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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 57 -- September 1997 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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Antonio Moreno
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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 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; (d) Taylor's associates and the Hollywood
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silent film industry in which Taylor worked. Primary emphasis will be given
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toward reprinting, referencing and analyzing source material, and sifting it
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for accuracy.
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David B. Pearson has set up a mirror of the Taylorology web site at
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http://www.uno.edu/~drif/arbuckle/Taylorology/
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Two color reproductions of posters from William Desmond Taylor's films are
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available on the web. "Huck and Tom" (1918) is available at
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http://www.lightside.com/ampas/ampasimages/tom.html
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"The American Beauty" (1916) is available at
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http://www.lightside.com/ampas/ampasimages/amer.html
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Antonio Moreno
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Several prominent silent film actors and actresses were close to the
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vortex of the Taylor murder. One such actor was Antonio Moreno, who spoke
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with Taylor on the phone less than an hour before Taylor was killed and was
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with Taylor several times during the week prior to his death. Moreno's phone
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conversation with Taylor was in progress when Mabel Normand arrived at
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Taylor's home on the evening of February 1, 1922. The following items are:
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(a) an "autobiography" written by Moreno in 1924; (b) two interviews from
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1919; (c) a clipping regarding the settlement of Moreno's lawsuit against
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Vitagraph, which was filed shortly before the Taylor murder and was the
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subject of Moreno's business meetings with Taylor; (d) Moreno's statements
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regarding William Desmond Taylor, which provide some information on Taylor's
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activities during the last week of his life, and; (e) some rumors pertaining
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to Moreno.
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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[In the following biography, words which were italicized in the original
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article have been surrounded in asterisks.]
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November 8 - December 13, 1924
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MOVIE WEEKLY
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The True Story of My Life
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by Antonio Moreno
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"To see ourselves as others see us..." This should doubtless be the
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way to write a story of one's own life. But it is so hard to know *how*
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others see us, even hard for a movie actor, who has his finger somewhat on
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the pulse of public opinion through the agency of fan mail.
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The only way that *I* can tell my life story is plainly and simply as
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it has happened and as I have felt it. It is said that every life is a
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story, no matter how uneventful it may seem to the person living it. This
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theory gives me courage to tell my story.
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If the story is not as romantic and colorful as might be expected, it
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will be because of two reasons, one being that I am not a writer and have
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little or no idea of how to give glamour to circumstances and events. And
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the other and probably the most important is that my wife says that I am "a
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Latin without the Latin temperament." Thus, I haven't even *that* dramatic
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instinct to help me out.
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Then, too, I have always had the impression that autobiographies should
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be written at the age of eighty or ninety and published after death. I'm a
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bit afraid to see the story of my life in the cold light of print while I am
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still alive and still living that life. It's hard to have a true perspective
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on a thing you are still doing.
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When the request came for me to write this story, I shuddered and
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shrank from what appeared to me to be an ominous business. How to go about
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it? My friends reassure me and tell me that everyone, or nearly everyone, is
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writing life stories about themselves. Some of them thinly disguised as
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fiction. Some of them baldly and frankly what they are.
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Perhaps some of them are doing this sort of thing from the same motive
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that inspires me--self preservation.
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By self-preservation I do not mean the earning of sustenance, the well-
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known daily bread, but as a means of salvation from fantastic fictions which
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are woven about a person who chances to be caught in the limelight. Most of
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these stories are anything *but* true. Whatever may, or may not be said
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about my own story of my life, at least it *will* be *true*.
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I've read the most incredible publicity tales about, for an instance,
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my rise from dire poverty to dazzling riches. I've read the most romantic
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accounts of minutely described romantic adventures in which I have been
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supposed to be the protagonist and hero. I may have wished that some of
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these sensational events had happened to me, but am forced to admit that very
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few of them ever did. Excepting in the minds of the ladies and gentlemen who
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thus honored me with their imaginative pens.
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Still, with due credit to the much-maligned press agent, I will say
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that some of these accounts were based, at least *based*, on fact. I refer
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to the stories retailing my early state of poverty. The only reason that
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they were not all fact is due to my failure to go into enough particulars to
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make sufficient data for a good story. Somehow, I dread living over again,
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even in conversation, "the days that the locusts have eaten."
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According to my recollection, there was no gala demonstration in
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Madrid, Spain, when I was born. Although I do believe that for a time, at
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any rate, my father considered me an attraction about on a par with a bull
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fight. He thought I was good entertainment. He was even a little bit proud
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of me, because I was huskier than most infants and promised a long and
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vigorous career with my fists or my lungs or something of the sort.
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My father, by the way, was named Juan Moreno, and he was a non-
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commissioned officer in the Spanish army. He married my mother, Ana, after a
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very charming and danger-fraught romance; in the face of strenuous objections
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raised by her family, one of the oldest in Spain, which considered a mere
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soldier beneath it in rank and dignity, not to mention social suitability.
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Therefore, I was the child of a true love match, which may or may not mean
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anything.
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Shortly after my unheralded entrance in the Spanish capital and my
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christening as Antonio Garrido Monteagudo Moreno, my parents moved to
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Seville. Beautiful Seville. If I were I poet, I might expatiate at length
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about Seville. Being only a Latin "without the Latin temperament," I can
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only feel the beauty of it in my blood and remain, forever, I fear,
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inarticulate.
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Nevertheless, the city of Seville, with its languorous charm, its
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underlying and overlying sense of smoldering excitement, is the great city of
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Andalusia. I once thought of Seville as a beautiful woman with fever in her
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veins. I don't know--is that a charming analogy? No? It is, too, a
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somnolent city. A city that is dreaming underneath her sleep. A song from
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an upper chamber may be answered far down a narrow, quiet street. I, myself
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as a small boy, have heard such a song, have answered it-- The thrum of
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guitars, the chatter of men and women, slurring like silk drawn across white
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hands, all are uninterrupted by the blaring noises of traffic.
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Yes, Seville is a jewel set in orange groves, palms that wave like long
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green arms and the continual spray of fountains. In my childish mind these
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things were jumbled--spray of fountains--songs answered and unanswered--songs
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that came from dim, mysterious recesses, that were filtered out through
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jalousies and casements--palms and the heavy-hanging oranges.
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To enter the cool, flowered shade of Seville is like awakening from a
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troubled sleep in a garden of tranquil beauty, where twilight reigns in
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veils. The real charm of the city unfolds at twilight, as though that
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twilight took off her shrouding veils, or else as though some lovely
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nocturnal flower were unfolding. At twilight, the people gather in the
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gardens or at the river side to talk or to listen to the music. For there is
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music everywhere. here at there at a barred window may be seen the faces of
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two lovers, the man leaning against the iron lattice, the woman within
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guarded by the screen, whispering, whispering for hours. It is a curious
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kind of privacy one finds in Seville, for there are no blinds, no curtains,
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to hide the view of the rooms and patios, filled with their sense of cool
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serenity.
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Seville, as you may know, is famed for the beauty of its women. They
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have that "golden pallor" accentuated by black, flashing eyes and shining,
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very dark hair and a dignity of graceful languor that lends to their mere
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beauty a magnetic charm, a mystery--I like mystery in the beauty of women.
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Perhaps that is childhood impressionism hanging over. Psychologists say that
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all the impressions that really matter, all the impressions that we carry
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with us into maturity, are made before we are seven. I think that is
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somewhat the way it is with me.
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Some day I shall go back to Seville. My wife and I plan a long trip
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there one of these days. I want to see whether I can now recapture that
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first fine beauty, that sense of things unseen--
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To make a brutal contrast, I used to go, as a child, to the slaughter
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place, and there learned much about bull fighting. It *is* a brutal contrast-
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-latticed windows and pale lovers--music and gentle talk--and then, the
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slaughter places. But life is like that. Contrast. Perhaps it is as it
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should be. But it should, also, go to prove that nothing is improbable or
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too extreme. I have heard, I have had, stories criticized on the grounds
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that they were "too extreme, too improbable." Nonsense. Nothing in life is
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too extreme or too improbable. Nothing, as a matter of fact, is ever quite
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as improbable and extreme as the contrasts of life itself. Real life. For
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instance, I, who was brought up with the idea of the priesthood, live in
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Hollywood and am on the screen. But this comes later on.
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To go back, I was fascinated by the slaughter place. More fascinated,
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I am bound to admit, than I was by the pale lovers murmuring at their
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latticed casements. Boy-like.
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It was my youthful ambition to be a torero. Actually, one of my
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playmates was destined to become the idol of Spain, where the torero is
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highly honored. This chum of my boyhood was Gallito, who was killed in the
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great plaza at Madrid while engaged in a bull fight some short while ago.
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All Spain went in mourning for him. He was the popular hero, more beloved
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than any ruler.
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The huge amphitheater in Seville, which I used to visit regularly,
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holds 14,000 people. The seats are arranged in tiers. One pays more to sit
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in the shade than in the sun. *I* sat in the sun. This amphitheater is a
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picture worthy of Maxfield Parrish. Above is the rich blue sky, a reflection
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of the sapphire sea beyond, and below is the hot gold sand of the arena. The
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sunny side is a mass of flashing color; poor folks resplendent in red,
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yellow, green and purple. Vivid hues from handkerchiefs, parasols and
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mantillas heavily embroidered with flowers. On the shady side sit the more
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aristocratic, the white mantilla predominating, overshadowed by the countless
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sombreros of the men. Vendors of sweet wine, fruit, fans and pictures of the
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toreros press through the crowds. And over all, higher and deeper than the
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sky, hotter and more vivid than the sand, is the thrilled sense of excitement
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and expectation. A trumpet brings silence and the bull fight proper. The
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bold, flaunting colors that pervade the scene are carried into the ring as
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the toreros appear in the brilliance of their attire. Amid roars of
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applause, mad shouts and rending shrieks, the fight goes on, while over the
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hot gold sand spread crimson stains blackening in the suns.
