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* T A Y L O R O L O G Y *
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* A Continuing Exploration of the Life and Death of William Desmond Taylor *
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* *
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* Issue 18 -- June 1994 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu *
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* TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed *
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
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Adela Rogers St. Johns:
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Eulogy, Apology, Psychology, Mythology
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What is TAYLOROLOGY?
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TAYLOROLOGY is a newsletter focusing on the life and death of William Desmond
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Taylor, a top film Paramount film director in early Hollywood who was shot to
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death on February 1, 1922. His unsolved murder was one of Hollywood's major
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scandals. This newsletter will deal with: (a) The facts of Taylor's life;
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(b) The facts and rumors of Taylor's murder; (c) The impact of the Taylor
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murder on Hollywood and the nation. Primary emphasis will be given toward
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reprinting, referencing and analyzing source material, and sifting it for
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accuracy.
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Adela Rogers St. Johns was in a unique position to comment on the Taylor case.
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Although she was in New York at the time of the murder, her home was in
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Hollywood. As the western editor of PHOTOPLAY she was very familiar with life
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in the movie colony, the facts and the rumors. In addition she had been good
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friends with Mabel Normand for almost a decade prior to the murder. Over the
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years, St. Johns wrote several times about the Taylor murder and about the
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personalities close to it. Some of her earlier commentary was contradicted by
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her later writings. Which was the truth?
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Eulogy
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Immediately after Taylor was killed she was interviewed by a New York
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newspaper, and then wrote an article eulogizing Taylor.
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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February 4, 1922
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NEW YORK HERALD
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...Another report brought forward in motion picture circles here was that
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the director and Miss Normand had feared trouble of some sort and that they
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had made plans secretly to have a wedding to head it off. Miss Adla St. John
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[sic], writer on motion picture topics, who has just returned from a trip to
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the coast, said she had not heard of such premonitions.
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"Mr. Taylor was one of the quietest and best liked men in the motion
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picture colony," she said. "His death came as a sudden shock to me, as it did
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to all his friends here. I don't know of his having had an enemy. Every player
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was delighted every time he heard he was going to be under Mr. Taylor's
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direction."
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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February 5, 1922
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Adela Rogers St. Johns
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BOSTON ADVERTISER
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February 13, 1922
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LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
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(New York)--One of the last people I said good-bye to when I left
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Hollywood a month ago was William D. Taylor.
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Now--Bill Taylor is dead, foully murdered, cut down in the prime of a
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manhood that was a rock of all of us.
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And it isn't very easy to write about him.
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There are so many, many things that I remember about him.
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So many kind, fine, big things. So much that was worth while, that was
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inspirational and clean.
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If they had to shoot a director, there are a lot we could have spared
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rather well.
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Neither his friends--and I have the honor to count myself in that list--
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nor the motion picture industry could spare William D. Taylor.
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As a general rule, I don't hold much of a brief for men.
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I'm not particularly keen about being a woman, and I certainly wouldn't
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want to be an angel. But a man--heaven deliver us!
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But William D. Taylor was the sort of man that revived your faith in the
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sex.
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For three years it has been my business, as Western editor of a motion
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picture magazine, to know as much as possible about what was going on in the
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film capital. I spend my days around the studios, gathering news and
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overhearing scandal--when there is any. I flatter myself that my earlier
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training as a reporter has helped me to keep pretty close tabs on what goes on
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in Hollywood.
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In these three years, in which I have known Mr. Taylor pretty well, I
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have never heard one thing said against him, one breath of criticism, one
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whispered scandal circulating about the studio lots.
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And that is saying a good deal of a place where we have nothing to talk
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about but each other.
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Why, everybody adored him.
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Betty Compson dropped into my house to say good-by two evenings before I
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left. She was more radiant than usual, because Mr. Taylor was going to direct
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her next picture. Every star on the Lasky lot, man and woman, wanted to work
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with him.
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He wasn't a genius. I don't believe he knew the meaning of the word
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temperament. But he was so steady, so consistent, so sure in his judgments,
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that he couldn't turn out a bad piece of work.
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Did you ever see him?
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Tall, bronzed, erect, a captain in the Canadian [sic] army, with all the
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dignity of bearing of a soldier. His hair was just beginning to gray, his eyes
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were the quiet, calm blue-grey that always gives you a comfortable feeling. A
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fine-looking man.
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I can't tell you whether or not Mabel Normand and William D. Taylor were
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engaged. I don't know. As a matter of fact, I don't think they knew. I have
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seen them together, I have been with them together, and I do know that a great
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affection and friendship existed between them.
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It is my own belief, based entirely on what I saw and on what I know of
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Mabel, that eventually they might have married. It was the sort of affection
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that leads to marriage.
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That's why I feel a great sorrow when I think of this tragedy.
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Mabel Normand and I have been friends for twelve years. And the keynote
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that I have found in Mabel's character in all those years is loyalty. It's a
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fetish, a religion with her. You may not see her for six months, but if you
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need her it's as though only six hours had elapsed.
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What that child is suffering under this thing no one will ever know.
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I am too far away from the scene of the crime to have any settled theory
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of it.
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But of the theories that I have heard voiced, and that have been wired me
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by my friends in Hollywood, I can tell you a little, and I can tell you what I
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think of them.
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Personally, I believe William Taylor was the victim of a shooting that
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had nothing to do with himself or with any act of his. That does happen quite
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often, you know. It might even happen to a motion picture director.
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Either this valet of his--Sands--with whom he had quarreled, drank a lot
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of bootleg whisky and in a frenzy went gunning for the man against whom he
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thought he had a grudge, or else some inexperienced burglar, knowing that a
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movie director lived in that house and figuring, of course, that all motion
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picture directors are rich, broke in to steal, lost his head, shot and ran.
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Los Angeles has had a great many holdups lately, most of them done by
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boys. And any crime expert will tell you that it is your boy on his first job
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who commits murders. Oldtimers generally don't carry a loaded gun.
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Then there is the jealousy theory--that possibly some one jealous of
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Mabel watched her visit to the Taylor bungalow, saw her leave, and in a red
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rage shot down the man with whom she had spent an hour or two.
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That doesn't hold water for a very simple reason. Mabel isn't like that.
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Mabel is a coquette, a flirt, the kind of a girl that men get crazy about. But-
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-Mabel always ends them too quickly for damage. If she goes to a dance and
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some nice boy gets a desperate crush on her, Mabel has a lovely time kidding
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him. When he calls up the next day and her secretary says, "Mr. So-and-So is
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on the phone," Mabel says, "I don't know him. Tell him I've gone to Europe."
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In all the years of her picture work Mabel's name has been coupled with
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only two men before Taylor's--and both those men are big characters, highly
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respected and above suspicion.
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As to some ghost from Taylor's past--maybe. I'm not idiot enough to vouch
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for any man's past.
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But isn't it strange that William Taylor should have anything in his past
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that would cause a terrible murder--William Taylor, the fine, clean gentleman
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that we all knew and loved so well?
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How dare they parallel the shooting of Taylor with the Elwell murder?
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What single justification is there for putting the character of a man like
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Taylor, against whom not one single concrete thing can be brought, with a man
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whose reputation was as notorious as that of Elwell?
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How dare they begin immediately the old and always unproven stories of
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wild "hop" orgies, of alleged night life in Hollywood that will be "searched
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and raked over."
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It is an injustice that makes the blood of everyone who knew the man
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absolutely boil.
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William D. Taylor, president of the Motion Picture Directors'
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Association, stood for everything that was clean and fine on the screen. He
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had a breadth of vision and a businesslike understanding of what the screen
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needed. We are going to feel his loss keenly.
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Those of us who loved and revered him have lost a friend, a man who
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always thought of others, who had a splendid dignity and strength to which a
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lot of us went in trouble.
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I can see room for only one emotion--sorrow. I can feel only on thing in
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my heart--grief for the loss of my friend, horror at this dastardly cutting
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down of a man who should have lived.
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That is all I can see for any one to feel.
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Some day somebody is going to write for you the truth about Hollywood.
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Some day some one is going to tell you the things you ought to know--the bad
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things about the small group of people who do wrong, but the truth about the
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great body who live decently, cleanly, and normally and who have to suffer
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silently the sweeping, and as I say, always unproven denunciations of
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Hollywood.
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In the meantime, a gentleman has died.
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As to who shot William D. Taylor from behind, I am terribly in the dark.
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But his I am sure of--when the truth comes out, as it will, there will be
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nothing in it to reflect in any way upon the good name of one of the finest
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men I have ever known.
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Nor upon the good name of the girl who loved him--Mabel Normand.
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Apology
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Her eulogy of Taylor was followed by a several articles defending the
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reputation of Hollywood, which was being severely attacked in many newspapers.
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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February 17, 1922
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Adela Rogers St. Johns
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LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
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February 20, 1922
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BOSTON ADVERTISER
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(Chicago)--What in the world is this all about--this Hollywood stuff?
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I have lived in Hollywood for a long time. I graduated from Hollywood
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High School more years ago than I like to remember. I've only been away a
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month.
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But I certainly don't recognize the old home place from some of the lurid
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and picturesque descriptions I've been reading lately.
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I frankly admit going to a lot of Hollywood parties--a lot of them.
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I admit knowing a lot of motion picture stars. First of all, it happens
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to be my business. Second, I like 'em and I'm not nearly such a terrible
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person as I ought to be to travel with this riproaring, hop-shooting, snow-
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sniffing, immoral gang I read about.
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My goodness, I wonder where they keep it?
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I spend eleven months of the year out there. And I give you my personal
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word of honor that I've never seen anybody sticking hypodermic needles in
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their tummies yet.
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I want to describe to you the best I can some of the "wild parties" I've
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sat in on out there.
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Last Christmas night the Wallace Reids had open house for their friends.
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Mrs. Reid, who used to be Dorothy Davenport, and I have been pals for some ten
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years and if any church or league of any kind can show me a finer woman or a
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better wife and mother than Dot I'll donate a couple of cut glass bath robes.
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Well to get to the party. In the first place, I admit there were a few
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bottles around that broke the Volstead act. Why, we were so desperately
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vicious we even had wine punch. There were eight or ten disabled soldiers from
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the Arrowhead Hospital for whom Wally had sent his car. I remember Jeanie
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MacPherson and her mother were there. Little Bill Reid's Christmas tree was
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about somewhere.
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I suppose we made a lot of noise. Everybody danced and I do remember one
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girl who had on a black velvet dress and little pink silk bloomers. She did
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some comedy falls for us--like you see in pictures--and I had a flash or two
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of pink silk bloomers. You can see much less--or much more--any evening you
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drop in at the Follies.
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Later in the evening Wally and Dot and Mr. And Mrs. Bill Desmond and my
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husband and I got real reckless and played games. We sat down on the floor and
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everybody took some cards. Then each represented an animal and when anybody
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matched our cards we had to make a noise like the animal we were supposed to
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be or else we lost our cards.
