious to leave New York and its upsetting associations. She felt that new scenes, new faces, might help her to clarify in her own mind the decision that she must make. She signed on the dotted line and took the next train to Hollywood. Then began the most trying period of her life. "Besides, I was very lonely," she went on. "I knew very few people and after I finished work I was always by myself. I hadn't definitely decided about my divorce, so I didn't want to meet new men, yet the evenings dragged endlessly. "I was used to the night-life of New York and the theatre— the strange suppressed excitement of making-up, of walking out on the stage, of scanning the audience in search of a familiar face. "Then, Avhcn my first picture. 'The Ghost Talks,' was released, things seemed worse than ever. For it was not a good film, and I was terrible. "Due partly to the imperfections in sound reproduction at that time and partiv 10 the role that I portrayed, my voice registered with a distinct lisp. F.veryone said— and I firmly believed myself— that 1 was through!" This seemed the final straw to her. Life, which for so many years had smiled blithely, showering upon her its most desirable gifts, had turned against her. Barely twenty, beautiful, charming, affectionate, with her marriage smashed and her career in ruins about her feet! But Helen was to get a better break than that. The very fact that she had been so unhappy for those months, the mental anguish that she had experienced, the tremendous emotional upheaval, had developed her latent talent. She emerged from the ordeal an accomplished actress— a woman entirely sure of herself. Shortly afterward she was offered a fiveyear contract by Pathe which she signed, promptly thereafter beginning to do her best work. "Swing High" won the acclaim of both public and critics, while in "Her Man " she gave an even better performance. The new Helen Twelvetrees was very definitely on the ascendency. It was then that love again came into her life and threatened once more the laurels she had fought so hard to win. For even though many stars of the first magnitude are happily married and still manage to retain their popularity, it is nevertheless a dangerous thing for one just approaching the portals of stellar importance to enter the holy bonds of matrimony. Helen's parents felt that a marriage at just that time might seriously jeopardize her career. And they believed it best that she throw her greatest interest into her work, which depended entirely upon herself. They were afraid that were she to marry again she might find only more misery and they wanted to shield her from that. The producers for whom she worked talked to her and tried to persuade her to postpone her marriage until she was firmly established as a star. Their interest was purely box-office. But Helen was in love— and really in love, this time. Not as a child, not as a young girl, but as a ^voman ^vho had at last found the one man in all the world and was willing to stake everything On finding happiness ivith him. Helen Twelvetrees and Frank Woody, a Los Angeles realtor, were quietly married one day last spring and left for a honeymoon in the high Sierras as soon as Helen finished the picture on which she was working at the time. "I had to learn to like the Great Outdoors," Helen confesses. "I'm really a city person— and I guess I always will be, at heart. But Frank likes the open spaces, you know, and I want to go with him wherever he likes. "For myself, though, I like the 'feel' of a city. I like the soft carjjets in hotel lobbies, the dull drone of many voices over dimlv-lit tea-tables, the flicker of a thousand lights on Fifth Avenue as New York makes its \vay home in the evening. "But I'm learning to like all sorts of sports, no^v. "That's one reason that we take so small a part in the usual social life of Holhwood. When I am working, I never go any place. I'm too tired in the evening to want to do anything but sleep. ".\nd between pictures, we go away. I think that is the best way to achieve happiness in Hollywood— the only way to keep one's pcrspectix'c. " Again iliat shadow across her eyes— that fearful chitching at her happiness, as if frightened that it will be wrested from her. "If vou stay too close to the motion picture colony," she Avent on. "you lo.se your sense of values. There's too much of everything in Hollywood. Too mucli money in