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If I go on thinking back on much more of this scarlet life of the
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amphitheater I will be writing just that, a life of the amphitheater rather
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than the story of my own life. But so fascinating does it appear in
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retrospect and so large a part did it play in my childhood, so much has it
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always influenced me that my life story would not be complete without some
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detailed mention of it. Any person who has so richly embroidered a
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background in his or her life cannot help but be influenced by it. It leaves
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an impress never to be forgotten. One is molded by it whether consciously or
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unconsciously.
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Well, then, my father died while I was still a youngster.
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Owing to the extremely straitened circumstances in which my mother
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found herself, my schooling was curtailed, but such elementary education as
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was afforded I received at a boarding school in Cadiz, where religious
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training was the dominant element. We were, I may add, in *extremely*
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straitened circumstances. My mother's family, aristocratic to their very
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finger-nails, were, at the same time, aristocratically impoverished and
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besides, they had never quite forgiven their daughter for her alliance with a
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soldier of Spain. Aristocrats so seldom do forgive. It is, forgiveness, one
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of the humbler virtues.
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My earliest recollection of Cadiz was of the shipping that came into
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the harbor. It stimulated my budding imagination. Whence came those
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precious cargoes? Whither were they going? I wished violently that I might
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sail with the ships, put into far ports with them, return home laden with
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fruits and spices, silks and jewels, or whatever their cargoes were.
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I rather veered in my ambition, I had wanted to be a torero, but, in Cadiz,
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I leaned a bit toward the sea, toward ships-- The sea was more bloodless but
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quite, I thought, as dangerous.
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In Cadiz I learned to swim and sail and row. I emulated the fish in
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swimming, my friends told me. I think I excelled most, perhaps solely, at
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that sport. My chief diversion out of the water was angling for the finny
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residents beneath the surface. A good catch meant a proud and boastful hour
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or so for me.
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When I was a little over nine years of age I was obliged to leave Cadiz
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and school, too, in order to assist my mother by earning a little toward the
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maintenance of our home.
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We moved to Algeciros, a village opposite to Gibraltar, which same is
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mostly inhabited by tourists.
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In Algeciros, I obtained employment at a bakery and worked late at
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night and in the early mornings carrying loads of new bread and rolls to the
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stores and various market places. I worked about eight or nine hours each
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night and received in payment one peseta, which was considered magnificent
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remuneration. During the day I attended school, but was, for the most part,
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too dog-tired, too sleepy, to take in much of the instruction that was doled
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out to us. Many and many is the time when I have been smartly reprimanded
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for falling soundly asleep at my desk. The only consolation I had was that I
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was also too tired and sleepy to care very much what they said or did to me.
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I was anesthetized alike against punishment and learning.
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After six months in Algeciros, we moved to Campamento, a small coast
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town between Algeciros and Gibraltar, where, by the way, my mother still
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lives.
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In Campamento we lived in a cottage near the church and I, with another
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boy, was taken into the choir. This event was one of the very few bright
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spots in my poor mother's life at that hard time. Her devout soul was
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thrilled at the happy circumstance.
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I then became an assistant to the padre and helped him in his duties of
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preparing for the masses. While there was no remuneration, it so greatly
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pleased my mother to think that I was helping at the church that mere money,
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greatly as we needed it, didn't seem to matter.
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It was my mother's great ambition that I, in time, might aspire to
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become a priest. To this end she prayed daily and nightly and many and
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earnest were her talks to me. Beautiful, earnest talks, talks striving to
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instill the sacerdotal instinct into my small brown body. Talks that,
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thought they did not serve their explicit purpose, have served other purposes
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and have never left me.
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However, and needless to say, mine was not the sacerdotal instinct.
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If I must, and I know that I must, tell the truth, I was always looking
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for a chance to get away from ecclesiastical duties and studies and go among
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the Englishmen's polo ponies at Gibraltar.
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My greatest pleasure was to be asked to hold the player's extra ponies
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for which duty I was more than recompensed by a shilling. I dared not tell
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my mother where I spent my spare time, she being of the opinion and hope that
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*all* spare time should be given to the church, and great was her state of
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speculation as to whence came so many shillings, inasmuch as my time was
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known to be without pecuniary value.
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About two years after our arrival in Campamento, a change came into our
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lives.
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We had been two years, then, in Campamento when my mother married
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again.
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It took me some time to "get over it." That is, to adjust myself to
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the idea and to the new scheme of things.
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I had been, for so long, the man of the family. The only man. Upon my
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small but sturdy shoulders there had devolved that sense of responsibility
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that only an only son with a widowed mother can ever quite feel. I had got
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used to the thought that in our world there was only my mother--and me.
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I had grown to feel, even if I never voiced it, that I was the one to whom
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mother must look for the material things of life and that mother was the one
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to whom I must look for the spiritual.
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I had begun to think that mother and I were a small world. Our small
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world. Our responsibilities, problems, worries, small joys and sorrows, were
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ours alone. There simply was no one else.
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I think that whatever a parent does has an extraordinary effect upon a
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child. We marry and sometimes, very often, we marry again. We live our
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different lives of love and work and ambition. But somehow, we seldom think
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of our parents living exactly the same kind of lives. Exactly as vital,
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exactly as needful. It had probably not occurred to me that, having me, my
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mother might have been lonely, sad. She was sufficient to me. I must have
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thought that I was sufficient to her. But I could look up to her.
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I always needed to look up to a woman. That is why a flapper has never
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seriously intrigued me. Aspiration must be an integral part of my feeling
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for any woman. Aspiration and admiration. But could my mother look up to
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*me*--a boy of eleven? And a boy, at that, who had demonstrated a preference
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for polo ponies over and above the joys of the sacerdotal life? Ah, I fear
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not!
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My mother was always kind and sweet to me. I am sorry for boys, for
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men, who cannot look back to the same cherished memory. It must take away
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something very *necessary*. Looking up to my mother, as I did, gave me my
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need always to look up. Where I cannot first admire, I cannot love.
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So, then, my mother married again. Boy-like, I had been utterly
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oblivious to any incipient romance. And when my mother announced to me that
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she was going to marry the man who was a market gardener in our town and who
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had spent frequent evenings with us, I was amazed. My world flopped over on
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its other side.
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She did marry him and shortly after the marriage he opened a small
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store. My mother helped a little with the business and so did I. And from
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the small store there grew up quite a business and, eventually, a farm was
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purchased with the proceeds of the industry.
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I never cared particularly for the farm, nor for the life of the farm.
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After the first exploratory interests abated, I began to grow restless.
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Somehow, natively, I was more interested in human beings and the
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behavior of human beings than I was in cattle and vegetable life. The
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slaughter places, the vivid amphitheater, the faces of the people who
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congregated there to watch the gory sport, the sea, the sipping wharves,
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these things, these places held me spellbound, where the farm was a negative
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interest.
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My mother and my new father, seeing these signs of restlessness, did
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all that they could to interest me in the farm and in the business. It was
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my mother's hope always to keep me with them, to have enough money,
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eventually, to educate me as the men of her family had been educated and then
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to have me pick out some profession that would befit a gentleman. She had,
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by then, I think, finally abandoned her hope of the priesthood for me.
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Although it did crop out now and then, like an ecclesiastical fever slowly
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abating.
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She would read to me in the evenings, the lives of sainted men, stories
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from the Bible, histories of the church. And I tried to listen, but my
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adventurous spirit was, I fear, with the toreros or with the sea-bronzed men
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and their mysterious cargoes.
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Then, too, tourists came to Campamento in the winters. These tourists
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became my friends. Many and many a tale of many a far land did I hear from
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the lips of some foreigner wintering it there in sunny Campamento. And
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instead of these tales making me more content with my native land and my
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allotted life, I became more and more restless, more and more eager to get
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away. As far as possible. I felt that I would never live my life in Spain.
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Some of the tourists were especially nice to me. They took an interest
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in me. Perhaps they sensed the eager, questing spirit that hung so hungrily
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on all their words.
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In exchange for my conducting them about Campamento, they, in their
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turn, conducted me, mentally, around the portions of the world from which
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they were variously come.
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I would go home fired with tales of London and Paris, Chicago and New
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York, Berlin and Vienna.
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But especially New York. America. There, there, I felt, would be my
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final abiding place. There I would find sea and plains and the great cities.
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There I could spread out and learn and live and be one or all of the many
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things I had dreamed.
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I would tell my mother of these things, these places, and with such a
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light on my face that she would sigh and turn away her face and say, "Antonio
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will not be with us long."
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Often, too, these tourists would take me to the theaters and there,
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certainly, I sat enthralled. Why, I thought, in the theatre one *can* be all
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of the things one has dreamed about. One can be buccaneer and torero, sailor
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and poet, lover and adventurer. I had often wondered how, in one lifetime,
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I could ever manage to achieve all of the roles I, at various times, saw
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myself enacting. The stage was the solution. Yes, in the theater all things
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were possible.