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That may be terribly immoral but some how it seemed all right to me.
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Another party I went to once was at Viola Dana's. It was given in honor
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of Winnie Sheehan, vice president of the Fox Company. Yes, they served drinks.
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How many homes are there outside of Hollywood that serve drinks at a party?
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How many people who have a small cellar occasionally invite in a few friends
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and have a glass or two? Is that the sole prerogative of the picture colony?
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Is it never done the same anywhere else--in Chicago or New York, for example?
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At this party we had the most fascinating entertainment. Viola had
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prepared a two-reel feature film with some delicious take-offs on the picture
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colony, quite harmless hits at our little personal vanities and
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characteristics. Then Alice Lake and Buster Keaton did a lovely burlesque of
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the ice scenes from "Way Down East." I never laughed so much in my life.
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Afterward we danced. Maybe one or two of the boys drank too much. But I
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just spent a month in New York and I saw several instances of that kind--and
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they weren't all picture actors, either.
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Do you know what I did the last time I spent an evening with Mabel
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Normand? Sat before an open fire and read Stephen Leacock out loud. Yes, and
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at 10 o'clock we had some hot chocolate. You may disagree with our literary
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taste and our choice of refreshment, but surely no moral indictment can be
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brought on those grounds.
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Somebody published a story not long ago about Mabel making her escort
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play horse and let her ride around on his back in a public cafe--said it was
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her favorite indoor sport. Well, I don't know who said it and I don't care.
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It's a lie. And that's that. I've told her ten million times that her
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fantastic sense of humor--which, by the way, you are all glad enough to let
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lighten many dark hours for you--ought to be controlled a little and not lead
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her into such wild pranks. But, at that, I'll back Mabel Normand as the best
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read woman in America--and you can bring on your college professors and your
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high-brows any time you like.
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My father is a lawyer. From the time I sat in the court room, when my
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feet wouldn't touch the floor, I've been taught to weigh evidence. Sit down,
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if you're interested in this thing and weigh the evidence a little bit. I
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don't mean what people say, but the actual evidence. On what can you base an
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indictment of Hollywood? Two or three nasty scandals--the Arbuckle case. The
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Taylor murder. But who shot Bill Taylor? Is there anything yet to convince you
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that he was killed for any immoral reason or that he was killed in any way as
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a result of his connection with pictures?
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Suppose Mary Miles Minter was in love with him. She's an unmarried girl
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and her mother keeps pretty close tab on the family wage-earner. Bill Taylor
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was a big, fascinating, strong man. No wonder she fell in love with him. As
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for Mabel, Mabel will fall in love and men will fall in love with her as long
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as she lives. But it isn't because she's a screen star, it's because she's the
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most fascinating, adorable, irresistible small creature that the witches ever
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brewed.
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Let's be a little fair. Let's not lose our heads and, above all, our
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sense of humor. Let's not think continually and all the time about the people
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who have made false steps.
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After all, did it ever occur to you that if 1000 people go out for an
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auto ride on a Sunday afternoon and come back happy and peaceful and
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contented, their names don't appear next day in headlines? But if one of that
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thousand gets killed while driving he has eight columns or so of type. That's
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news.
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So it is in pictures. People like the Conrad Nagels, the Jack Holts with
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their three kiddies, the William De Milles with their intellectual, political
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set, the Douglas MacLeans, the Sam Woods go on forever leading exemplary lives
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after which any one might model. But you don't hear about them.
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Don't you see?
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I'm only putting one side of the case. I do believe the producers should
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have morality clauses in their contracts. If a bank knows a young man in
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direct contact with a large sum of money is gambling the bank fires him. If
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the picture magnate knows a man or woman star leads a notoriously immoral
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life, he should kick him right off the lot.
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That's our job now--the job of the industry--to clean things up where
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they need it. And we admit there are places where it is needed.
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But in order to do that we need not and cannot admit that Hollywood is a
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festering sore of perversion and vice.
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The man who said girls who come who come to Hollywood all must succeed
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only through immoral relations--I believe he camouflaged by saying sentimental
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relations--with men probably will wake up some morning soon with his teeth
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knocked down his throat. May McAvoy's brother might do it--or Lois Wilson's
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father. Or Florence Vidor's husband. Bob Ellis, who is married to that sweet,
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wonderful girl, May Allison, might take a crack at him.
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There are immoral people in Hollywood. It is, after all, an artists'
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colony. It is filled with temperamental nuts. It is a small gathering of
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people who know each other very well, indeed. I know there are a few stars who
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do horrible things. I know Roscoe Arbuckle lost his head under prosperity and
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lived a life for which he is now getting paid several thousandfold.
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If it wasn't so funny, I couldn't help resenting this picture they draw
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of my home village--why it sounds like the Apache district of Paris.
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If you could see it. Honestly, I think you'd never be the same again if
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you'd read the press agenting stuff we've had recently. It's a nice, quiet
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little village.
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Lots of nights there isn't anything to do after 12 o'clock and everybody
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goes to bed at home.
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I have two small kids--a girl and a boy.
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I haven't the faintest objection in the world to having them brought up
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in Hollywood.
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Nor do I admit that every girl who calls herself a motion picture actress
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is one. Lots of them wouldn't recognize a camera if they saw one.
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Do you read in headlines that Mary Pickford virtually supports a large
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orphanage in Los Angeles? Do you have it flung at your face that Tommy Meighan
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takes care of a great number of crippled children? Are you constantly reminded
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that stars, after working eight or ten hours at the studio, give more hours
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and more time to answering every demand of charity; that there is never a day
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goes by at a big studio that they are not asked for talent to appear for
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charity, and that they are never refused?
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Let's be fair and a little more sane about this thing. Let's look at both
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sides of it. For there really are two sides, you know.
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Perhaps you don't realize how much concerted action is now taking place
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among motion picture producers in an effort to guard this great art--this art
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that gives you so much pleasure--against any further vulnerability along the
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moral lines. Quietly, and partially awaiting the advent of Mr. Will Hays as
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director-general of the industry, the big producers of the game are getting
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together and mapping out moral housecleaning of the studios. They have
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decided, as I know, that those whose lives are such that they may bring shame
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and unpleasantness upon the name of the body of people who work in pictures
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will have to go.
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I talked with Mabel Normand last night over the long-distance telephone
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between here and Los Angeles.
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Her voice haunted me all night. She was crying. Her nurses didn't want
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her to talk, but she wanted to ask me if I believed she had anything to do
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with the Taylor murder, if anybody back here believed it?
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And I told her what I believed, that no one connected her with it, no one
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believed she had done anything that any connection with the shooting. And I
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told her that I loved her and for her to take care of herself. Mabel's health
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is not good. Doctor's verdicts last year were discouraging--and no one can
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make Mabel take proper care of herself.
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After all, outside of infinite rumors, constantly changing theories,
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reports, conjectures, what have we to tie the shooting of William D. Taylor to
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Hollywood, or any part of Hollywood, or any of its manners and customs?
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Not a darn thing.
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And I don't think we ever will have.
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Nobody can keep a lot of fool girls with blonde curls from falling in
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love with a man. It happens in offices--often. No one can keep them from
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writing notes to him, if they haven't been taught that love letters are the
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most dangerous things in the world to sign except checks.
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What's that got to do with Hollywood. Doesn't it happen anywhere else?
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I think so.
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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February 21, 1922
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Adela Rogers St. Johns
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LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
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Last year when May Allison was going to New York she dropped into my
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house for lunch the day before she left.
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"Going to buy a lot of clothes in New York?" I asked.
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"Good heavens, no. I'm going to get a chance to wear some of those I've
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got. You never get a chance to show off your good clothes in Hollywood," said
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the blonde screen star.
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And that's the sad truth.
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I've been in New York for just a month.
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I've been back in Hollywood a couple of days, and it's pretty dull out
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here, I tell you. After the bright lights of a big city, the curfew life we
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lead in the famous wicked film colony is a bit difficult to take. But it's a
|
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good place to rest up in, anyway.
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|
No cabarets. No place to dance nearer than six miles. An occasional party
|
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where the piece de resistance of the evening is likely to be the good old game
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of consequences. Listening to Wally Reid and Wanda Hawley play duets on the
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saxophone and the piano.
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|
Oh, well, I can get the papers and read what some of these writers that I
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|
never heard of, never saw in Hollywood, and who probably have never been
|
|
there, have to say about it. Get a thrill out of that!
|
|
Hollywood--the prize "bad town" of the West! Why, Hangtown and Bodie in
|
|
the good old days when shootin' was shootin' sound like a Seventh Day
|
|
Adventist Sanitarium on Saturday compared with the things you read about
|
|
Hollywood.
|
|
Of course I don't know anything about it. I only live and work there.
|
|
And yet--and yet--just before I came away, Mrs. Wallace Reid cried on my
|
|
shoulder because she was so bored--sitting home every night in front of the
|
|
fire with only an occasional dinner at the Hollywood Country Club to brighten
|
|
her existence.
|
|
First of all, there's our hotel life, of course. We have a very famous
|
|
hotel in Hollywood. The Hollywood Hotel. A ramshackle old building which has
|
|
been standing sedately on its corner for years and years and years. But it has
|
|
housed more famous people than most architectural palaces. It has a nice
|
|
family dining room where everybody has their own table and knows the
|
|
waitresses by their first names.
|
|
On Thursday nights they have dances in the lobby, after rolling up the
|
|
carpets. I suppose to be in the modern style of Hollywood journalism I should
|
|
call them "dance orgies", but--I just can't. I haven't a great deal of regard
|
|
for the truth in literature, but I have some inhibitions.
|
|
The last Thursday night we drifted up there we found all the nice old
|
|
ladies from Iowa and Kansas who come out for the winter sitting around in
|
|
their best black satins, ready for the fray. Anita Stewart was there, shocking
|
|
every one in the place almost to death by dancing every other dance with her
|
|
husband, Rudy Cameron. Jack Dillon and his wife were tripping the light
|
|
fantastic, and their little boy was allowed to stay up into 10 o'clock to
|
|
watch. Lila Lee had on a frock of apple green that may have been immoral, but
|
|
looked charming. With her was a good looking young millionaire to whom her
|
|
engagement is often reported. They did sit out quite a few dances, they did.
|
|
Mae Busch, startlingly vampish in black velvet, Marguerite de la Motte,
|
|
May Allison--and we all went over to the drug store on the opposite corner and
|
|
had an ice cream soda between dances.
|
|
I tell you, it's a wild and wearing life.
|
|
Yet there, in the very heart of this place which some parasites of the
|
|
industry, seeking free advertising at the expense of the hand that fed them at
|
|
least scrappily for some time say should be abolished, live and work some of
|
|
the greatest literary geniuses of the age.
