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Oh! For A Blonde; A Lady Diogenes! BY LOUISE GALLAGHER
No one can deny that Elinor Glyn is responsible for a lot of the thrills that help to lighten an unromantic and prosaic world. Maybe we owe her more than we think for giving us a pen picture of what a perfect lover should be like. There is now a chance of paying off this debt.
Madame Glyn is looking for a beautiful blonde with tragic eyes, so girls, if any of you have blue, blue eyes in which lurks the shadow of a tragedy, come on out and land a job at the Goldwyn studio that at the present is going abegging. It is a good part, a lead in fact, in the next Glyn picture.
It is true that there are blondes a plenty roaming the streets of Hollywood praying that their tough luck will break and they will land a job soon, and it is also true that they range in many different shades from ash to tawny, but the poor things fail, according to Madame Glyn, to look tragic even when their rent is a month overdue and the court can’t enforce the payment of their justly due alimony.
The realistic modern blonde has too much of the fighting spirit to led adversities and the trials that beset young girls trying to carp enough money to pay for their marcels daunt her. The picturesque blonde who does so much to lighten up gloomy sets, would not dare to show any emotion whatever for fear of destroying her charm. It seems unfair to wish all the sadness of life onto the brunettes-semi or all the way-but the blondes do insist upon holding the center of the stage when things are whirling gaily.
Poverty Row
On Poverty Row, which is the name given to that part of Sunset Boulevard where the small poorly financed, poorly equipped motion picture companies have their studios, you can pick up a blonde a minute and anyone of them will assure you, “What it takes to act, I’ve got. ” In this anesthetic region of picture land you will find much that is cheap, gaudy and untidy; thwarted genius gone to waste, those who have failed to get in at the big studios, many new beginners with the light of hope still in their eyes and others who have given up the useless struggle of trying to “make good in the movies” and look upon the work they do in pictures as the easiest way of making a living.
One or two of the big stars laughingly relate that they received their first training on the Rowand pretty hard training it was. It is seldom that you find a black-headed or brown-haired girl working for any length of time in what might be called the cinema slums. The work is too hard, the chance for advancement too slight for them to keep up their courage, so they get out and leave the field to their blonde and less sensitive sister.
Most of the daring feats in pictures too are performed by blondes. When you see a lady hurl herself out of a two-story window, get run down by an automobile or recklessly jump a cliff, you can just be she is a blonde. It is only as a tragedienne that the blonde falls short. Anyway, if you have had a small tragedy in your life that has left its mark in the cerulean blue of your eyes, you have a good chance of landing on your feet at the Goldwyn studio.
In two or three pictures I have been in, it has been necessary for me to wear a blonde wig and it does change one’s whole personality. A golden crown of fluffiness puts you on a different tempo and it also sometimes enables you to catch up with your friends, especially when it changes you so that you cannot be easily recognized.
There is a lady Iiving at my hotel who bears unmistakable proof that she comes from good old Puritan stock. Her special mission in Hollywood, now that she is a wealthy widow of 45, is not to jazz things up a bit, but to learn the real truth about the movies and do what she can to expose them. She has been very kind to me in sending me doughnuts and hot chocolate, both of which I very much dislike. She was quite peeved when I wouldn’t take her with me on a night set at Universal, where she undoubtedly thought she could gather a lot of material.
I was sitting in the lobby the other evening all dolled up in blonde curls and a very much longer dress than I usually wear, when the old dear came over and sat by me. I saw she didn’t recognize me, so I changed my speaking voice, hoping to be able to get away from her quickly. “You look a lot like a girl who lives here who works in pictures,” she told me, “only, dearie, she is not as modest and well mannered as you are. If you could see some of the queer clothes she wears and the way she makes her eyes up is awful. I would hate for a daughter of mine to ruin her skin with that terrible grease paint. I hope a nice little girl like you didn’t come here to get in the movies?”
I assured her that I didn’t, and escaped into the elevator before someone with more discerning eyes would come along and expose my masquerade.
I am back doing some more “rah-rahing” on the Harold Lloyd comedy, and with so many big football games scheduled here during the holidays, it is easy to get into the spirit of the thing. There was quite a discussion the other morning as to whether Harold should go into a football game wearing the famous horn rims. The director was afraid that without them he would never be recognized-and he wouldn’t-you would never know Mr. Lloyd if you met him in private life minus the specs without any lenses. Of all the noted screen celebrities, he is perhaps the only one that could walk down a crowded street without being known. It would take some good detective work to discover him when he is just a plain citizen of the U.S.A. The director is positive that he will get a rise out of football fans if the horI1~ims go into