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This I kept to myself. I didn't quite dare to tell my mother that the
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son she had dreamed of in the priesthood was hankering for the stage. My
|
|
mother didn't quite approve of the theater. To her it was a snare and a
|
|
delusion. Something to be approached timidly and gingerly and from the
|
|
outside only.
|
|
Nevertheless, these occasional and enchanted glimpses were what bred in
|
|
me my first desire to go on the stage.
|
|
It was while I was employed as a helper on the buildings for the annual
|
|
fair that I became acquainted with two gentlemen from America: Mr. Benjamin
|
|
Curtis, nephew of Mr. Seth Lowe, who in 1901-2 was mayor of New York, and
|
|
Mr. Enrique de Cruzat Zanetti, a graduate of Harvard.
|
|
These two gentlemen were making a tour of Europe, the "grand tour," as
|
|
we call it on the continent.
|
|
There were two of the tourists to whom or on whom I bestowed, that
|
|
winter, my unswerving allegiance. My huge admiration for them, lavishly
|
|
expressed, and my breathless interest in all they told me about America
|
|
evidently caught their fancy.
|
|
They made a chum of me. I became more confidential with them than I
|
|
had ever been with anyone excepting, perhaps, Gallito. I dared to tell them
|
|
things I didn't even dare to tell my mother, for fear of hurting or shocking
|
|
her. They were men. They would understand. I liked men better than I liked
|
|
women. I always stood in awe of women. I still do. And yet, perversely, no
|
|
doubt. I like best the women I stand most in awe of.
|
|
I even went so far as to make brave enough to invite them to my house
|
|
where, with great ceremony, I presented them to my mother. I somehow felt
|
|
that this was a Great Occasion. I felt it even more when, after our dinner,
|
|
Mr. Curtis began to talk very earnestly to my mother about a subject that was
|
|
of intense interest to me--myself. He said a great many things about me that
|
|
I did not understand and am not sure that my mother quite did, either.
|
|
Flattering things. I hadn't had many flattering things said of me before.
|
|
I wasn't used to it. And the upshot of that long evening talk was that they
|
|
asked my mother's permission to place me in a school at Gibraltar.
|
|
What an evening!
|
|
Certain times, certain memories stand out in retrospect like dashes of
|
|
scarlet against a drab background.
|
|
Most of life is drab rather than scarlet. Most lives go along in
|
|
uneventful routine. The performance of duty. The getting of cake and bread.
|
|
Perhaps it is better so, for then, when the scarlet moments come, they light
|
|
up all around them with a brilliance they wouldn't have if they were more
|
|
frequent.
|
|
There are times when we know, be we young or be we old, that we have
|
|
come to a cross-road. That it is up to us to point a finger and that,
|
|
whichever way we point, we begin at that instant to travel a new road, back
|
|
which we may never walk. Or, if we do walk back, it will be all different.
|
|
*We* will be all different.
|
|
All this bears upon that evening in Campamento when Mr. Curtis and Mr.
|
|
Zanetti were talking with my mother, concluding by telling her that they
|
|
wanted to send me to school in Gibraltar.
|
|
If anyone ever writes a biography of me, it must be up to that person
|
|
to tell the flattering things Mr. Curtis said of me; it must be sufficient
|
|
for me to say that both of these gentlemen told my mother that I seemed to
|
|
them destined for "better and bigger things" than guiding tourists, getting
|
|
odd jobs at the annual fair and otherwise picking up odd pennies and an even
|
|
odder education about the streets and byways of a rather unenterprising
|
|
little town. They thought that I had latent talent, they said. They
|
|
couldn't quite tell what it was. Perhaps I couldn't quite tell, either.
|
|
But education, influences, different environment would bring out whatever of
|
|
Genius or her lesser sister, Talent, there lay buried within me, and it
|
|
seemed to them that I should be given a chance.
|
|
I remember that my mother was silent for a very long while. The
|
|
gentlemen had been persuasive, no doubt of that. They had appealed to her
|
|
maternal pride, but also to her maternal sacrifice. She had worried about me
|
|
many a time, I knew that. She had felt that I was out of my element in the
|
|
life I was living. But she knew, too, as I know now, that we had come to a
|
|
cross-road, she and I, and that, if I accepted the patronage of these
|
|
gentlemen, she and I would never travel the old road again, in the old way.
|
|
Her silence seemed to me very long, indeed. I felt the element of drama
|
|
being lived in that candle-lit room. My mother and these two gentlemen; they
|
|
held my Future, my Fate, balanced in their hands. How could they be so
|
|
quiet? I wanted to rend the waiting silence with a shout. But whether of
|
|
grief or triumph I couldn't tell.
|
|
Finally, with a dignity that was not lost upon me, young as I was, my
|
|
mother bowed her head in acquiescence. She had accepted!
|
|
There was much hand-shaking and many pats on the head and the
|
|
interchange of words of wisdom. Then the gentlemen drew my mother further to
|
|
one side and they conversed in undertones while I sat in my corner of the
|
|
room, stubbing my toe against the rung of my chair.
|
|
When they had gone, my mother made no particular demonstration. She
|
|
was more than ordinarily quiet, as I remember it. She simply said, "You have
|
|
had great good fortune; I pray that you may always live up to it."
|
|
I knew that she had made two renunciations that night: one, of her son
|
|
as wholly hers; the other, of her son as a priest. That dream she interred
|
|
then and there. What further renunciation she had agreed to I didn't know at
|
|
that time.
|
|
Within the week I was placed in the school at Gibraltar.
|
|
But I didn't like the routine and confinement of the school. I had
|
|
lived my own life, as it were, too long for me to accept gracefully routine
|
|
and schedule. I was miserable, stupid and unhappy. I wanted to be with my
|
|
American friends. With them, I felt, I could learn far more than ever I
|
|
would learn at Gibraltar. I have never been able to learn a thing unless I
|
|
wanted to. I have always had to have things presented to me with color and
|
|
with personal interest. When Mr. Curtis or Mr. Zanetti told me things,
|
|
I drank them in eagerly. I got something out of it. I knew that I would get
|
|
little or nothing from the school.
|
|
I wrote frantic letters to Mr. Curtis, telling him how I felt about the
|
|
matter. I showed him just what I was thinking and insisted that if I could
|
|
be with him I would learn all that he wanted me to. I would read, I promised
|
|
him.
|
|
After the interchange of several letters, Mr. Curtis told me that he
|
|
was in ill-health, that he supposed I knew what I was talking about, that he
|
|
didn't believe in making education a bitter pill to be swallowed and
|
|
afterward abhorred and that he had arranged with my mother to take me on a
|
|
tour of Spain with him. I was, he went on to say, to act as his attendant,
|
|
give him his medicine, attend to other little duties that might come up in
|
|
the course of traveling.
|
|
Thus I was taken on a tour of Spain.
|
|
On that tour I learned many things. I learned a certain poise and self-
|
|
reliance through the duties imposed upon me and the sense of responsibility I
|
|
felt for Mr. Curtis and his comfort. I read a great deal under Mr. Curtis'
|
|
guidance and suggestion. And I fell in love!
|
|
While we were stopping in Seville, my old home, I met Conchita Perres,
|
|
a girl with whom I used to play now and again as a child. The reunion
|
|
became, at first sight, as they say, a romance, and I fell violently in love
|
|
with the exquisite senorita.
|
|
First love!
|
|
First love has been written about by so many people better able to
|
|
handle its delicate cadences than I ever could that I will scarcely try.
|
|
It would be like rudely rubbing the bloom from a fragile memory. Best to
|
|
leave it in my heart.
|
|
I used to take her for walks in the evenings along the river
|
|
Guadalquivir. Always, of course, we were accompanied by a duenna, the
|
|
omnipresent chaperon of Spain.
|
|
And, I suppose, as is the case with most boys, all sorts of other
|
|
things awakened in me with this first awakening of love. I began to have a
|
|
sense of what life might really be about. I began to realize that I couldn't
|
|
merely drift about from place to place with no definite goal in view,
|
|
whimsical--I must plan out what I was to be. I must go forth into some sort
|
|
of an arena and come back triumphant.
|
|
We made great plans, Conchita and I. I sketched a future for myself,
|
|
and also, of course, for her, that I had never even thought about until I
|
|
came to take these walks along the Guadalquivir. I thought of Gallito and
|
|
suggested that I might be a torero, but Conchita was a timid soul and did not
|
|
care for so ambiguous a future. I might be a poet, I thought. Poetic blood
|
|
coursed for the first time through my enamored veins. But Conchita was also
|
|
practical and didn't seem to think very favorably of my future as a poet.
|
|
I might be an actor. Well, Conchita thought that might be possible, but one
|
|
had to wait so long before one could attain any eminence as an actor. All
|
|
this talking, this planning, this dreaming was good for me, though it led to
|
|
nothing immediate. It at least cleared the way for me to make some sort of
|
|
concrete plans for myself. Never again would I drift as I had drifted.
|
|
Those plans for the future--alas, they were never to be realized.
|
|
Though I should not say "alas," I know. Only that I feel a pity for all the
|
|
bright young plans that go astray, that never are fulfilled. And they begin
|
|
so brightly, with such a shining faith.
|
|
Soon, all too soon for me, I had to go on with my friend and employer.
|
|
But I did not forget my promises or my love, and several years later I
|
|
returned to Seville--an Conchita.
|
|
Of this second reunion I will tell later on.
|
|
I think that parting from Conchita, my first love, was also the first
|
|
*personal* tragedy of my life. The first tragedy in which I, myself, played
|
|
the leading role.
|
|
I had suffered in childish fashion when my father died. But then I had
|
|
suffered more for my mother than myself, who was too young for grief.
|
|
Children so easily, so quickly forget. Just as they harbor no grudges, nurse
|
|
no grievances, so they bear no lengthy griefs. Later on, I suffered because
|
|
of the privations my mother had to undergo. But then, too, my grief was for
|
|
my mother. For myself, I rather enjoyed the somewhat hand-to-mouth
|
|
existence. I had more freedom than other boys; I didn't envy them their
|
|
wealth nor their advantages. For me, each day was a great adventure. I made
|
|
my own days more than other boys did.
|
|
So when I was torn away from my first love, I knew my first personal
|
|
suffering. I began to see deeper into things than I had seen before. I felt
|
|
a surging of warm sympathy for my mother and for what she must have suffered
|
|
at my father's death. I had now known before. Odd, how we can only learn by
|
|
our own experience. No matter how near we may be to the experiences of
|
|
others, even our own, we never really KNOW until our own hearts are broken--
|
|
or we think they are.
|
|
I thought that my heart was broken when I said farewell to Conchita,
|
|
telling her, with tears in eyes and voice that one day I would return,
|
|
bidding her to wait for me and never to forget me. *Helas!*
|
|
Then, feeling very old and wise and sad, I set forth with Mr. Curtis on
|
|
the resumption of our tour of Spain. I was playing, albeit unconsciously, a
|
|
new role. I was the broken-hearted lover, beloved figure of romance. If Mr.
|
|
Curtis perceived my emotional predicament, he either took it too lightly or
|
|
too preciously to speak about it to me. Perhaps he didn't care; perhaps he
|
|
didn't dare. I suffered in what I considered a noble and lofty silence.