|
|
Here, with alleged vice rampant about them, with wild women and dissolute
|
|
men shrieking up and down the boulevard, so they tell us, here Gertrude
|
|
Atherton wrote much of her latest novel. Here Sir Gilbert Parker lived and
|
|
worked. Somerset Maughm had a little quiet room under the eves where he
|
|
conceived and executed some of his brilliant comedies. Elinor Glyn completed
|
|
her last book in her second floor suite. Rita Welman, Mary Roberts Rinehart,
|
|
Rupert Hughes--all have lived in the Hollywood Hotel. I have visited most of
|
|
them there, seen them hard at work.
|
|
Must we forget that sort of thing utterly when we think of Hollywood?
|
|
I went to a dinner party at Charlie Chaplin's house on the hill not very
|
|
long ago. It was a real movie dinner party--most all celebrities: Charlie, Sam
|
|
Goldwyn, Gouverneur Morris, Rupert Hughes and his wife and May Allison and
|
|
Claire Windsor.
|
|
Do you know what occupied three hours at the dinner table?
|
|
I dare say some of our imported scribes would lead you to believe that
|
|
they carried in the cocaine on the tea tables, that we spent the time in
|
|
ribald jest and risque tales that would have made Boccacio blush to hear.
|
|
Well as a matter of fact, Rupert Hughes and Charlie Chaplin launched at
|
|
once into the most interesting theological discussion I have ever heard--Mr.
|
|
Hughes, with his immense fund of information and historical statistics;
|
|
Chaplin with his wonderful intellectual conception and imaginative
|
|
impressionability. They discussed religion for three hours while we all
|
|
listened spellbound.
|
|
If you want to be fair about Hollywood, will you remember all this?
|
|
While I was in New York I went to Delmonico's for supper after the
|
|
theater with some friends. Upstairs, in a private banquet room, a group of
|
|
railroad officials were having a party. There were about twenty of them, and
|
|
they may have had doughnuts in their pockets, but I don't think so. Anyway,
|
|
the pockets bulged considerably. During the evening they had a lot of girls--
|
|
dancing girls--up there and the noise was certainly indicative of a good,
|
|
rousing old time. Wine, women and song seemed to be the order of the evening.
|
|
If anybody pulled a party like that in the Hollywood Hotel or in any cafe
|
|
in Hollywood the place would be raided, the neighbors would call out the fire
|
|
department and the whole town would be shocked to death for a week.
|
|
Polly Frederick is another screen star who gives a lot of parties. Last
|
|
one she gave I lost $3.75. It was a terrible reckless evening for me. I mean,
|
|
that's a lot to lose at penny ante poker, isn't it? Polly does like the wild
|
|
life. After working all day, getting up at 6 in the morning for her ride
|
|
through the hills, she's just all ready to carouse all night. And she does
|
|
like a little poker game.
|
|
For years Mary Pickford has lived the life of a recluse. There was
|
|
nothing else for her to do.
|
|
If the film people mingle with others, if they go into society, they
|
|
can't possibly feel comfortable. I went to a reception one night with Bebe
|
|
Daniels--it was a wedding reception and the bride was an old friend of ours.
|
|
We had known her in our schooldays before we became residents of the horrible
|
|
center of vice, Hollywood.
|
|
Poor old Bebe. She was stared at, talked about, eyed, talked to in the
|
|
most insane manner I have ever heard in my life, until at last she grasped my
|
|
arm and gasped, "For heaven's sake, let's get out of this. I feel like an
|
|
animal in the Zoo."
|
|
Yet those were good, kindly, well-behaved folk of the social strata.
|
|
There is another thing that we face in Hollywood. The hangers-on. And
|
|
they are not all poor ones, by any means. The worst place in Hollywood last
|
|
year belonged to the good-fellow husband of a rich woman, whose place offered
|
|
every inducement possible for the entertainment of guests. Swimming pool,
|
|
motors, tennis court, servants, costly food and plenty of good liquor were
|
|
thrown out as bait for the film folk, with whom it was his chief ambition in
|
|
life to consort. A group of rich young men, attracted by the pretty faces of
|
|
the film stars, hang about on the fringe of the colony, delighting to mingle
|
|
on free and friendly terms with the possessors of such famous names and by
|
|
their actions bringing more censure--and more justified censure--on the
|
|
industry than any of those who get a pay envelope across the studio counter.
|
|
|
|
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
|
|
February 22, 1922
|
|
Adela Rogers St. Johns
|
|
LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
|
|
My mental picture of Hollywood is getting to the place where I have to
|
|
sit down and do a lot of remembering to be sure I'm right.
|
|
When I read about the "wild tribe of Hollywood" now under investigation I
|
|
begin to sing South Sea Island lullabies and see exotic panoramas of huts in
|
|
the wilderness, of groups of people living in cellar dives which the sunlight
|
|
never reaches, of fantastic settings like those I used to see in the old San
|
|
Francisco Chinatown.
|
|
And I say to myself: "Hollywood, my Hollywood; can you have been
|
|
deceiving me all these years? Under that bright and charming exterior that I
|
|
know so well, in that soul that I've been on such darn good terms with for all
|
|
these years--are you really a den of iniquity?"
|
|
Then I positively get the giggles.
|
|
Why, it'll probably surprise you a lot to know that we actually have
|
|
homes in Hollywood. Real homes. Where people live, with their kids, and have
|
|
problems about heating the house, and keeping the lawn watered, and getting a
|
|
cook that will stay.
|
|
Florence Vidor, for instance, has a new home that would deceive the most
|
|
hectic of our smut-seeking sleuths. You'd never dream it was anything but the
|
|
charmingly kept, tasteful home of a southern lady. Last time I was there
|
|
Florence and I were sitting in her sitting-room, satisfying our evil passions
|
|
with some after-luncheon mints. Mammy, the Negro servant whom Florence brought
|
|
from her home in Texas, had little Suzanne Vidor, Florence's 4-year-old
|
|
daughter, down in the kitchen with hear, and when she went out to answer the
|
|
telephone she told Suzanne to watch the coffee.
|
|
In a minute Suzanne came dashing in and called at the top of her small
|
|
voice, "Mamma, mamma, come quick. The coffee is frowing up all over the
|
|
stove."
|
|
Just tell that one the next time you want to give your friends an example
|
|
of the risque jokes we tell in Hollywood.
|
|
I don't think you should visit the Milton Sills home, however. It's
|
|
pretty trying work, talking with Mr. and Mrs. Sills. Maybe it wouldn't exactly
|
|
shock you, but it would give you an awful mental kick.
|
|
They talk about the effect climate has had on the development of
|
|
different races of the earth and the age of the various astronomical suns as
|
|
judged by the differences in their color. Of course, Milton used to be a
|
|
college professor, and that may have saved him from the vile clutches of the
|
|
Hollywood monster.
|
|
As to the Charles Rays--I'll hardly be able to convince you about them.
|
|
The Rays' home is quite the most beautiful place I have been in. They
|
|
spent more than two years selecting the furniture and the wall drapes and the
|
|
works of art that fill it. They own some delicious pictures and Mrs. Ray
|
|
spends about half her time between her voice and piano lessons--pretty swift
|
|
pace she keeps up, too. Their butler is the best I've ever seen, in or out of
|
|
the Sunday supplements. Mrs. Ray also is a very fine needle-woman.
|
|
Really, being in the movies, I don't see how they move in the social set
|
|
they do out there. They are quite "in" now--Mrs. Ray is on the committee of
|
|
the Children's Hospital, with all the blue blood of the town. Gets her name in
|
|
the society column and everything.
|
|
Of course, when I think of Lois Wilson I have just one desire in the
|
|
world. To see her face when she reads what kind of a place she really lives
|
|
in. Only, of course, Lois won't know what it's all about.
|
|
Last summer Lois' mother and sister went over to Catalina for a few weeks
|
|
and left Lois and her father alone in their white plaster house in the
|
|
foothills. Lois and her father did their own cooking and used to be real
|
|
devilish and toss a coin to see who washed the dishes. I went up one morning
|
|
to get Lois to go down to the beach and go swimming with me. All over the
|
|
house--pasted on Lois' dressing mirror, on the lamp shade, on the front door,
|
|
pinned on the pillow covers--was this legend in bold, black type. "Lois, don't
|
|
forget to feed the bird."
|
|
So the worst you can say about Lois is that maybe she hasn't a very good
|
|
memory.
|
|
The Jack Holts are another family that--really, all joking aside, I don't
|
|
believe in any town, anywhere in the country, you'll find another home like
|
|
the Holts. They have three kiddies, and honestly (I hope they won't see this
|
|
story) Jack just literally bores you to death telling you about them.
|
|
I think they must have meant Jack Holt when they told that story about
|
|
somebody liking to play horse. Because Jack uses the big blue drawing room
|
|
chiefly as a race course around which he crawls on all fours with Jack Jr.--
|
|
who's getting close to his third birthday--on his back.
|
|
William de Mille and his wife, Ann--the daughter, by the way of Single
|
|
Tax George--live in a big old brown house, all books and a bit shabby inside.
|
|
Once a week William has a class of devotees who come up there for a lecture on
|
|
political economy, and Bill's idea of the way to spend all the money he makes
|
|
in the movies is to conduct private political and advertising campaigns for
|
|
the legislative movements he believes in. Last year he spent a small fortune
|
|
advocating one such bill.
|
|
Oh yes--I mustn't forget this one.
|
|
Conrad Nagel is an usher in one of the biggest churches on Hollywood
|
|
boulevard. You can see him there twice on Sunday, wearing a frock coat and a
|
|
sweet smile. The Nagels have a baby daughter a year and a half old.
|
|
Of course they can return a terrible indictment against Lila Lee--and
|
|
Bebe Daniels. Lila lives at home with her mother and sister, Bebe has just
|
|
bought a big house in the exclusive West Adams district, where she reigns over
|
|
a bevy of grandmother, mother, aunts and such like.
|
|
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
Psychology
|
|
|
|
Adela Rogers St. Johns also wrote a series of short "fiction" stories about
|
|
Hollywood. As she later stated in her autobiography, THE HONEYCOMB: "...most
|
|
of them were built on fact and often became fiction only to avoid libel
|
|
laws...In some instances it was the only way in which you could print the
|
|
truth." The following short story, "Dolls," was a fictionalized version of the
|
|
relationship between Mary Miles Minter and her mother, Charlotte Shelby; and
|
|
of the romance between Minter and Marshall Neilan. Although the incidents are
|
|
fiction, the characterizations (at least in the first three chapters) are
|
|
probably extremely accurate.
|
|
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
|
|
July 1923
|
|
Adela Rogers St. Johns
|
|
COSMPOLITAN
|
|
Dolls
|
|
|
|
Hollywood, in spite of its youth, has its traditions. Among them is the
|
|
tradition of Mignon Variel's dolls. Also, the kingdom of the silversheet has
|
|
its anniversaries and its historical dates.