|
|
We visited Cadiz, Ronda and many other Spanish cities. During the
|
|
course of our travels I was constantly asking questions about America. Next
|
|
to the subject that most occupied my thoughts America came next; maybe
|
|
*first* and I didn't know it, or wouldn't admit it. And when I received my
|
|
replies, I was filled with wonder that there should be such a marvelous place
|
|
on the face of the earth. For me it was the veritable El Dorado. I dreamed
|
|
of the days when I should go to America, win my fortune, return for Conchita
|
|
--Towering castles, there in Spain!
|
|
When Mr. Curtis and Mr. Zanetti returned to Gibraltar to embark
|
|
eventually for America, I begged them to take me with them. I made them the
|
|
most grandiose promises as to what I should do once I got there. They need
|
|
have no fear of me. Nothing was too difficult for me to promise, if only I
|
|
could reach the Promised Land.
|
|
For they made it just that to me--a Promised Land. They insisted that
|
|
I must have more education and that if I pursued by studies conscientiously
|
|
they might one day send for me.
|
|
They sailed and left behind me so great an incentive that I faced
|
|
school with an enthusiasm, a zest, I had never manifested before. I had to
|
|
prove my mettle with my mind. Well, if so, then I would do it. I would have
|
|
preferred a more active and grandiloquent way of proving my right to go to
|
|
America, but I was, even then, enough of a fatalist to know that what is to
|
|
be is to be. Study was even more than ordinarily difficult for me just then,
|
|
too, for it was constantly besieged by the twin mirages of Conchita's face
|
|
and my El Dorado. They began to seem to be linked together.
|
|
It was only a few months later, maybe six or seven, that my mother
|
|
informed me I need no longer go to school. Astounded, I asked by what right
|
|
I could break my promise to my guardians. My mother smiled, that sad-wise
|
|
smile of hers and told me that Mr. Curtis had cabled for me to join him in
|
|
New York. All this had been arranged before he sailed for America, unbeknown
|
|
to me. I was to prove my mettle, prove the reality of my desire to go and
|
|
then, if I gave evidence of making good, I was to be sent for.
|
|
My wild joy was shadowed for a moment at the thought of leaving my
|
|
mother. Far more permanently now than ever before. Alas, it was only for a
|
|
moment, as time goes. I knew that this time I might, in very truth, never
|
|
come back. Or that, if I did come back, it would be as the man and not as
|
|
the boy. When my mother said good-bye to me this time she would never see
|
|
the boy Antonio again. I knew that she was realizing this very same thing.
|
|
And again I was confronted with the splendid spectacle of the maternal
|
|
sacrifice. Though it broke her heart, she would smile at me over the
|
|
shattered bits. Gallant creatures, mothers.
|
|
We had a week of preparation, during which I was too busy to have much
|
|
time for sentiment. Clothes to buy, school business to wind up, friends to
|
|
say farewell to, Conchita to write to. And at nights I would lie long awake,
|
|
tired in body, but feverishly active in mind, dreaming of the country to
|
|
which I was actually going at last. I felt, too, that I was going to meet my
|
|
life-test. There, in America, I would either fight or fail. I would be a
|
|
Failure or I would be a Success. America should be my proving ground.
|
|
As I stood, at last, on the deck of the steamer looking back at the
|
|
little village where mother and I had lived so happily together, a choking
|
|
feeling seized me. My newly attained manhood now threatened to desert me.
|
|
I wanted to be a little boy again. I wanted very much to cry, but the sense
|
|
that such a demonstration would be unworthy of an explorer setting sail for
|
|
America sustained me until the steamer actually began to draw away. Then the
|
|
tears came, and finally dignity collapsed altogether under a violent and
|
|
combined attack of home-sickness and sea-sickness.
|
|
An American lady on board very kindly came to my rescue, giving me
|
|
motherly comfort for the first trouble and oranges for the second. I
|
|
recovered and felt that the fact that an American had put me on my feet again
|
|
was a favorable omen. For the rest of the voyage I was very much myself; the
|
|
spirits of youth rose like a hoisted flag and flew victorious.
|
|
When the Statue of Liberty emerged from the mists I gazed at it with an
|
|
awe close to the sublime. It seemed to me to be the embodiment of all the
|
|
beauty and magnificence with which I had invested America in my dreams.
|
|
I had been a little bit afraid that America wouldn't be what I had dreamed--
|
|
and here was a dream come triumphantly true.
|
|
I thought then, I think now, that the placing of that goddess in the
|
|
harbor was of divine inspiration, for to so many lonely hearts and fainting
|
|
spirits it has been the symbol of welcome and hope.
|
|
The first face I saw in all the crowd on the pier was that of Mr.
|
|
Zanetti. With him was his housekeeper, Mrs. Finney, who received me with all
|
|
the affectionate solicitude a youngster seldom receives except from his
|
|
mother. Dear, good, ample soul--now that she has passed on I think of her
|
|
often with admiration and gratitude and know that if the rewards meted out in
|
|
the world beyond are just ones, hers must be doubled at least for the warm
|
|
love she brought to the heart of a lonely little boy.
|
|
It was Mrs. Finney who taught me English and gently and persuasively
|
|
showed me the necessity for studying three or four hours every day. So
|
|
grateful was I for her affection and the deep interest she took in my welfare
|
|
and progress that I studied as never before; even began to love what had
|
|
always been with me either a grim duty or a means to a desired end.
|
|
Only a few months after my arrival in New York, Mr. Zanetti decided to
|
|
go to Cuba on business and asked me if I wanted to go with him. I was still
|
|
boy enough, as I am today, for that matter, to think going on voyages the
|
|
most splendid business in the world and told him, in my newly acquired
|
|
English, "Of course! You bet!"
|
|
My Cuban experiences are among the most pleasant in my life, as I look
|
|
back on things. I shall never forget the hospitality, friendliness, great
|
|
heartedness of the splendid people on that enchanted isle. Today, was I
|
|
write, one of my keenest anticipations is another visit to my Cuban friends.
|
|
While in Cuba Mr. Zanetti was married, and today the son of that
|
|
marriage is a student at Harvard. The finest compliment I can pay him is to
|
|
say that he is a replica of his father.
|
|
When I returned to the United States the problem of what my next step
|
|
was to be confronted us. We decided on--but I shall go on with this later.
|
|
When I returned to the United States from Cuba we were, as I have said,
|
|
confronted with the problem of what my next step was to be. That the next
|
|
step was, of course, to be educational goes without saying.
|
|
Conclaves and discussions resulted in the decision that I should be
|
|
sent to Northampton, Mass., to school, and to Northampton, accordingly,
|
|
I went.
|
|
At Northampton, I resided in the home of Mrs. Morgan, a widow of a
|
|
Civil war veteran, who had lost her only son. Like Mrs. Finney she gave me
|
|
such an affection as I'd only known with my own mother. My big regret is
|
|
that she did not live long enough to share in the more successful part of my
|
|
life. I would have liked to have proven to her that her belief in me was not
|
|
wholly unjustified.
|
|
Whenever I hear men speak cynically or skeptically about women I am not
|
|
only indignant, but I cannot understand it. When I grow very old and many
|
|
things, no doubt, grow faded and dim, certain warm and glowing memories will
|
|
remain with me, and most of these memories will have been given me by women
|
|
who have ministered to my life, always unselfishly, always tenderly,
|
|
encouraging, consoling, blessed with faith.
|
|
After quitting school with about the same stock of experiences and
|
|
successes and friendships as marks the school days of most boys and young
|
|
men, I took a position in the Electric Light and Gas Corporation at
|
|
Northampton. They say that a Spaniard has no sense of humor, but Mrs.
|
|
Morgan, were she still here, could testify otherwise, for she never forgot my
|
|
remark upon obtaining this job:
|
|
"Hum!" I exclaimed, "I have studied in Spanish, English and Latin in
|
|
order to become a gas meter reader!"
|
|
I had many amusing experiences making such translations. One is,
|
|
I think, especially amusing and also illustrates the opportunity for
|
|
character study that the humble occupation gave me:
|
|
I was sent to the story of a Chinaman on the outskirts of Northampton
|
|
to examine the gas meter. The shop was always brilliantly illuminated but
|
|
the meter, mysteriously, never contained more than two or three coins. As it
|
|
was impossible for anyone to tamper with the meter without being detected
|
|
through the mechanism, the superintendent couldn't for the life of him make
|
|
out what was wrong. I looked over the meter carefully but could find no
|
|
signs of manipulation. And yet I was sure that the Chinaman was getting a
|
|
big return of gas on a very small investment. I decided to take upon myself
|
|
the role of Sherlock Holmes and elucidate the mystery.
|
|
At dusk I saw Mr. Chinaman come to the door and carefully look around
|
|
to ascertain whether or not there was anyone about. Then he went to the
|
|
meter and put something in it that illuminated the shop like a cathedral at
|
|
Easter time. I immediately hastened to the store, opened the meter and found
|
|
that my ingenious friend had stocked it with a piece of ice the size and
|
|
shape of the required coin. After serving its purpose the ice, of course,
|
|
melted and drained away, leaving only--the mystery.
|
|
This was only one of the experiences I had that made the job of meter
|
|
reader full of human interest, even excitement and intrigue. It has made me
|
|
quite positive that no job need be dull and mundane if you look for the
|
|
elements of drama to be found. Life is lived at interesting angles wherever
|
|
the angles may be placed.
|
|
I remained with the Gas and Light Company for about six months. All
|
|
the while I was thinking of a career on the stage. Either in my conscious
|
|
mind, or else in my subconscious, this ambition had never really deserted me
|
|
since the days when I visualized myself as torero one day, sailor to far
|
|
ports the next, great lover the next. Besides, there was Conchita, waiting
|
|
to hear of my success. One could not remain in the capacity of a gas-man
|
|
with Conchita in view--I new that. I began to burn with restiveness and the
|
|
desire to get my foot on the first rung of the ladder I ultimately wanted to
|
|
climb. I hadn't of course, thought of pictures as a career at that time. So
|
|
very few had. The legitimate stage was my goal.
|
|
One day, and also via the gas-meter job, my opportunity came.
|
|
Maude Adams was playing in Northampton in one of Charles Frohman's
|
|
companies. They were rehearsing for "The Little Minister." I had always
|
|
been an intense admirer of the lovely Maude Adams and I determined, rather
|
|
soaringly, no doubt, that my debut should be made with her. I approached the
|
|
manager and made application. He gave me one of those hard, cigar-in-the-
|
|
mouth scrutinies and evidently felt in the mood for making a "discovery" for
|
|
he gave me a small part in the production. He was probably not half so
|
|
surprised at himself as I was at him. I had aimed high, but after I had,
|
|
thus swiftly, really attained my purpose I knew that I hadn't actually hoped
|
|
for so much after all.
|
|
I went home in a perfect glow of triumph, told Mrs. Morgan with shaking
|
|
voice, wrote letters to Mr. Curtis, Mr. Zanetti, my mother and Conchita and
|
|
slept the sleep of the gods that night.
|
|
I remained with the Company during the run of the piece and also
|
|
through the runs of "The Sister of Jose" and "Peter Pan." I omit to say that
|
|
the town of Northampton did *not* go dark when I deserted the Gas and Light.
|
|
I felt now, that I had really achieved the first great step in my career. My
|
|
being in America, the kindness and interest of my American friends was
|
|
beginning to be realized. I had started in to gain what I had come for, what
|
|
I had been educated for and believed in. And with this realization there
|
|
came to me a desire to take a trip home to see my mother, my sweetheart and
|
|
my beloved Spain. I felt that I could go back wearing at least the sprouting
|
|
leaf of the crown of laurel I had set forth on my adventures to gain.
|
|
After I had finished my theatrical engagement in 1910, I started on my
|
|
homeward journey.
|
|
I stopped in Paris for a month, saw the theatres, enjoyed myself as a
|
|
young man of the world for, really, the first time "on my own"; then I went
|
|
on to Madrid where I visited the house in which I was born. I then, with
|
|
palpitating heart and eager pulse, hurried on to Seville where I intended
|
|
realizing the dreams I had dreamed with my adored and beloved Conchita.
|
|
I hadn't heard from her in some months, but took her silence to mean that she
|
|
was awaiting, breathless, my actual presence before her.
|
|
My first hour in Seville was spent in dressing in my best and seeking
|
|
out her house. That walk from my hotel to her home will remain with me as
|
|
long as I live. It was, in a sense, the very pinnacle of my youth and my
|
|
dreams of youth. So far on my way I had known sorrow and privation, but I
|
|
had also known warm friendships, faiths that had been kept, loyalty and
|
|
sympathy. I was ingenuous. I believed in men and even more especially in
|
|
women. I had, I thought, begun to make good. I had now come home,
|
|
triumphantly, even as I had promised, to claim my love. All of my study, all
|
|
of the hours reading gas meters, all of the hopes and efforts were to
|
|
culminate tonight in the arms and on the breast of my Conchita. It was a
|
|
veritable paen of a walk. I felt as though my feet hit, not pavements, but
|
|
air. The blossoms seemed to drop about my head. I felt like holding out my
|
|
arms to take into them Seville, beautiful--and mine--
|
|
I was received at the home of Conchita with true Spanish warmth and
|
|
cordiality. But I felt, vaguely, that there was a certain formality and a
|
|
constrained manner in the reception for all its old-world courtesy.
|
|
When Conchita came down to greet me, more beautiful than even my
|
|
longing dreams had pictured her, she did not come to me as I had dreamed she
|
|
might, to my arms, straight to my hungry heart. I felt that the moment
|
|
demanded swift, decisive action, lest I die of the cold fear that suddenly
|
|
pressed in upon my glowing hour with fingers as cold as death.
|
|
When, in that moment, I found my voice and asked her if now she would
|
|
marry me and return with me to America, she told me that she did not consider
|
|
me in a position to marry and furthermore that in my absence she had become
|
|
affianced to another.
|
|
I cannot say, even now, today, just what a blow this was to my youthful
|
|
and ardent soul. As I stood there, speechless, the doors of the sun closed
|
|
to upon me, feeling that the tragedy of all the ages had dropped upon my
|
|
stooped shoulders, her fiance made his appearance at her window and I--
|
|
I bowed myself out of my first romance. After all, I thought as I made my
|
|
exit, the first touch of bitter irony searing my thoughts, after all, my
|
|
theatrical experience had been of *some* use. Without it I'm sure I could
|
|
never have made such a gallant exit.
|
|
I had entered that house a boy. I left the house a man. For me,
|
|
things might grow to be better, they might grow to be worse. I might dream
|
|
again, or I might never dream. But whatever the result, nothing would ever
|
|
again be quite the same.
|
|
I rejoined the friends I had met in Seville and we visited many Spanish
|
|
cities. I wanted to travel. To keep going, to be on the move, that, I felt,
|
|
was my only hope of banishing Conchita from my mind.
|
|
We traveled, then, my friends and I. We visited the cities. Sometimes
|
|
we threaded curious little places topped with castle towers or grim forts
|
|
where people hurried out on their iron balconies to stare at our lumbering
|
|
motor winding in and out of the crooked streets. After riding for hours
|
|
through olive orchards or past cultivated farms with odd thatched out-
|
|
buildings, hobbled horses, shepherds with their flocks, women waving flags at
|
|
the toll-gates or jogging past on their heavily-laden burros, we finally
|
|
reached the marshes of the Salinas, where the salt obtained from the
|
|
evaporation of the sea water is piled alongside the canals in numberless,
|
|
huge glistening pyramids. In a few minutes we would be honking across the
|
|
narrow, flat and sandy spit connecting the mainland with the rocky islet of
|
|
Cadiz--the Spanish Venice--where again I was amid the shipping scenes that
|
|
had fascinated my boyhood.
|
|
From Cadiz, then, our train climbed the hills to the Grenadine heights
|
|
toward our next stop--the Alhambra, where we hoped to induce the guards to
|
|
unlock its portals, so promptly closed at sunset. A few well-invested
|
|
pesetas and the key was turned; we stood in the land of magic dreams, the
|
|
Moorish paradise. The first glimpse of this wondrous ruin should be by
|
|
moonlight; in the soft, mysterious beauty of night you feel the witchery of
|
|
Oriental romance. As through a silver veil we saw, that night, the softly-
|
|
colored decorations of an Arab's tent, bordered with the oft-repeated Moslem
|
|
inscription, "There is no Conqueror but God!"
|
|
During all the trip through the old-familiar places, I thought of two
|
|
things: the inexplicable defection of Conchita, and the coming reunion with
|
|
my mother in the home at Campamento. This meeting was the more delightful
|
|
because of the anticipation. And also, perhaps, because I had not only my
|
|
small success to lay at her feet, but my wound to be healed by her
|
|
tenderness.
|
|
This meeting, at any rate, fulfilled every expectation. The few weeks
|
|
I spent there with my mother were rejuvenating and filled with spirit.
|
|
I will not attempt to describe them; they are too personal. Suffice to say
|
|
that I felt again my great ambition to succeed, to qualify for the sake of
|
|
those who expected so much of me. And expected it so confidently.
|
|
On my return from Europe, I set about my career with a fresh zeal.
|
|
I first obtained an engagement from Sothern and Marlowe, playing in their
|
|
repertoire of Shakespearean plays. In summers I played in stock companies to
|
|
gain a greater versatility. Finally I decided to seek an opportunity on
|
|
Broadway, the Mecca of the theater folk.
|
|
I visited New York and there renewed my acquaintance with Helen Ware,
|
|
then under the Belasco regime. Some little time before, in Northampton,
|
|
I had met Miss Ware and she had encouraged me to persevere in my theatrical
|
|
work at a time when I was feeling rather discouraged and depressed.
|
|
It was Miss Ware who assisted me in obtaining an engagement to play a
|
|
young Spanish count in "Two Women." I was fortunate in securing a part so
|
|
suited to my type and my ability. The newspapers approved of my performance
|
|
--how proud I was of *that!*--and thus I was retained for a tour of
|
|
Cleveland, Chicago, Montreal and other cities of Canada and the United
|
|
States.
|
|
In the autumn of that year I joined John Gates, who was managing a
|
|
company playing "Thais." The cast included Constance Collier's husband.
|
|
My part was small, but I profited a great deal by studying the work of the
|
|
splendid players in the leading roles. Later I joined the Wilton Lackaye
|
|
company to play a young Italian secretary in "The Right to Happiness."
|
|
Then came a vaudeville engagement followed by the juvenile lead in "The
|
|
Old Firm," with William Hawtrey, brother of Charles Hawtrey.
|
|
While again playing with Constance Collier, I met Walter Edwin, an old
|
|
Englishman, who had understudied Sir Henry Irving and Beerbohm Tree. He had
|
|
just finished an engagement with the Edison Picture Company and he advised me
|
|
to try the films, as he thought I would be suited to the requirements and as
|
|
he also thought there was "a big future" in pictures, and the ones who got in
|
|
on the ground floor, etc.
|
|
I believed in the soundness of Walter Edwin's point of view. And with
|
|
this belief in mind and little wotting (as the old novelists say), what this
|
|
next step was to lead to, I followed his advice and applied at the Rex Studio
|
|
for a movie job. I began as so many others have begun in the past and,
|
|
doubtless, as so many others will begin in the future. As an *extra*. I was
|
|
one of the many doing "atmosphere" in a two-reeler, "The Voice of Millions."
|
|
Marion Leonard played the heroine.
|
|
I liked the new work, despite the fact that I had gone to see about it
|
|
rather unenthusiastically and simply on advice. I liked it and, more,
|
|
I prophesied, to myself, at any rate, something of the gigantic and important
|
|
thing it has now become.
|
|
I received but five dollars a day, but I determined to stick to the
|
|
studios. There began to shape in my mind my first definite "scheme of things
|
|
entire." The films--here was where I belonged. To the films I would give my
|
|
allegiance, my time, my ambition. To this end I secured an introduction to
|
|
David Wark Griffith and once more obtained a place among the extras.
|
|
I wasn't daunted. If I couldn't rise out of the rank and file, then I could
|
|
never rise at all. I believed in opportunity and thought I should recognize
|
|
the first knock.