|
|
Some barbed tongue had once remarked that Mignon's sixteenth birthday
|
|
might well be called Hollywood's national holiday.
|
|
Unkind, no doubt, but Hollywood was a little weary of celebrating
|
|
Mignon's birthday. She had been younger and now she was older than sixteen.
|
|
But somehow Mignon's birthday had been cleverly surrounded with a halo--as
|
|
though it were merely symbolic.
|
|
It had grown to mean sweet sixteen as the Fourth of July means
|
|
firecrackers.
|
|
And Hollywood was a little weary, too, of the pictures of Mignon that
|
|
flooded forth afterwards--of Mignon, with her curls falling in a golden
|
|
shower, one toe turned in, and the biggest new doll in her arms.
|
|
As a matter of fact, on the drizzly morning when she sat in the office of
|
|
Sam Hartfeltz, producer, and toyed with the silken ears of a yappy Pekingese,
|
|
Mignon Variel was nineteen.
|
|
But even off the screen she looked the traditional sixteen that clung to
|
|
her. Younger, perhaps.
|
|
It wasn't only the tiny feet, in flat-heeled, round-toed slippers. Nor
|
|
the little fur cap, pulled over the long curls that reached below her waist.
|
|
Nor the undeveloped curve of her young breast beneath the white crepe frock.
|
|
One of Hartzeltz's battery of lawyers, sitting opposite her, discovered
|
|
that there was something lacking in her face that even adolescence brings.
|
|
And he decided that though it was the face of a child, somehow it wasn't
|
|
childish.
|
|
It took him some time to place the look, and then he remembered that he
|
|
had seen it in the faces of children who are raised in fashionable hotels.
|
|
Of course. Of course.
|
|
The skin was so lovely, the white of magnolia blossoms, as though grease
|
|
paint had protected it from the sting of the wind and the kiss of the sun.
|
|
The young lawyer thought of the girls he knew, who rollicked on golf
|
|
courses or tennis courts, until the wild roses peeped through their tanned
|
|
young cheeks, and he heaved a quick sigh.
|
|
Of course Mignon Variel had made a great deal of money and won and great
|
|
deal of fame, but just the same he was glad his own tousle-headed youngsters
|
|
were just--just kids.
|
|
There were six people seated about the big, polished mahogany table.
|
|
Mignon, bored and a little cross. Fidgeting impatiently.
|
|
Migon's mother.
|
|
Sam Hartfeltz. Two lawyers. A stenographer.
|
|
It was perhaps noteworthy that both lawyers were employed by Mr.
|
|
Hartfeltz.
|
|
Ma Variel needed no lawyer for contracts.
|
|
It was, indeed, another tradition in Hollywood that Ma Variel was a
|
|
match, single-handed, for anyone in the business.
|
|
Contracts were an old--a very old--story to Ma Variel.
|
|
Ever since Mignon, at the age of four, in gauzy skirts not more than five
|
|
inches long and a pair of immense butterfly wings attached to her dimpled baby
|
|
shoulders, had danced herself into the headline position on a vaudeville bill,
|
|
Ma Variel--flushed and cold-eyed, emotional but immovable--had signed her name
|
|
to many an amazing document.
|
|
For Baby Mignon's service had been in demand.
|
|
She put down the jeweled lorgnon and laughed indulgently.
|
|
"Not so bad, Sam," she said purringly. "Not so bad at all. Though 'tis a
|
|
waste of time, beginning with such stuff as that on me. Marriage and morality
|
|
clauses for a baby like my Mignon! Seems to me you and I have known each other
|
|
pretty near long enough to start right down to cases. The child cannot do
|
|
eight pictures a year. She's still growing and 'tis too great a strain on the
|
|
delicate strength of her. No, we'll start by striking that out. Six pictures,
|
|
now, that's not beyond reason."
|
|
"But--" began Mr. Hartfeltz.
|
|
"Sammy, what good is it to you to have her overtax herself? The lamb
|
|
shall have some time to play, so she shall. No one can ever say that Gertrude
|
|
Variel sacrificed her lambkin for money or for fame. Six pictures a year, Sam.
|
|
That's plenty."
|
|
"All right," said Hartfeltz slowly. "I suppose I'll have to agree to
|
|
that. Though Mignon looks strong as a horse. And the program does need more
|
|
pictures. Well, then, we'll say six pictures a year--thirty thousand dollars a
|
|
picture. That's too much, but Mignon's been with us a long time and we want to
|
|
be fair with her."
|
|
Ma Variel leaned back in the blue velvet chair and folded her pretty, fat
|
|
hands in her lap.
|
|
Her heavy round face under the elegance of her street hat took on a slow,
|
|
playful smile.
|
|
"Nobody knows better than I do that you want to be fair, Sam," she said
|
|
pleasantly. "that's the only reason I don't laugh in your face for saying
|
|
thirty thousand a picture to Mignon Variel. Four years now Mignon's been
|
|
making Hart pictures. Naturally, myself, I don't want to see her leave. I've
|
|
got some sentiment, I hope. Too much, indeed, for my own good."
|
|
Sam Hartfeltz lighted a cigarette nervously and pushed the box across to
|
|
Ma Variel, who took one sadly.
|
|
A little pause, tense and delicate, fell as the smoke wreathed upward.
|
|
"Oh, mamma, do hurry up!" said Mignon petulantly. "I'm getting so tired."
|
|
Ma Variel merely glanced at her.
|
|
"Well," said Sam Hartfeltz, flushing with the embarrassment that usually
|
|
overpowered him in moments like this. "I guess she won't need to wait any
|
|
longer now, Gertrude. We're practically through. Six pictures a year for three
|
|
years. Thirty thousand dollars a picture. I'll have the lawyers here draw it
|
|
up and you can come in again tomorrow and sign it."
|
|
"Sammy, I'm surprised at you," said Ma Variel, pleasantly, but a tinge of
|
|
crimson had begun to grow in the creases of her double chin. "I am. You know
|
|
I'm only a pore lone woman against all you smart men. But it's like a lioness
|
|
with her cub, Sammy, when you try to put something across on my baby. I've
|
|
given up my whole life without one other thought but her, and you know thirty
|
|
thousand dollars isn't enough."
|
|
"It's my top figure," said Hartfeltz, with sudden coldness.
|
|
Ma Variel gathered up her sable cloak and wrapped it about her plump
|
|
shoulders.
|
|
"All right, Sam," she said, as coldly.
|
|
Mignon jumped up and started for the door, her round young figure in its
|
|
short Persian lamb coat looking very slender and immature beside her mother's
|
|
over-groomed bulk.
|
|
As Ma Variel put a steady hand on the door know, Sam spoke again. "Where
|
|
are you going, Gertrude?"
|
|
Ma Variel did not turn.
|
|
"I'm going to see Morris of the United and tell him what a fool I've
|
|
been, letting sentiment stand in the way of my child's future. I'm going to
|
|
tell him I'll take the fair, decent proposition he, a perfect stranger, made
|
|
to me, when my best friends try--"
|
|
"Come back a minute, Gertrude," said Hartfeltz despondently. "Don't
|
|
always be going off half-cocked like that."
|
|
She turned in the doorway, poised like a large and angry seal.
|
|
"I'm no good at dickering, Sammy," she said. "I wouldn't demean myself to
|
|
do it. I know what's right and I try to do what's right, that's all."
|
|
"Well, what'd you think is right?"
|
|
"Forty thousand a picture for six pictures the first year. Fifty thousand
|
|
a picture the second year. And sixty the third year. And me to have the last
|
|
say on stories."
|
|
"Great guns!" said Hartfeltz.
|
|
"And at that, for old times' sake, I'm putting it under what Morris
|
|
offers me."
|
|
"Come back and sit down," said the man behind the table wearily. "It's
|
|
too much. It's a hold-up. It's murder. But I suppose I got to do it."
|
|
For the first time a dark wreath began to blaze in Ma Variel's eyes. The
|
|
slow flush of crimson crept up to her cheeks.
|
|
"What do you mean, it's a hold-up?" she said, coming to stand facing him,
|
|
her fist clenched on the table. "Don't play me for a fool, Sam Hartfeltz. I'm
|
|
only a poor lone woman with nothing in the world but my child, but I'm no
|
|
fool. Who carried most of your rotten old program last year? Ask any
|
|
exhibitor. Why do they take such stuff as you force down their throats from
|
|
Von Merchen and such dubs as Dorothy Vogel and Elise Devereaux? Because they
|
|
have to take 'em to get Mignon Variel, that's why.
|
|
"Don't every exhibitor in the country tell me my Mignon is the whip of
|
|
the Hart program? And do you think I was traipsing all of the United States in
|
|
the summer time at my age to amuse myself? I guess not. I've had a hard life,
|
|
and the way I like to amuse myself is to get off my corsets and my shoes and
|
|
watch Mignon playing with her dolls. No, I was finding out just what I needed
|
|
to know. Did you have any other picture clean up like 'The Rose of Avenue A'?
|
|
Think I don't know it netted three hundred and fifty thousand dollars the
|
|
first six months?
|
|
"Who's the only star on your lot hasn't had a flop this year? Mignon
|
|
Variel. And what's more, don't she give your productions a good name with the
|
|
church people and the censors, such a dear, sweet, innocent baby as she is?
|
|
Shy, it's worth every cent you pay her to know you've got one girl isn't going
|
|
to be named as corespondent in a divorce case or have her nightie found in
|
|
some man's bedroom about the time you release a million dollar picture of her
|
|
as Saint Cecilia. Don't kid me, Sammy. What did all the exhibitors in Texas
|
|
tell me?--my baby's the biggest drawing card they've ever had, that's what.
|
|
Nobody else is so beautiful and young and such an actress--that's what they
|
|
told me. And exhibitors only see through the box office window, I guess I know
|
|
that. And you've got the nerve, after all the money she's made for you--"
|
|
Tears were streaming down her cheeks now.
|
|
"Instantly Mignon was at her side, arms about the shoulders heaving in
|
|
their tight frock. "Mama, don't!" she pleaded. "Oh, mamma please don't cry!
|
|
You're a hateful old thing," she flung at the dark, troubled man. "You made my
|
|
mamma cry, after all we've done for you, too. I don't want to work for you any
|
|
more. I can work any place. I'm going to have my own company, that's what I'm
|
|
going to have."
|
|
Ma Variel's sobbing stopped abruptly. "Don't talk like that, Mignon," she
|
|
said. "That's no way for a little girl to talk. Well, Sammy?"
|
|
"It's all right," said Hartfeltz. "Only--that story thing. Honestly,
|
|
Gertrude, you got to leave the stories up to the scenario department. I had
|
|
more trouble last year than Congress, trying to fix up rows between you and
|
|
the scenario department. More fuss it was than all the rest of the studio to
|
|
run put together. Please now, don't start that all over again. I tell you, I
|
|
give you a bonus this year if you let the scenario department pick out the
|
|
stories for Mignon."