|
|
It wasn't easy. I worked hard, lived frugally and had little or no
|
|
pleasure, excepting that I found in my work and my fellow associations.
|
|
One day Mr. Griffith called me to him and told me that he had decided
|
|
to make me a regular member of his stock company at a salary of forty dollars
|
|
a week. The elation I felt when thus recognized by Mr. Griffith far
|
|
surpassed any feeling I had when I later achieved stardom.
|
|
While with Mr. Griffith I played in pictures with Mary Pickford,
|
|
Blanche Sweet, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Lionel Barrymore and the late Robert
|
|
Harron. And I think we all, Mary and Lionel and Lillian and the others as
|
|
well as I, look back upon those days of penury and progress with a feeling of
|
|
profound appreciation. If not actual nostalgia--It was a rare and happy
|
|
family, surging with eagerness, borne high on the wings of work and ambition,
|
|
fired by enthusiasms and beliefs. How we dreamed! How we builded! What
|
|
futures we erected in clouds beyond the sight of mortal eye!
|
|
When I had worked up to the munificence of one hundred and twenty five
|
|
dollars a week, considered positively plethoric in those days, I was
|
|
introduced by Howard Chandler Christy to J. Stuart Blackton, then one of the
|
|
officials of the Vitagraph Company. It happened that S. Rankin Drew had been
|
|
taken suddenly ill and someone was needed to fill his place in the company
|
|
with his father, Sidney Drew, and Mrs. Drew. Commodore Blackton made me the
|
|
offer and I accepted.
|
|
I certainly had courage or audacity or "nerve" or *something*, to
|
|
attempt playing with artists as superior as Mr. and Mrs. Drew, but I managed
|
|
to get by in "Too Many Husbands" to the satisfaction of the Vitagraph, and so
|
|
I became leading man and eventually co-star.
|
|
For four years I remained with the Vitagraph, then transferred to the
|
|
Pathe to appear in serials with Irene Castle and Pearl White. After
|
|
appearing in Kipling's "The Naulahka," a Pathe feature, I returned to
|
|
Vitagraph to star in serials, the last of which I also directed. Shortly
|
|
thereafter I again took to "features," among which was "Three Sevens," from
|
|
the novel by Perely Poore Sheehan.
|
|
About this time, too, I began to feel that serials were not doing me
|
|
the amount of good they might do, or rather, that feature stories would do.
|
|
My friends, fan and otherwise, began to proffer me the excellence of
|
|
their advice. It all led to the same thing--break away from serials; go into
|
|
stories where your Latin temperament (if I have one), your type, will be more
|
|
*valuable*. I felt definitely that I had gone as far as I could go in the
|
|
sort of thing I was doing and that I must either "step out," or remain one of
|
|
the background. A remunerative background, no doubt, but not quite the sort
|
|
of thing I dreamed for myself.
|
|
I began to bestir myself.
|
|
Well--with struggle here and there, and a great deal of wrenching and
|
|
red tape, I finally managed to hoist myself out of the type of work I had
|
|
been doing for so long, pretty nearly *too* long. And the first result was
|
|
"My American Wife" with Paramount, and "Look Your Best" and "Lost and Found"
|
|
with Goldwyn.
|
|
I was on my way! Famous Players-Lasky eventually contracted with me
|
|
and I have made "Flaming Barriers," "Tiger Love," "The Spanish Dancer," "The
|
|
Border Legion" and "Story Without A Name" most recently.
|
|
During the beginning of this work I migrated to California, there to
|
|
take up my abode and there, too, to meet the lady who has become my wife.
|
|
Perhaps it is not given to every man to meet his Ideality. It was
|
|
given to me. A woman, gracious and poised, lovely and cultured, intelligent
|
|
and charming--my wife. It was, too, the sort of a romance that Jeremy Taylor
|
|
once described so aptly as "true love." He said, "True love is friendship
|
|
set on fire." It was so with us. I met my wife as Mrs. Danziger and we were
|
|
friends, good friends, for some time before the idea of love and romance came
|
|
to us as a fitting and beautiful consummation. It was while I was away on
|
|
exterior one time, in the South Seas, that I suddenly, swiftly and poignantly
|
|
realized just what this friendship really meant to me. It was like lightning
|
|
illuminating skies that had been dim and wonderful before, but were now rent
|
|
asunder, revealing, not friendship only, but friendship crowned with love.
|
|
When I returned to Los Angeles, bearing my secret, I was afraid to put my
|
|
fortunes to the test. It seemed too much to hope for. Here I had been at
|
|
the very side of the love I had dreamed of for years--how did I dare to
|
|
*know* whether or no my dream was to come true? I finally, and very
|
|
falteringly, proposed one evening when four of us were playing Mah Jong.
|
|
I suppose that I felt the need of support if the heavens should fall on me,
|
|
obliterating my dream. So agitated was I that I used the name of the other
|
|
woman playing with us instead of my wife's name--Daisy.
|
|
What the happy culmination of that proposal has been, all of my friends
|
|
know. We were engaged; we were married; we came to New York for our
|
|
honeymoon. We have built a home in California and we are, I dare to
|
|
prophesy, going to "live happily ever after."
|
|
In reviewing my personal experiences, I have aimed at no "message."
|
|
Neither have I told a history of "How I Became a Success," for I do not
|
|
consider that I have achieved success, save in my personal life. Otherwise,
|
|
there *is* no such achievement in life. The way to success has no ending, it
|
|
is a constant and perennial striving upward.
|
|
The only real formula for real success is Work and Faith. All may
|
|
achieve this sort of success for all may work and the only happiness, the
|
|
only success, is in *labor*. Other rewards do not count, comparatively. The
|
|
joy of leisure is an illusion. The chief reason for my liking serials for as
|
|
long as I did was because they kept me constantly at work, whereas feature
|
|
pictures do permit of a week or more idleness in between. To occupy myself
|
|
during some of these brief periods, I have written this autobiography. Thus
|
|
you may perceive the fruits of idleness!
|
|
The End
|
|
|
|
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
|
|
|
|
August 24, 1919
|
|
Louella Parsons
|
|
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
|
|
Most people christened with the handicap of Antonio Garitarrido
|
|
Monteaugudo Moreno would die in the attempt to live up to such a name. Not so
|
|
young Moreno. He has kept on going and has done his level best to live up to
|
|
his ancestral drawback. It smacks as much of romantic Spain as Murphy does of
|
|
potatoes and Ireland. And it smacks truly, for Antonio Moreno is a real
|
|
Spaniard, not a camouflaged nicknamed one conceived for motion picture
|
|
purposes. He was born in old Madrid and set sail for America to make his
|
|
fortune, at the tender age of fifteen.
|
|
Young Moreno, who still retains a faint accent, said it was Helen Ware
|
|
who first put into his head the idea that he might be able to do something on
|
|
the stage. Miss Ware happened to be on the boat carrying Tony to the New
|
|
World, and it was her encouragement that induced him to make the effort to
|
|
become an actor.
|
|
"I couldn't speak a word of English when I came to this country," went
|
|
on Mr. Moreno. "I was a stranger in a strange land indeed. My landlady used
|
|
to give me lessons, pointing out this is a fork, this is a spoon, this is a
|
|
knife, until I learned the necessary nouns and could make myself understood."
|
|
After remarking upon Mr. Moreno's success in struggling with a new
|
|
tongue he laughingly said there were times when he could not get the right
|
|
word in time to express a thought.
|
|
"One day Tommy Meighan and I were having luncheon with David Warfield,"
|
|
he said. "I came a little late and, in explanation, I started to tell Mr.
|
|
Warfield of the beautiful woman I had met on my way to the hotel.
|
|
"'Blonde or brunette,' he asked.
|
|
"'Mediocre,' I said, and Mr. Warfield and Tommy have never stopped
|
|
laughing at my mediocre beauty. They will never believe I meant to say
|
|
medium."
|
|
Mr. Moreno's trip to New York was in the nature of a vacation for a good
|
|
little boy. It was Albert Smith himself who told Tony he might have a week in
|
|
the gay city.
|
|
"And," said Tony, "when I get here the theatres are closed, prohibition
|
|
has struck the gilded cafes and there is no place to go. All my friends say
|
|
come on out for the weekend, but I am only here one weekend, so what is there
|
|
to do?"
|
|
Later, Mr. Moreno explained prohibition really meant little in his life,
|
|
since he only took a drink with the boys to be a good fellow. He didn't
|
|
really care much for liquor, but he had come all the way in the hopes of
|
|
seeing Frank Bacon in "Lightnin'" and Fay Bainter in "East is West."
|
|
"It's a case of when a feller needs a friend," he said. "Here I have
|
|
been on the Coast working hard, and looking forward to my vacation in New York
|
|
and the strike, which has all year to happen, comes at the very moment I
|
|
arrive in town."
|
|
Tommy Meighan and Jack Pickford, both pals of young Moreno, had the same
|
|
sorrowful experience, though Mr. Pickford was there for some time before the
|
|
theatres shut their doors. They all went back to the Coast together to work
|
|
in different studios for different film corporations.
|
|
Olive Thomas helped the entertainless situation all she could by giving
|
|
a birthday party for Jack last Saturday on his twenty-third birthday at their
|
|
country place in Rye. The party was in reality a week-end affair and lasted
|
|
until Monday, when duty called the guests to the Twentieth Century train.
|
|
To go back to the beginning of our story, Mr. Moreno did get on the
|
|
stage, and, after making himself known, he was engaged by Vitagraph for
|
|
pictures. The Moreno-Storey pictures are well remembered as being some of the
|
|
finest made at that time. Mr. Moreno played opposite Edith Storey and they
|
|
were considered one of the best teams in pictures. Then Miss Storey went to
|
|
Metro and Mr. Moreno went to Pathe. But he admitted there was always a
|
|
hankering in his heart for Vitagraph, and Vitagraph had never replaced him, so
|
|
after a year with Pathe he signed a new contract with Albert Smith, one which
|
|
benefited him financially and made him think perhaps after all it was a good
|
|
thing he went away, for he was appreciated when he came back.