|
|
With a small square of colored lawn, Ma Variel wiped the tears from her
|
|
cheeks. When her dignity and calm were restored, she said impressively: "Your
|
|
whole company hasn't got money enough to pay me such a bonus. Who found 'Sweet
|
|
Violets' and 'Springtime,' I want to know! Me, or your scenario department?
|
|
Who got 'Nurse Adeline,' eh? Me. When they want to put her in stories any
|
|
grown-up star could do."
|
|
Sam Hartfeltz pulled himself up by his boot straps for his next remark.
|
|
"But Gertrude," he said, "Mignon ain't so young as she was. She's getting
|
|
a little bit heavy around the hips that she should play little girls any more.
|
|
I don't ask she should do sex stuff. But you know the critics ain't so gentle
|
|
in saying she should stop being so childish all the time. Nice, clean stories,
|
|
yes. But Mignon is going on twenty now. She can't play with dolls all her
|
|
life."
|
|
For the first time Mignon's self-satisfied little face broke into sudden
|
|
interest. "Oh yes. I'm awfully tired of playing little girls. I'm nearly
|
|
twenty and I'd like to do grown-up parts."
|
|
Sammy Hartfeltz was not a brave man. He was only a very good showman with
|
|
a strange gift of knowing the mind of the public. He had made a vast fortune,
|
|
but the shy delicacy and self-consciousness of his downtrodden youth still
|
|
clung to him.
|
|
But even had he been a brave man, a very brave man, he must have quailed
|
|
before the fury that flamed into Ma Variel's face.
|
|
The crimson had gone purple. Her temples pulsed with it.
|
|
She screamed at him, and Mignon shrank back against the door, her young
|
|
face suddenly old and wizened, like a child's at the sight of a lash it has
|
|
felt across its tender body.
|
|
"Don't you go putting ideas like that into my child's mind! There's time
|
|
enough in the years ahead for her to grow up. She's only a baby yet. A little
|
|
baby. Why, she doesn't look a day older than she did when she played 'The
|
|
Flower Girl' in London and the King and Queen gave her a decoration.
|
|
"That's the way the public wants her. That's the way I'm going to keep
|
|
her, and don't you forget it. At home, don't she still play with her dolls?
|
|
Don't you dare talk to me about how she should grow up. And putting in
|
|
marriage and morality clauses!"
|
|
"She might get married sometime," said Hartfeltz desperately. "And for
|
|
morality, what can you tell? You think everybody else is a fool, Gertrude.
|
|
What about Jack Garford, eh?"
|
|
The purple faded to gray, to white.
|
|
"You've got the nerve to throw that up to me now. It wasn't terrible
|
|
enough that a degenerate dog of an actor tried to compromise my baby, just for
|
|
blackmail because he heard I'd stored away a little money, but you've got to
|
|
throw it up to me now. The saints help me!"
|
|
"All right," said Sam Hartfeltz, "all right. You draw up the contract and
|
|
bring it down here tomorrow and I'll sign it."
|
|
|
|
II
|
|
|
|
Mignon had never noticed Mickey O'Toole at all until the morning that she
|
|
caught him, in the wide corridors of the dressing room building, giving an
|
|
imitation of her usual morning entrance on to the set.
|
|
He was, to her, merely another leading man. And she hated all leading
|
|
men.
|
|
Of course, Mignon had no business in the dressing room building.
|
|
She had her own elaborate bungalow. But she had been up to the wardrobe
|
|
to get her costume for the new sequence and she had mistaken the turn.
|
|
It was a very good imitation.
|
|
Mickey had a genius for that sort of thing. Hollywood rated him as one of
|
|
her prize entertainers.
|
|
Aside from that, he was a handsome youngster, with dark red hair that
|
|
photographed black, a quizzical mouth and inquisitive, impudent eyes.
|
|
Daring was written in the very poise of his head.
|
|
As Mignon came round the corner, he was holding a large audience utterly
|
|
convulsed as he enacted the scene which took place each morning when Mignon
|
|
arrived on the set for work.
|
|
He needed only one actor--himself--to present the case complete.
|
|
Mignon herself, with the dogs, Ma Variel, carrying a doll under her arm.
|
|
The frantic, overloaded maid. The uniformed chauffeur, carrying a hamper of
|
|
flowers. The fussy, efficient secretary.
|
|
With the merest intonation, expression, gesture, he put before them the
|
|
entourage, in all its absurdity and self-importance.
|
|
Then Depew, the director--toadying suavely and diplomatically.
|
|
The whispering chorus of script holders and musicians and actors and
|
|
publicity men and writers, all breathing a murmured, awe-struck welcome. Their
|
|
bowing, smirking, "Good morning, little lady" or "How's our sweet little star
|
|
today?" and "You're as fresh as a rosebud, Miss Variel."
|
|
Very well done.
|
|
The very essence of biting, devastating, brutal caricature.
|
|
Mignon's heart stopped beating. Fear, anger, a sickening nausea she could
|
|
not understand.
|
|
It was his imitation of herself that drove her back into the cold shadow
|
|
of the stone walls, stunned into silence.
|
|
That stolid hauteur. That obnoxious self-satisfaction. That simpering,
|
|
nasty-nice egotism.
|
|
Horrible. Horrible.
|
|
Her brain, that had never operated outside a set groove, like a chipmunk
|
|
on treadmill, began to beat frantically at her temples, her forehead.
|
|
These were people. People like herself. Mickey O'Toole, whom she had
|
|
despised--he had opinions about her. They all had thoughts about her!
|
|
Independent thoughts.
|
|
Like flashing pictures trickled into her brain. Like the small darting
|
|
pains that follow a second after the bullet.
|
|
Her isolation. The giggles of the other girls. The way the publicity
|
|
department had to be clubbed into working for her. Her lights always missing
|
|
and the sullen expression on the faces of the electricians when they were
|
|
discovered on some other set. Her friendlessness. Other girls, arm in arm.
|
|
Lunching in each other's dressing rooms.
|
|
Oh, they made fun of her! Of her and her dolls.
|
|
She had told mamma that. She had. She had begged not to have her picture
|
|
taken with her dolls any more.
|
|
How she hated dolls! What could she do? Mamma--mamma--mamma--
|
|
Her thoughts would go no further. Mamma had always thought for her,
|
|
decided for her. Protected her. Why, she had actually believed the whole
|
|
studio adored her greatness from afar.
|
|
Ma Variel lacked many things. But courage she had.
|
|
And her only child discovered in that moment that some of it had been
|
|
bequeathed to her.
|
|
Mignon sucked in her lower lip and walked deliberately around the corner
|
|
into the wide corridor where Mickey O'Toole played to his audience.
|
|
In the checked gingham rompers and the short socks, with her curls
|
|
falling about her and a big rag doll tucked under her arm, she did look
|
|
absurdly like a child.
|
|
Only a slight thickening of the tissues of her whole body and a lack of
|
|
perfect suppleness, which only an artist might have noted, betrayed her.
|
|
"How dare you?" she cried violently, and was furious that her voice
|
|
failed her. "Oh, how dare you make fun of me, you--you horrid--"
|
|
Mickey O'Toole's eyes narrowed. It was not a fortunate beginning. The
|
|
O'Tooles were rather apt to dare.
|
|
"Good morning, Miss Variel," he said, a new grin leaped into his eyes,
|
|
with sheer joy that such a situation should develop for his amusement. "I
|
|
didn't intend that you should be part of my audience for this little impromptu
|
|
performance. 'Tis hardly worthy of your attention. Give me time, and I'll try
|
|
to give you something a bit more--artistic."
|
|
"I shall tell Mr. Hartfeltz about your impertinence at once, and you'll
|
|
be dismissed and never work on this lot again," said Mignon, her eyes hot and
|
|
her lips cold.
|
|
"Can you imagine that!" said Mickey O'Toole. "Well, 'tis a comfort to
|
|
know I can always go back to digging ditches. But--it'll cost him a pretty
|
|
penny to turn me out now and remake half a picture. How he will weep over
|
|
that!"
|
|
The audience had faded, reluctantly.
|
|
It was all very well for Mickey.
|
|
Mickey had no sense anyway.
|
|
But they knew something of Ma Variel's power and temper.
|
|
"I suppose you think you were very funny," said Mignon. It was plain now
|
|
that she was too inexperienced, too untrained, to be a worthy opponent. "But I
|
|
think you're just hateful--hateful."
|
|
Partly from anger, partly from sheer terror at the revelation dawning
|
|
upon her, Mignon sank down, cross-legged, upon the stone floor, buried her
|
|
head on the rag doll and began to cry.
|
|
Her curls caught the morning sun and shone like the shimmer of autumn
|
|
wheat fields. Her clutching fingers closed about the toes of her futile little
|
|
Mary Janes.
|
|
"Oh now, don't do that," said Mickey O'Toole, and quite naturally went
|
|
and sat down on the floor beside her. "I say, don't cry. There isn't anything
|
|
to cry about, really. Here, stop it! I'd no idea you could cry like that."
|
|
Mignon raised her head and looked him straight in the eyes.
|
|
"Why do you hate me so?" she asked. "Why does everybody hate me so? Oh
|
|
dear. Oh dear."
|
|
"Bless your heart, you silly little thing," said Mickey O'Toole. "I don't
|
|
bother to hate you. I just think you make an awful idiot of yourself most of
|
|
the time."
|
|
Mignon gasped.
|
|
"Does everybody think that?"
|
|
"Well, I dare say there are lots of people don't think about you at all.
|
|
But a lot of them think that."
|
|
"Why?"
|
|
Mickey looked long into her eyes. They were dumb eyes, but they were very
|
|
pitiful. Almost like the eyes of a puppy who has been kicked and doesn't know
|
|
why.
|
|
"Well," he said at last, "I dare say it's on account of your mother.
|
|
She's not popular. Maybe it's only because she loves you, but she certainly
|
|
tramples on everybody. You're not so bad, if you'd only go about your
|
|
business. You can act. But you're not the most important thing on this planet
|
|
by a darn sight. To be frank with you, my dear, since we're talking man to
|
|
man, you're an upstage, conceited, dumb little brat. That's what you are."
|
|
Mignon was nodding her head, in exact imitation of her biggest French
|
|
doll.
|
|
"I-I didn't know," she said.