|
|
Serials seem to be Vitagraph's intention for their returned star. He
|
|
has just finished "The Fighting Peril," or some peril or other, and is to make
|
|
another thriller. Deep in his heart he hopes to make features again, but now
|
|
his popularity in serials will not permit the change to me made.
|
|
"If people go to see one one time in a feature," said Mr. Moreno, "it is
|
|
not so much of a compliment, but if they go for fifteen weeks and follow your
|
|
adventures in a continued picture it is proof that they like you and want to
|
|
see you, so sometimes I am glad I am in serials, for they have their
|
|
compensation."
|
|
Antonio Moreno is an interesting chap who has by sheer strength of
|
|
character and hard word educated himself in the ways of America, both in
|
|
literature and in business. He loves his adopted country even more than his
|
|
sunny Spain, he says.
|
|
"I went back a few years ago but I have become so entirely Americanized
|
|
I was out of place. I love the romance of my country," he said, "the
|
|
beautiful moonlight nights, the serenades, the songs, the poetry and the
|
|
beautiful women, but I miss the energy of this country, the wideawake spirit
|
|
and the effort every one makes to accomplish their purposes, be it an artistic
|
|
ambition or a commercial goal."
|
|
And Tony is not conceited. While we were having luncheon two girls
|
|
discovered him and at once went into raptures. They left their table, came in
|
|
and stood in front of him and pointed him out as if he had been Exhibit B in a
|
|
freak museum or in the Bronx Zoo. He talked fast and tried not to notice the
|
|
two fair ones. They left the dining room but kept parading up and down
|
|
Peacock Alley at the Astor craning their necks and looking in at him as much
|
|
as to say peek a boo, here we are. The whole thing became so obvious and so
|
|
amusing I finally said to him:
|
|
They have followed your adventures on the screen and are glad you are
|
|
saved to be able to eat your luncheon.
|
|
"Perhaps it might have been better if I had not been saved," he said.
|
|
"I almost wish I hadn't." He was blushing, and it was the real thing, not a
|
|
put-on-for-effect affair. Having seen screen actors who would have reveled in
|
|
this recognition, I must admit Mr. Moreno's stock went up 100 points then and
|
|
there.
|
|
There is an element of sincerity about the young man and straight
|
|
forward manner which is singularly pleasing. In fact, Antonio Garitarrido
|
|
Monteaugudo Moreno is, name and all, a most likable chap. It is a good thing
|
|
we can write and we don't have to pronounce all the Spanish in his name, for
|
|
it sound when I say it like a Chinese Summer resort, but, dear reader, you
|
|
should hear Tony say it--ah, that's another matter.
|
|
Those female lounge lizards who wasted 50 cents worth of powder dolling
|
|
up to look pretty for Mr. Moreno would never have torn their sentimental young
|
|
selves away if they had heard him roll out his soft Spanish enunciation.
|
|
But seriously there should be a law against such females. They are
|
|
dangerous, and make the old familiar verse the female of the species is more
|
|
dangerous than the male come true with a vengeance.
|
|
Mr. Moreno is, in the language of his press agent, heart whole and fancy
|
|
free and one of the few eligible bachelors on the screen. We tell that not to
|
|
encourage these girls, but to say press agents are not always truthful and Mr.
|
|
Moreno does not look entirely fancy free. Our luncheon was over, however,
|
|
before I had time to ask him if his p. a. told the truth. Next time I will do
|
|
better, I promise, and find out about his matrimonial intentions and
|
|
aspirations--but, alas! he thinks Spanish women the most beautiful in the
|
|
world.
|
|
|
|
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
|
|
|
|
December 1919
|
|
Gladys Hall
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MOTION PICTURE
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From Sanctimony to Serials
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The other day something vivid happened, here in my office. The
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"something vivid" was Tony Moreno, newly arrived from the coast and here for
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the purpose, he said, of acquiring a new derby and such like essentials. The
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derby had been achieved and was handled with great reverence and considerable
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admiration by its owner. One appreciates that for which one makes a
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transcontinental trip. "They don't grow them like this in California," he
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said, referring to the derby, and then he tried it on and demonstrated its
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exceeding originality and chic. There was about him, wholly, the air of the
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proud small boy who exhibits to an admiring crony a shiny new bat or a "bike"
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just acquired. He is distinctly, refreshingly ingenuous.
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He is friendly and without affectation.
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He is truthful and eager and like a child who stands before a shop
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window filled with goodies, knows they are obtainable, yet does not know just
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which one to choose, just how to go about it.
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He is rather self-depreciatory than the reverse. For all the feminine
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adulation he receives, he has a healthy viewpoint. He is quite amazingly
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unspoiled.
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He has an equally healthy distaste for New York or any other sort of
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night life, cabaret life, etc. "I duck whenever I can," he said. "I don't
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know why, but it all just bores me. Bores me horribly. I never have a good
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time."
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It is easy to picture the small Tony running with bare feet and swift,
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brown legs through his childhood in Spain. "There is nothing at all
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extraordinary about me," he said, "unless it is my Spanish birth certificate.
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My father was just a--well, what you would call here an ordinary soldier,
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sergeant, perhaps, or something of the kind. He died when I was about ten or
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eleven and my mother and I moved away from the town, far out into the
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country, and lived there alone. She used to pray that I would be a priest.
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That was her great ambition for me. In the evenings we would sit together
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and she would picture me as a very *great* priest and picture, too, her own
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pride in me. I don't think *I* ever took to it very kindly. I don't think I
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would have been a very good priest."
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Rather a breathtaking thought, it occurred to the appreciative
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interviewer--the vivid Tony in the sacerdotal garments doling out penances--
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penitence were paradise, enow--
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"Were you ever sanctimonious?" I asked.
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"Oh, at intervals. I stall am. But mostly, mostly now, I am *serial".
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From sanctimony to serials--that's a far hail, isn't it?"
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"How about the serials? Like 'em?"
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Tony looked rarely grave. "I should like to do Spanish things," he
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said. "I feel sort of lost in serials. I have the atmosphere of Spain, her
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traditions, her mannerisms and language and romance soaked into my blood and
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bones. I could give it again on the screen. And then I am the type--I could
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make the real spirit of Spain live here, in America. It seems to be the
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thing for me to do--I know Marseilles--Barcelona--Castile--Yes, I know my
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country."
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Another breath-taking thought--Tony, Spanish Tony--strumming away at an
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old guitar under some latticed jalousie, where a face, framed in a dark
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mantilla, shone with the glow of a pale young moon--and a rose dropped down--
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There is something paradoxical about Tony. He has the dark face of
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some dream of old romance--one would expect of him soft whisperings in some
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bewitched retreat--one would picture him as dreaming of some remote "Elaine,"
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lily-white and crowned with distant stars. And one finds the friendly heart
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of a singularly truthful child, direct and rather unvarnished utterances--the
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same camaraderie of some lovable, usual brother and very succinct opinions on
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the sort of a woman he would marry--
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"I'd want some one who *knows* something, first of all," he told me,
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"because I don't. I don't know a thing. I'm just a mutt. I'd want a woman
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who could teach me a thing or two, who had brains and a little experience.
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None of the ingenue variety. Gosh, how I hate 'em in real life. I'd like to
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do this to 'em." And he extended a powerful and no doubt bronzed right arm
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and made a thoroughly eliminating gesture. "I don't care how old she is.
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I don't care how she *looks*. Looks matter very little to me. The main
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qualification would be--brains. Some one who would talk to me, who would
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read to me and tell me what to read. Some one who would educate me, as it
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were. That's the kind of a woman *I* want. That's the only kind I could
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love--the kind I could look up to. I'd be bored to death with the clinging
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vine before she'd have half a chance to cling. I'd hate to think I could say
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to a woman, 'Come here!' and have her toddle over, lisping, 'Yes, dearie!'
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I like superiority in a woman. I like to feel it."
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After he had gone, rather forcibly escorted by his P. A., who informed
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me, not without misgivings, that he knew Tony was easy to interview because
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he always told the truth, the sense of something vivid having happened
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persisted. There was a jolly, healthy sort of a glow, a sense of color, of
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uplift. More than the Vitagraph screen hero I seemed to see the soldier's
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son running about the streets of Barcelona (I *think* he said Barcelona) with
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his bronzed legs and his night-shade hair--or the widow's small son
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listening, wide-eyed, to the pious dreams of himself as a godly priest--the
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man who, almost universally pursued, speaking feministically, says that he is
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"a mutt" and that he wants some one he can "look up to."
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One might say many things of Tony--of how he was "discovered" in
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Spain--and brought over here--and educated at Northampton--of his being a
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protege of Mrs. Carter--of his various successes--and still one would not be
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saying so complete a thing as simply to say that he has the face of a
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thousand dreams and the heart of a little boy.
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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July 31, 1923
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LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
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Moreno Gets $22,500 Cash
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Antonio Moreno, film star, figures that $22,500 in the hand is worth
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more than $129,000 in the courts.
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So he has dropped his long-pending suit against the Vitagraph film
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corporation and accepted a cash settlement of $22,500, it was learned
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yesterday.
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Moreno, resplendent in a scarlet velvet costume of ancient Spanish
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vintage, and nonchalantly smoking an extremely modern cigar, verified the
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rumor when reporters found him on a stage at the Lasky studio.
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He said he had instructed his attorney, Neil McCarthy, to drop the
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action against the Vitagraph corporation.
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The suit was filed in January, 1922, after Moreno had been summarily
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"fired" by the Vitagraph corporation. For months prior to that, it was known
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in film circles, he had not worked, although he had reported daily at the
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studio and drawn his check every pay day.
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In those months a long-drawn and heated controversy was in progress
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between the star and the corporation. They wanted him to play "heavy" roles
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and he refused. He wanted youthful, dramatic and heroic parts. The day
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after he was discharged he filed suit for $129,000, which he alleged was due
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him for the unfulfilled portion of his Vitagraph contract.
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Later, after a long period of comparative idleness, he signed a long-
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term contract wit the Famous Players-Lasky corporation.