|
|
"Think a minute," said Mickey. "What's the good of going around saying
|
|
your mama doesn't allow you to associate with picture people? Your mother may
|
|
be a most estimable lady, but she used to be a second-rate dancer on the small
|
|
time vaudeville and everybody knows it. They'd all forget it quick enough if
|
|
she didn't act like she was Queen Victoria reincarnated. What's the good of
|
|
cutting poor little tramps that never had a chance or a break of luck, but
|
|
who've got more brains and more heart and more honest woman emotion than
|
|
you'll ever have? What's the use of making it so hard for everybody? *I* don't
|
|
care, but most leading men that play in a picture with you get sort of tired
|
|
of having their left hand ear photographed exclusively. And you know, Mignon,
|
|
you're a big girl now. It's such a lot of apple sauce for you to pretend you
|
|
think storks bring the babies. It is really. How old are you?"
|
|
"Sixteen."
|
|
"Behave, behave! How old are you?"
|
|
"Most twenty."
|
|
"Can you imagine that? What's there to be so ashamed of about being
|
|
twenty that you try to hide it all the time? Oh, what a lot of apple sauce!"
|
|
Mignon trembled a little. "I guess," she began confusedly, "I guess you
|
|
don't know what it's like to be--be an infant prodigy. With mamma. Oh, I was
|
|
treated fine. But--it's sort of a funny way to grow up. It--makes you
|
|
different from other people. When you've never done anything in your whole
|
|
life just--because you wanted to--but always for the people watching you. It--
|
|
it's funny."
|
|
She stammered and wiped the tears away with the skirt of the rag doll. "I
|
|
remember once we were in a town near a park. I ran away to the park and played
|
|
with the children." Her eyes grew wistful. "They didn't like me either because
|
|
I didn't know how to play. One little boy pushed me down and cut my lip. But I
|
|
didn't care. That was the only time I ever played with children.
|
|
"Mothers are--fine--but I guess it's funny I always thought I'd like a
|
|
papa. Maybe he'd have carried me on his shoulder and--made me a coaster. You
|
|
get awful tired of just dolls."
|
|
She stopped, inarticulate. Ashamed of her speech. Unable to describe or
|
|
explain any more of the old hurt.
|
|
But Mickey O'Toole of the Irish imagination looked into her round face
|
|
and her round, wet eyes and saw all that she could never tell.
|
|
The endless procession of hotels that were never home. The gushing
|
|
throngs of admirers. The little dark dressing rooms, on days when the shouts
|
|
of youngsters rang from every dusty hillside and every wave-washed beach.
|
|
The glare of the footlights in tired baby eyes.
|
|
He saw a lonely, puzzled baby, all by herself in the Terrible Land of
|
|
Grown-ups. He could almost hear the precise flavor of her speech and the
|
|
horror of her "cute sayings."
|
|
Robbed of her mud pies. Robbed of her broken window panes and her
|
|
bruised, mother-kissed knees. Robbed of that sacred privacy of childhood.
|
|
But oh, most of all, beyond everything else in the world, robbed of her
|
|
playmates. Of those other children who alone could have answered the incessant
|
|
cry of her lonely baby heart.
|
|
Poor little mummer! Like all those other poor little mummers he saw daily
|
|
about the studios, precocious, too well behaved, unchildlike little creatures,
|
|
doing their tricks like monkeys on a hand organ.
|
|
He though of Baby Mignon, flapping her tiny wings like a pink butterfly
|
|
on a wheel, and then he thought of that gentle Friend who understood better
|
|
than all others the delicacy of the child soul, and who said, "Suffer little
|
|
children, and forbid them not, to come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of
|
|
Heaven." And his heart came into his throat.
|
|
And she had been bound to serve out years in the slavery of this false
|
|
childhood. She couldn't even grow up. She had been wrapped and pinched into
|
|
that nightmare of stage childhood, as the feet of Chinese maidens are wrapped
|
|
and pinched to stunt their growth.
|
|
Unconsciously he put his arm about her, and quite as unconsciously she
|
|
relaxed against him. Gently he began to sway back and forth, as though he were
|
|
rocking a baby to sleep, patting her shoulder with regular, tender pats.
|
|
"There, there," he said softly. "I understand. Don't you worry."
|
|
"Mickey," said Mignon Variel softly, "what ought I to do first, do you
|
|
think?"
|
|
"Let's throw this away," said Mickey O'Toole. And he tossed the rag doll
|
|
over the cement wall.
|
|
|
|
III
|
|
|
|
Mignon crept noiselessly up the heavily padded staircase.
|
|
She was trembling with fright, yet she was warm with exultation.
|
|
Only a sense of pride for Mickey helped her to bite back a scream as the
|
|
light flashed on in the upper hallway.
|
|
Rigid, ominous, Ma Variel stood there.
|
|
"Where have you been?"
|
|
Mignon tried to speak; but her lips trembled so that she could not.
|
|
"Where have you been?" her mother repeated.
|
|
Neither moved for a long minute.
|
|
Then the older woman put out a hand. "Come here Mignon."
|
|
Like a frightened child, Mignon Variel, the greatest of screen ingenues,
|
|
crept up the few remaining steps.
|
|
"It's eleven o'clock," said the harsh, choked voice. "Where have you
|
|
been?"
|
|
Quite against her will, Mignon began to sob. "I haven't been anywhere,"
|
|
she said. "I haven't done anything I shouldn't. I just went out to dinner with
|
|
Mickey, that's all, and we danced. We went to the Ambassador. It was all
|
|
right, mamma."
|
|
"Why didn't you tell me?"
|
|
"Because--oh, mamma, you know you wouldn't have let me go alone! I'm--oh,
|
|
mamma, I love you. But I wanted to go out alone, just once, like other girls.
|
|
Just once--"
|
|
"So that's what he's put into your head, is it? This guttersnipe. This
|
|
shanty-Irish blackguard. This bleary-eyed seducer of babies. You're easy prey,
|
|
you and your fortune, for such a scheming vampire as him. But he's forgotten--
|
|
what is it they call me in Hollywood?--Ma Variel. He's forgotten Ma Variel."
|
|
Suddenly her face hardened. One hand reached out and clutched at the mass
|
|
of golden curls, coiled with exquisite beauty on top of the round young head.
|
|
Bound there with a thin silver ribbon.
|
|
And this time the girl screamed, aloud, as that ruthless, heavy hand tore
|
|
down the glistening mop and let the famous curls fall about the shrinking
|
|
shoulders.
|
|
"So--putting your hair on top of your head. Your pretty hair that makes
|
|
you look so young and sweet and different. I've spoiled you, Mignon. I've
|
|
spoiled you. But you're all I've got in the world, and you'll have to reckon
|
|
with me if you start this sort of thing. You and this low, common actor you've
|
|
chosen to disgrace yourself with. Come in here."
|
|
Mignon fought for self-control as she followed the heavy-moving figure
|
|
into the big, luxurious bedroom, where a fire burned on the white tile hearth.
|
|
"Take that dress off and go to bed," said her mother, pouring milk into a
|
|
tiny electric kettle, "and have your hot milk and be asleep before midnight,
|
|
like a young girl should."
|
|
"Please, mamma, I haven't disgraced myself. It's only that I wanted to be
|
|
like other girls--just once--and have a good time--"
|
|
"Like other girls, eh? Like these Hollywood trollops? Chasing around with
|
|
this man and that and getting common and losing their looks and ruining their
|
|
reputations. You don't know what a girl's up against that does that, my dear.
|
|
You just stop and think a minute and you'll know how fortunate you've been all
|
|
these years with a mother to fight every battle for you and stand in front of
|
|
you and think for you. I've had some hard times, my fine young lady, and if
|
|
I'm hard now, that's the reason. What do you know about the world? And your
|
|
Mickey would be a fine one to depend on--"
|
|
"Oh, mamma, please don't say anything against Mickey! He's been so dear
|
|
and kind--"
|
|
Ma Variel towered above her as she slipped trembling between the silken,
|
|
scented sheets. Towered impressive and terrible.
|
|
"Kind, has he? I don't doubt it. As he's been kind to every cheap extra
|
|
girl and low-down female on the lot. Common, that's what he is. A drunkard. A
|
|
gutter drunkard. Mixed up with all kinds of cheap women. What d'you know about
|
|
men, you poor, innocent baby? Answer me that. It takes years and hard knocks
|
|
to teach a woman most of them are rotten. A clowning, simpering, worthless
|
|
puppy, that's what he is."
|
|
She held out the glass of hot milk. Mignon took it and raised it to her
|
|
lips. Part of it spilled on the rare lace of her gown and on the brocaded
|
|
satin coverlet.
|
|
With steady hands, Ma Variel wiped the drops away.
|
|
"But, mamma, everybody likes Mickey."
|
|
"Everybody? The rifraff and kittle-cattle of Hollywood. Why shouldn't
|
|
they like him? He's one of 'em. He drinks with them and carouses with them and
|
|
makes love to them, sure enough. You, that I've kept above all that--is that
|
|
what you want, Mignon?"
|
|
"I--no, no. But mamma, that isn't all there is. There's some decent young
|
|
fun for a girl, isn't there. Not always to be cooped up, nor posing. Nor
|
|
playing with dolls. I want a little freedom."
|
|
"Freedom? To do what? Ruin yourself. You listen to me. Ever since the day
|
|
they gave you to me in the hospital, a little, wizened, ugly brat, squalling
|
|
with fear and hunger, you've been all I had in the world. I hated your father
|
|
because he made a fool of me just like this man would make a fool out of you.
|
|
I hated him because he run off and left you--not because he left me. For
|
|
twenty years I've fought and thought and forgot I was anything but your
|
|
mother. For twenty years I haven't had a feeling or a thought outside of you,
|
|
and I've kept you a sweet, pure child and now--"
|
|
Both women were sobbing, but the mother went on in an abysmal tide of
|
|
emotion. "Now you want to leave me. You go off with the first young snip that
|
|
comes along. You forget everything I've done and sacrificed for you. You
|
|
deceive me, your mother, for a man you don't know anything about. That you
|
|
never saw until a month ago. You want to ruin the career I've built up for you
|
|
and tarnish the good name I've kept for you in this rotten business. You want
|
|
to give him the money I've schemed and lied and fought for you to earn. My
|
|
goodness, Mignon, haven't you got everything in the world a girl could want?
|
|
Don't I give you everything?"
|
|
Ma Variel, in a tenderness that was cyclonic, swept the trembling child
|
|
to her breast.
|
|
As the passion of all the ages lay in her quivering, tear-stained, fear-
|
|
ridden face. The passion of motherhood and of fatherhood; of possession and of
|
|
service; of worship and of jealousy. The passion of a woman to whom a child
|
|
has been husband and lover and work and reward and religion for many years.
|
|
A fierceness of possession swept her, that would have taken this child
|
|
back into her very blood before giving her to another.
|
|
The blanket of it fell, smothering, on Mignon Variel. The thrill of
|
|
Mickey's presence vanished. The inspiration of her new self faded.
|
|
The other cone of that passionate, selfish, material mother-love
|
|
suffocated her.
|
|
She sobbed, once or twice. Nodded wearily. And fell into an exhausted
|
|
sleep of childhood.
|
|
Her mother sat there, hour after hour, holding her against her breast in
|
|
ecstasy.
|
|
|
|
IV
|
|
|
|
On a certain day in June when the oranges hung on the velvet trees like
|
|
colored balls on a Christmas tree and the fields were a mass of yellow mustard
|
|
bloom, Mickey O'Toole and Mignon Variel went to Santa Ana and were married.
|
|
For weeks the battle had raged.
|
|
Hollywood, amazed and amused, had watched with mingled chuckles and
|
|
thrills.
|
|
Each step of the drama had been known to the eager colony.
|
|
They knew, for instance, the exact hour when Ma Variel ordered Mickey
|
|
from the house and forbade him ever to return.
|
|
They knew, almost to a word, what took place in Sam Hartfeltz's office
|
|
when she blacklisted him at the Hart studio, and every other studio where she
|
|
or Hartfeltz had any influence.
|
|
But public sympathy was with Mickey. There were a number of people in
|
|
Hollywood who had old scores against Ma Variel. Mickey didn't lack influential
|
|
supporters.
|
|
They knew, too, about the time that Mignon actually climbed out of an
|
|
upstairs window in the dead of night for a stolen motor ride. And some
|
|
versions declared that she had left a cleverly conceived dummy in her bed.
|
|
There were rumors of terrific scenes in the Variel household. There were
|
|
rumors that Mignon had actually defied her mother on occasion--but not for
|
|
long. And that in the end Ma Variel had turned Mignon over her knee and
|
|
spanked her soundly with a hairbrush.
|
|
Here and there it was said that Ma Variel had stooped to the deepest
|
|
trickery to compromise and ruin Mickey.
|
|
The whole staff knew, and nearly burst with excitement, when Red--an
|
|
adventurous and impertinent prop boy--smuggled notes to Mignon under her
|
|
mother's very nose.
|
|
Altogether, Hollywood hadn't had so much fun in a long time.
|
|
When Mignon arrived at the studio, under guard, and was marched to her
|
|
dressing bungalow entirely surrounded by watchful eyes, they decided it was
|
|
almost as good as one of the old time romances, when kings hid haughty
|
|
princesses within impregnable towers to keep them from the arms of low-born
|
|
lovers.
|
|
After all, in her way Mignon was a princess.
|
|
The wedding was a surprise to no one.
|
|
Only the details were exciting.
|
|
And exciting they certainly were.
|
|
After days of failure, it was understood that Mickey had thought out the
|
|
plan.
|
|
Mignon was working on a big county fair set. And, after losing herself
|
|
among the vast throng of extra people, she had slipped through a side gate
|
|
into a waiting touring car, and made a wild dash for Santa Ana, where Mickey
|
|
awaited her.
|
|
And so Mignon Variel, who earned a quarter of a million dollars a year
|
|
and whose face was known in every land under the sun, was married by a justice
|
|
of the peace, in a county courthouse, in a calico dress and a straw hat with a
|
|
hole in it. And while the sandals hid her toes, they could not hide the bare
|
|
whiteness of her ankles.
|
|
She still wore, too, the grease paint of her screen make-up.
|
|
In two hours she was back on the set.
|
|
And because there had been another figure mingling with the extras, in a
|
|
calico dress and a straw hat, Ma Variel hadn't missed her.
|
|
The secret held for three days.
|
|
And then it broke with a dull thud in the morning papers. Eight-column
|
|
headlines, myriad photographs and much elegant description.
|
|
Fortunately Mickey, who was not sleeping well, awoke in the dawn and read
|
|
his paper early. So that just as Mignon, dizzy from the shock of that
|
|
screaming black type, was staring into her mother's eyes across untouched
|
|
grapefruit, the bridegroom walked in.
|
|
"Hello, mother," said young Mickey O'Toole with a grin. " 'Tis not the
|
|
way I would have announced it to you, but you've got Mignon so scared of you
|
|
there was no other way without frightening her to death."
|
|
Ma Variel did not look well in negligee and she knew it. If it takes ten
|
|
generations to make a man look like a gentleman in evening clothes, it takes
|
|
twenty to make a woman look like a lady in a pink negligee.
|
|
"Get out of my house," she said briefly. "Quick. And don't every come
|
|
back or I'll set the dogs on you."
|
|
"All right, dear," said Mickey. "Come on Mignon. The car's outside."
|
|
Mignon half rose. "Sit down," said her mother. "You get out of this house
|
|
and let my daughter alone."
|
|
"Oh no," said Mickey. "Can't do that. Sorry. She happens to be my wife,
|
|
you known. And you remember that the jolly old Bible says you should forsake
|
|
your father and mother and cleave unto your husband. Mignon, come here."
|
|
His tone was quiet, but for the first time an actual panic seized Ma
|
|
Variel, for it was as cool and steady and purposeful as it was quiet.
|
|
Mignon went to his side. "Please, mamma--" she began.
|
|
"Never mind, dear," said her husband. "You two women have had enough
|
|
chance at managing this thing. What you actually need is a man in the family.
|
|
I let you come back once, now I'm going to run it my way. Mother, let me tell
|
|
you a few things. Mignon is married to me. She's of marrying age and it's
|
|
legal. And the law is quite squiffy about people trying to separate husbands
|
|
and wives. It is, really. In fact, they do all sorts of unpleasant things to
|
|
you in this State if they find it out.
|
|
"I may not be much good, but I'm a better man than you are. Because I'm
|
|
willing to concede that Mignon is a woman and a human being with a few rights
|
|
of her own. Mignon loves you a lot, and there isn't any reason why we
|
|
shouldn't all live happily together. If we can't--you'll have to get used to
|
|
living alone."
|
|
Ma Variel rose and there was a flash of fire in her eyes.
|
|
"And if you try any rough stuff," said young Mickey O'Toole, "much as I'd
|
|
hate to do it, I should just naturally be forced to hand you a good stiff
|
|
wallop on the jaw. Because that's the only kind of language a selfish old
|
|
Biddy like you understands. There are too darn many mothers like you around
|
|
Hollywood.
|
|
"Now Mignon and I are going honeymooning."
|
|
"If you go," said Ma Variel, "you'll never get a cent of my money. You'll
|
|
take her in the clothes she's got on."
|
|
"I'd take her in less than that," said her son-in-law. "Of course when my
|
|
wife's twenty-one you'll have to make an accounting to her of all the moneys
|
|
she's earned. She's got a right to that. And don't call me a fortune hunter.
|
|
Because I know I'm not one and my opinion is the only one I really value. So
|
|
I'm certainly not going to let Mignon's money interfere in our happiness."
|
|
The very air quivered.
|
|
The butler, coming in with hot toast, glanced at the three motionless
|
|
figures and retreated hastily.
|
|
"Now, mother"--Mickey smiled engagingly--"now's the time for you to pull
|
|
that great old classic about not having lost a daughter but gained a son.
|
|
You've no idea what a lot of help I'm going to be to Mignon. She'll never have
|
|
to depend just on you for her thinking again."
|
|
Ma Variel rang a bell. She was panting for breath now.
|
|
A trim, white-capped maid came down the stairs.
|
|
"Pack my things," said Ma Variel, her voice cracking like a whip, "and
|
|
have Agnes pack Miss Mignon's. We're going to Coronado for a few days."
|
|
"You mean"--Mickey was puzzled but pleasant--"you mean all of us?"
|
|
"I mean I think you're a filthy little blackmailer, and if you've got
|
|
this poor, ignorant child in your clutches so she can't get out--I'm going
|
|
along."
|
|
"On our honeymoon? Oh, I assure you, mother darling, you'll feel
|
|
frightfully in the way. Awfully, awfully de trop. Really you will. Ever been
|
|
on anybody else's honeymoon?"
|
|
"Shut up," said Ma Variel. "I'm going with my daughter. She's never spent
|
|
a night away from me since she was born."
|
|
"I know, dear, and they couldn't have Prohibition either," explained
|
|
Mickey. "Isn't there an old proverb about there being a first time for
|
|
everything? Mother, I think you're a great old girl. I respect you as a worthy
|
|
antagonist. I suspect, moreover, that we have a lot in common. You're going to
|
|
love me before you get through. But I cannot, I really cannot, take you on my
|
|
honeymoon. In fact, if I had wanted you on my honeymoon I'd have married you.
|
|
You'll have a honeymoon of your own yet, don't you stew, ma."
|
|
It is no exaggeration to say that Ma Variel choked.
|
|
She made one step forward and Mignon shrank. "You little fool--" she
|
|
cried.
|
|
"Easy on," said Mickey, and his eyes were cool and dangerous. "You're
|
|
speaking to my wife, you know. And a woman."
|
|
"I'm her mother--" said Gertrude Variel.
|
|
"I know, dear," said Mickey, "and motherhood is a beautiful thing if you
|
|
don't abuse it. You can go right on being her mother, but you aren't going to
|
|
be a war lord any more."
|
|
"Then go--go both of you. I never want to see you again," said Ma Variel.
|
|
"Oh, Mignon, my baby--you won't leave me like this? You'll kill me--my baby--
|
|
you can't leave your mamma like this--"
|
|
She had broken. She was pleading now.
|
|
"Mamma!" Mignon O'Toole held out her arms.
|
|
But a firm masculine hand circled her wrists. "That's a good way to feel
|
|
about it," said Mickey quietly. "You just think it all over while we're gone
|
|
and get your place in the scheme of things worked out in your head. And when
|
|
we get through having a nice, long, glorious honeymoon--Mignon'll come back to
|
|
work. And we'll probably see a lot of you then."
|
|
|
|
V
|
|
|
|
Drama gets into the blood.
|
|
Ma Variel had not intended to be sitting in front of the fire, rocking
|
|
that biggest doll of Mignon's, when her daughter came back.
|
|
But she was.
|
|
And when she saw the golden curls and the dimples and the round young
|
|
face alive with happiness, her dramatic instinct made her begin to weep and to
|
|
hold out the doll as she cried: "Oh, Mignon, it's the baby doll you used to
|
|
love so much. The one you always played with."
|
|
Mrs. Mickey O'Toole walked straight across the big, empty drawing room to
|
|
her mother's side.
|
|
She took the doll in firm, vigorous young hands and with one swift
|
|
movement brought its china head down against the brick mantel.
|
|
The tinkle-tinkle on the hearth was like the shattering of a fallen idol.
|
|
"I don't want any more dolls, mamma," said Mignon O'Toole. "I want a
|
|
baby. And I'm going to have one."
|
|
Her mother stood up, swaying. Every vestige of color and expression
|
|
drained from her face.
|
|
And then slowly, cunningly, a very little smile began to creep about her
|
|
set lips. It was the first time she had smiled since, in open battle, she had
|
|
been vanquished by her son-in-law.
|
|
"Well," she said at last, and her voice was humble, "you may feel awfully
|
|
independent and sassy right now, but I expect you'll need your mother quite
|
|
considerable when it comes to having a baby."