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Early this hear he and Mrs. Daisy Canfield Danziger, millionaire widow,
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were married. But Moreno, explaining his reasons for accepting a cash
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settlement in his suit, mentioned:
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"I have no doubt that, had the case gone to trial, I would have
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received a much larger judgment. But I am married now, and need the money."
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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February 5, 1922
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LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
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Victim Happy Before Death
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Antonio Moreno Tells of Phone Conversation With Him
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at 7 o'clock Night of Tragedy
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The assassination of William Desmond Taylor, Wednesday night, postponed
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forever an engagement which the film director had with Antonio Moreno, film
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star, on Thursday morning.
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When Moreno talked with Taylor over the telephone Wednesday night, about
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7 o'clock, Taylor was in the best of spirits, according to Moreno's story told
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yesterday.
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But when the time came for the appointment to be fulfilled the following
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morning, between 10 and 10:30 o'clock, the film director's corpse lay in a
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local undertaking company's morgue, pierced by a murderer's bullet.
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Moreno said yesterday that he had been an intimate friend of Taylor for
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several years, since the time Taylor had become associated with the old
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Vitagraph Company at Santa Monica in 1914.
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"He was one of the finest men I ever met," "Tony" said. "He had the
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highest ideals, I believe, of any man I've ever met in the profession."
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Details of a dinner party which he attended with Taylor, Miss Betty
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Francisco and Miss Claire Windsor, at the Ambassador Hotel Thursday night,
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January 27, were given by Moreno, as well as an informal meeting held between
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Moreno, Taylor, Arthur Hoyt and a Captain Robinson [sic], January 28, at
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Moreno's room at the Los Angeles Athletic Club.
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"I left them there about 7 o'clock," Moreno said, "to go to a dinner
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party at the Ambassador, which I had arranged for a friend visiting here from
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Chicago. Later, I understand, the three went to dinner at a roadhouse between
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Los Angeles and Pasadena--I do not know its name--and then on to the Annandale
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Club after dinner, finally going to Taylor's home."
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Moreno declared he had spent about two hours last Monday with Taylor at
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the Vitagraph studio, where Moreno is working. He had an appointment with him
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for Tuesday, also, but the director, according to Moreno, did not fill it
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because of a trip to Mount Lowe on location.
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"Then I called him again Wednesday night," Moreno said, "about 6
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o'clock. His boy, Henry, answered the phone. Mr. Taylor was not at home.
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However, he called me later, about 7, and we arranged that I should call for
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Mr. Taylor, at the Lasky studio, about 10 o'clock Thursday morning. Mr. Hoyt
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was with me in my room at the time. Mr. Taylor was to go with me to the
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Vitagraph studio, on a matter of personal business."
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"But--" and here Moreno gave a sorrowful shake of his head--"But you
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know the rest. The appointment was not fulfilled--and never will be.
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"I feel that in Mr. Taylor's death I've lost one of the best friends
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I've ever know. And I'll do everything in my power to run down the man who
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killed him."
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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February 5, 1922
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LOS ANGELES TIMES
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Film Star Aids Police Search
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Tony Moreno With Taylor Before Shooting
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Director Was Healthy and Cheerful, Says Friend
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Check on Events of Week Taken by Officers
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William D. Taylor appeared to be in the best of health and spirits about
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one hour before he was shot down in his own apartment at 404-B South Alvarado
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Street. He did not appear to have any premonition of what lay in store for
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him, although, according to the police theory of the slaying of the film
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director, the murderer was then lurking in the shadows a few feet away from
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Mr. Taylor.
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This was disclosed yesterday by Tony Moreno, Vitagraph star.
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Mr. Moreno's story of his conversations with the slain director on the night
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of the murder and for a week prior to the shooting, furnish an important check
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on Mr. Taylor's movement for at least seven days preceding the shooting.
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"I played golf with Mr. Taylor exactly a week before his death. We
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drove to the San Gabriel Country Club and remained there from about noon till
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dark. While there I introduced him to Asa Keyes, the Deputy District
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Attorney." Mr. Moreno said yesterday at his apartment, in the Los Angeles
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Athletic Club.
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"The next day I saw him again. I met him at the Ambassador at a party.
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Mr. Taylor was with Miss Claire Windsor. I saw him leave the hotel with her.
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There were a number of picture people there that night.
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"Saturday night--that is, a week ago tonight--Mr. Taylor was here in the
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club. He was in my room and with us were Arthur Hoyt and Capt. Robertson, who
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is a close friend of Mr. Taylor. We sat and talked a while. Then Mr. Taylor,
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Mr. Hoyt and Capt. Robertson left. Later I learned they drove to Cedar Grove,
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near Pasadena, and had something to eat there. From there they drove to the
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Annandale Country Club.
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"I saw Mr. Taylor next at the Lasky studios, Monday morning at 10
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o'clock. I had an appointment with him to go to the Vitagraph studios, on a
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matter of business importance to me. Chester Bennett of the Brunton studios,
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was with us. We were together until 12:30 p.m. that day.
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"We were unable to see the people we wanted that day. The appointment
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had to be made over again. I called Mr. Taylor again, Tuesday at the Lasky
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lot, but I did not get to talk to him. I was informed that he was out on
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location on Mt. Lowe. Tuesday, which was the day before the murder, I could
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not get in touch with him.
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"Wednesday night Mr. Taylor called me at the club. I was in Mr. Hoyt's
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room, when the call came. We discussed the business appointment I wanted
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Mr. Taylor to participate in. As near as I can now recall it, it was about 7
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o'clock when Mr. Taylor called. He did not tell me much about his trip to
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Mt. Lowe.
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"Mr. Hoyt was present at the conversation. It lasted several minutes.
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Mr. Taylor then made an appointment for Thursday morning, at 10 o'clock.
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He appeared to be in best of spirits. He was pleasant and cheerful.
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"It was a few minutes after 7 that Mr. Taylor hung up. Then Mr. Hoyt
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and I went to the club dining-room and stayed there for dinner.
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"Thursday morning, Mr. Hoyt called me and told me I would not be able to
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keep the appointment with Mr. Taylor because he was dead. He then told me
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what he read in the papers."
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The investigators last night began to check up the facts supplied by
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Mr. Moreno in an effort to supply the missing links and thus account for every
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action and movement of the slain director. Mr. Moreno's story supplied much
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important data, the officers say.
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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Some Rumors
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[The following was received in several e-mail messages from Nicholas Pinhey,
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who may be Antonio Moreno's grandson:]
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"...Moreno had a lot of skeletons in his closet, and I am determined to
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dig them out (my duty as his rumored grandson)...As for my story, my
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grandmother was married and worked at the Vitagraph studios, she supposedly
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was put in the family way by Moreno, producing my mother (born Marguerite
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Mary Moore, Hollywood, 1916). My grandmother, gave up my mom for adoption
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(the birth caused serious repercussions for her marriage), and she was taken
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in by a Judge or attorney named Cornell. The Cornells are the source of the
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Moreno story. Antonio visited my mother in the early 1930's and gave her
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presents, but never contacted her again. My mother would have nothing to do
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with him in her later life. My oldest brother wanted to go after the estate
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when Moreno died. My mother forbade opening the records and forbade any
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action. She was not terribly fond of the topic. I never paid any attention
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to the story until February of this year. My son ran across a book by George
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Hadley-Garcia entitled "Hispanic Hollywood" with lots of info on Moreno. It
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suggested that the marriage to Daisy was a studio ploy to cover Moreno's
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homosexuality. It also states that Moreno's pal Ramon Novarro was gay and
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refused to marry, thus ruining his career. This piqued my interest. There is
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some resemblance to Moreno and my mother (long deceased), she was dark
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haired, dark eyed and very pretty. I started going through the records, and
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so far things check out. Looks like Moreno could have been a bisexual.
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"...Daisy was quite a party girl (according to many accounts) and the
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death smacks of wild Hollywood scandal. Even though I'm not related to Daisy
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and Tappan, the story intrigues me. Moreno supposedly pushed Daisy down a
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flight of stairs, injuring her arm. The auto accident (250 foot drop over
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Mulholland) was linked to an arm injury she had suffered. Some have hinted
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that she was killed and the car going over the cliff was the cover, in best
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movie tradition. ...The murdering the wife story follows the line that she
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threatened to cut Moreno off from her oil money (daughter of oil magnate
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Danziger) because she was tired of his boyfriends. They had a fight, he
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pushed her down the stairs. He moves out of the house. One week later, she
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is up on 'lovers leap' with a young Swiss gentleman named Rene Dussac.
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Dussac is a friend of both Moreno and Daisy's (Hmmm?). According to the
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press Dussac is driving because Daisy's arm is injured (could be the
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stairs?). They encounter fog, Dussac, unfamiliar with the headlights,
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attempts to adjust them, but accidentally turns them off. The car goes over
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the cliff, drops 250 feet and disintegrates. Daisy is killed, Dussac
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miraculously survives. He climbs up the cliff (??) with a broken back (??).
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Moreno is reported as distraught, especially as Daisy had indicated that a
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reconciliation was possible (about mid-week between the separation and the
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accident)...Moreno never remarries. Daisy is cremated and interred at the
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house (by her fish pond) and Antonio eventually sells the house to the
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Catholic Church (present owners), some say to atone for his sins."
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*****************************************************************************
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A biographical article on Antonio Moreno from the magazine FILMS OF THE
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|
GOLDEN AGE can be found on the web at
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|
http://www.classicimages.com/foga/1996/winter/amoreno.html
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*****************************************************************************
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*****************************************************************************
|
|
Back issues of Taylorology are available on the Web at
|
|
http://www.angelfire.com/az/Taylorology
|
|
or
|
|
http://www.uno.edu/~drif/arbuckle/Taylorology/
|
|
or at the gopher server at
|
|
gopher.etext.org in the directory Zines/Taylorology;
|
|
Full text searches of back issues of Taylorology can be done at
|
|
http://www.etext.org/Zines/
|
|
For more information about Taylor, see
|
|
WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR: A DOSSIER (Scarecrow Press, 1991)
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|
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