|
|
"I expect I will, mamma," said Mignon softly.
|
|
|
|
(End)
|
|
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
|
|
In 1940, St. Johns wrote a character sketch of Mary Miles Minter, which
|
|
included the following:
|
|
|
|
February 25, 1940
|
|
Adela Rogers St. Johns
|
|
AMERICAN WEEKLY
|
|
Mary Miles Minter: Millions, Murder, Misery--Will They Haunt Her Forever
|
|
(extract)
|
|
...For her first big starring picture, I've forgotten what it was, it
|
|
never mattered much I guess, the director assigned to her was a man named
|
|
William Desmond Taylor.
|
|
After he was murdered, after that morning when Hollywood shrieked with
|
|
horror over the headlines announcing that his body had been found of the floor
|
|
of his apartment with a bullet hole in the back, a great deal was said and
|
|
written about Taylor's charm, his power over women, his career as a Don Juan
|
|
in Hollywood.
|
|
I knew Taylor pretty well. Knew him because he was one of the leading
|
|
directors at the time and it was my business to know him. And knew him because
|
|
he was very much in love with Mabel Normand, who was one of my best and
|
|
closest friends.
|
|
He always seemed to me a poised, rather cold man, and the thing I
|
|
remember best about him is that his face was lean and deeply tanned and that
|
|
he had a crooked smile. His eyes, it seems to me, were very brightly blue--at
|
|
least they were very bright, and it was a little difficult to tell whether he
|
|
was smiling or only looking at you very intently.
|
|
It may have been his soldier-of-fortune air that entranced the ladies.
|
|
Also--for Hollywood was fairly crude in those days and as I have said very
|
|
young--he had a worldly way with him, a sort of smiling hint that he knew a
|
|
good deal more about life than most of us, had seen more, suffered and enjoyed
|
|
more.
|
|
Women, especially very young ones, like that.
|
|
Mabel Normand who was the last person except the murderer to see him
|
|
alive, was fond of him, liked his companionship, but she wasn't in love with
|
|
him. That much I knew then.
|
|
When he and Mary Miles Minter first met--about two years, I think, before
|
|
his ill-fated death--she was still a child and he was close to fifty.
|
|
He made her first big picture, as I said. The first thing you know,
|
|
somehow, somewhere, the rumor began to drift about that Mary Miles Minter was
|
|
in love with Taylor. Later, in a sensational courtroom scene, her sister
|
|
Margaret testified that Mary had been in love with Jim Kirkwood when he was
|
|
her leading man [sic] and had gone through a "marriage in the sight of God"
|
|
with him. Maybe she did.
|
|
If I were writing the story the way I see it from what I knew of the
|
|
people, I would say that maybe Mary actually told Margaret that, maybe she
|
|
dreamed it, maybe she was tired of never having a romance and made it up. I
|
|
don't know. [1]
|
|
But at that time nobody in Hollywood ever heard of such a thing and when
|
|
the first little hints about Taylor and Mary began to be heard we were all
|
|
knocked silly.
|
|
Poor little kid. She hadn't ever had any sane romances. She hadn't gone
|
|
dancing with young juveniles or listened to the love making of gay young
|
|
scenario writers who usually tried out their love scenes on the pretty stars.
|
|
Night after night she'd been home with her mother and her sister and her
|
|
grandmother.
|
|
Day after day, she came to work at the studio, grave and quiet, hard-
|
|
working, never having any fun. Thinking it over from this distance, the
|
|
feeling comes over me that few girls ever lived so abnormal a life as Mary
|
|
Miles Minter...
|
|
How she escaped her mother long enough to fall violently in love with
|
|
Taylor is still a mystery...
|
|
Whatever it was--an affair, an engagement, or the dream-come-true
|
|
adoration of a very young girl for an older man--Mary was in love. She saw him
|
|
every day on the set. Sometimes at night she slipped out of the house and met
|
|
him for a drive, or a long walk. It was her first love--it was her first
|
|
companionship with any man--and it went deep. It began to eat her up, to be
|
|
the paramount thing in her life.
|
|
So that sometimes she even defied her mother and met him openly. Not
|
|
often--but a few times. So that even her first romance, its ending already
|
|
shadowed in tragedy, began under a dark star. Her mother disapproved violently-
|
|
-there were scenes--tears--threats--all the things that go with such a
|
|
mother's disapproval.
|
|
Perhaps Taylor was in love with her. It's difficult to tell. For he was
|
|
seeing a great deal of Mabel Normand, he was seeking her, calling her, trying
|
|
to help her. Everybody was always trying to help Mabel...
|
|
Nothing that I know of can stop people speculating after such a shocking
|
|
murder, when the police question and seek and follow clues and get nowhere. I
|
|
was in New York when it happened. I rushed home at once--mostly because I
|
|
wanted to be with Mabel Normand. Partly because I wanted to write some of the
|
|
truths that I knew, as a citizen of Hollywood, while some outside reporters
|
|
dashed in and made a Roman holiday of everyone who had ever spoken to
|
|
Taylor...
|
|
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
Mythology
|
|
|
|
In her later years, Adela Rogers St. Johns wrote more about the Taylor case,
|
|
and some of her later writing contradicted what she had written earlier. Were
|
|
the earlier writings a whitewash and the later writings the truth? Or were the
|
|
earlier writings the truth and the later writings her retelling of history as
|
|
she felt it should be written?
|
|
|
|
In THE HONEYCOMB, St. Johns states that:
|
|
*Taylor and Normand "had never spoken a word of love."
|
|
*Taylor kept an emergency roll of $5,000 cash handy (no such roll was ever
|
|
discovered after his death)
|
|
*Faith MacLean was certain that the person she saw leaving Taylor's home on
|
|
the murder night was Charlotte Shelby, dressed in man's clothing.
|
|
*St. Johns' husband, Ike St. Johns, had taken an article of "MMM" monogrammed
|
|
pink chiffon step-ins from the murder scene on the morning the body was found.
|
|
*Adela St. Johns' had heard gossip about the Taylor/Minter "affair" before the
|
|
murder, and had heard the opinion expressed that Mrs. Shelby should shoot
|
|
Taylor.
|
|
|
|
In LOVE, LAUGHTER AND TEARS, St. Johns states that:
|
|
*Normand and Taylor were only friends.
|
|
*Taylor is characterized as a "rattlesnake" who deserved to be killed because
|
|
of his predatory relationship with Minter.
|
|
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
Analysis
|
|
|
|
Let's list some of St. Johns' contradictions.
|
|
|
|
Early writing:
|
|
Mabel loved Taylor, Taylor loved Mabel, they might have married some
|
|
day.
|
|
Later writing:
|
|
Mabel and Taylor were only friends, and never a word of love was
|
|
spoken between them.
|
|
|
|
Early writing:
|
|
Before the murder, St. Johns had never heard a whisper of scandal or a
|
|
breath of criticism against Taylor.
|
|
Later writing:
|
|
Before the murder, she had several times heard the opinion expressed
|
|
that Taylor should be killed because of his relationship with Minter.
|
|
|
|
Early writing:
|
|
Taylor was characterized as one of the finest men she had ever known.
|
|
Later writing:
|
|
Taylor was characterized as a rattlesnake who deserved to be killed.
|
|
|
|
Early writing:
|
|
She had no idea who killed Taylor, or why he was killed, but believed
|
|
that it had nothing to do with himself or any act of his.
|
|
Later writing:
|
|
She was certain that Taylor was killed by Charlotte Shelby because of
|
|
his relationship with Minter.
|
|
|
|
So what are we to believe; which is truth and which is fiction? Perhaps one
|
|
clue can be found in what she says about Faith MacLean. In St. Johns' later
|
|
writing she states that Faith MacLean told her the person leaving Taylor's
|
|
home immediately after the murder was positively Charlotte Shelby. But when
|
|
re-questioned by investigators in 1937, Faith MacLean "partially identified"
|
|
Carl Stockdale as the person she had seen [2] That partial identification
|
|
may have been related to the fact that she originally stated the person she
|
|
saw had a prominent nose, and Stockdale's nose was very prominent; when shown
|
|
a picture of Stockdale she might have said, "Yes, it might have been him--the
|
|
nose seems similar--but I'm not certain." In any event, Faith MacLean's
|
|
"partial identification" of Carl Stockdale appears to indicate that Adela
|
|
Rogers St. Johns was incorrect. How could Faith MacLean partially identify
|
|
Stockdale if she was positive that Shelby was the person she saw? If St.
|
|
Johns' later writing was incorrect about the identification of the person
|
|
seen by Faith MacLean, then other portions of St. Johns' later writing may
|
|
also be inaccurate.
|
|
|
|
There is sufficient evidence to reasonably conclude that Taylor was in love
|
|
with Mabel Normand; they were not "only friends". The statements of Peavey and
|
|
the Fellows brothers, the fact that Taylor was sending flowers to Mabel
|
|
several times a week and giving her expensive gifts, the fact that he carried
|
|
her picture with him in a frame inscribed "to my dearest"--all point toward
|
|
his very strong affection for her. So it appears that the earlier statements
|
|
by St. Johns were more truthful in this matter.
|
|
|
|
Some of St. Johns' other writing was certainly erroneous; in LOVE, LAUGHTER
|
|
AND TEARS she reports as fact the apocryphal tale about Mabel Normand walking
|
|
off a Goldwyn film set and going to Paris; in reality Mabel's first trip to
|
|
Europe did not take place until 1922, which was long after her Goldwyn
|
|
contract had ended. She never walked off a film set and went to Europe--her
|
|
European trips all took place between films.
|
|
|
|
But overall, it is impossible to determine whether some of St. Johns' earlier
|
|
statements are more accurate than her later statements. The mere existence of
|
|
the contradictions cast doubt upon St. Johns' truthfulness as a writer, and
|
|
thus she should not be cited as an authoritative source for any facts of the
|
|
case. What she wrote is often interesting, but must be regarded as uncertain
|
|
unless independent verification is available.
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
NEXT ISSUE: The Case Against Edward Sands:
|
|
Who was Sands?
|
|
Press Items Indicating Sands was the Killer
|
|
Sands' Sexuality
|
|
Was Sands the Person Seen by Faith MacLean?
|
|
Was Robbery an Element of the Murder Motive?
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
NOTES:
|
|
[1] As the affair between Minter and Kirkwood resulted in an abortion, it
|
|
certainly was not just a fantasy of Minter's. See WDT: DOSSIER, p. 328.
|
|
[2] See WDT: DOSSIER, p. 329.
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
For more information about Taylor, see
|
|
WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR: A DOSSIER (Scarecrow Press, 1991)
|
|
Back issues of Taylorology are available via Gopher or FTP at
|
|
etext.archive.umich.edu
|
|
in the directory pub/Zines/Taylorology
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|