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Just Portraits! Me And Louise BY LOUISE GALLAGHER
TWO important things have recently happened. I have fallen for the crossword puzzle and Louise Giaum.
They are really a lot alike! You are apt not to get either of them just at first, but when you do you become an incurable addict I The possibilities of neither can be quickly exhausted I Sitting in a darkened theater one day several years ago in Birmingham, I watched the famous Wolf woman of the screen trail her peacock feathers through seven thrilling reels of wicked romance that I didn’t understand one word of.
That was in the days when my motion picture entertainment was rigidly censored by my family and limited mostly to the picture of Mary Pickford and Marguerite Clark with an occasional Pearl White thriller thrown in by way of a treat. Louise Giaum was the first screen vampire of my acquaintance and I played hooky from school to see her because several of my friends had confidentially informed me that I looked exactly like her. It added a lot to my prestige, I can tell, to have eyes like a motion picture actress. I was honest enough to say, after watching the lady emote-though I did hope no one would agree with me-that I failed to see any resemblance to little me in the gorgeous lady of floating tulle and pearls. The girls assured me that if I could only wear headdresses like hers when I grew up and have all my dresses, gowns with fish trains and wrap yards and yards of pearls around my neck and arms and learn to glide instead of walk, I would look exactly like her. The only thing that was possible for me to acquire at that time was the Giaum glide which I practiced until I got punished for shuffling my feet.
A Forgotten Resemblance.
I had forgotten all about my fancied resemblance to the wide-eyed Louise until one day on the Sennett lot I was decidedly embarrassed by the director. He apologized later by saying, “You startled me when I first saw you on the set. You look exactly like my first wife, Louise Giaum. She was about your age when we married.” He told me that she had been off the screen for over two years on account of poor health but that she was now back in Hollywood and intended to again take up her screen work.
A few days later in a newspaper office on the boulevard the editor said to me, “Not related to Louise Giaum, are you? She was just in here and you look something alike.” I decided then and there that I must have a look at her if possible and the obliging editor gave me her telephone number, after cautioning me not to tell where I got it for the phone numbers of screen celebrities are as jealously guarded as were once the Russian crown jewels.
Miss Giaum obligingly told me I might come out that afternoon. She lives with her mother in a lovely home in the Wiltshire district and has just recently returned to California after spending two years in travel. It was nice to be able to so closely inspect my favorite high-light vamp even though I did get the shock of my life. Miss Giaum is young and very smart. She had on a slim, little, straight, black dress, no jewelry of any kind and her short bob was a reasonable shade of brown. “Good Heavens,” I kept saying to myself. “Hasn’t the woman a trademark of any kind? Not a peacock fan, nor a weird headdress nor a slinky scarf? Even the wicker furniture refuses to look wicked with so much sunshine in the room.” Then my eyes lighted upon a leopard rug. That rug was the only thing in the room that faintly hinted of a wicked screen past and it enabled me to bring the conversation around to the roles made famous by Miss Giaum in the past.
She objects to being called a vamp because the word has been so abused and so indiscriminately applied to all types of women who express cinematic vices. She admitted that it is difficult to correctly title the dangerous women of the screen but that it is unfair to class them all under the one general head. “Anyway I was never altogether the vampire as she is known today. In all my roles I was never hopelessly beyond the pale. There was always a little glimmer of conscience and a hope of redemption if the footage held out.”
“Did you start wrecking homes and turning husbands from the path of honor in the beginning of your film career?” I asked her. “No, I didn’t. I came to the screen after a year or more on the legitimate stage in musical comedy. I started out in comedies just as you are doing. One day the vamp in a picture I was working in was ill and I was put in her place. I was not at all the type that was then being used for such parts but I could act and the director took a chance on a small woman being able to look dangerous. I made good in the part and thereafter it was my fate to be so cast.”
I asked her if she had definitely decided just when she would return to the screen and under whose banner. “No, I have not. I have had several good offers and some of them are still open. I may, however, take a flyer on the legitimate stage first, but if I do I shall later return to pictures. Sometimes I think the work is harder than it is on the legitimate stage because you have to so quickly work up to emotional climaxes. Both demand a heavy toll that taxes you mentally and physically though in return they give much. I like best being at home and having my friends about me and for that reason prefer pictures. I am in perfect health once more and anxious to get back to work.”
Miss Giaum told me she had married when she was 17 but that her marriage had lasted but a year and a half and she have never remarried.
Just Plain Clothes.
The conversation turned as conversations between women will, be they vamps or ingenues, heiresses or shop girls, to clothes. I wanted Miss Giaum to tell me if she expected to bring to the screen any star tingly new styles in gowns. “That would be almost impossible, wouldn’t it?” she smiled, “when you consider what has already passed in review. Could I ever hope to out dazzle what the screen has shown in unusual and extreme modes in the past year? I have some new Parisian gowns, but I do not expect them to create any special furor. I always dress plainly,” she added, “at home and in public, All my life I have had a dread of appearing conspicuous and have, therefore, confined myself to quiet colors and simple lines.”
“I thought you would be, oh, so gorgeous,” I told her.
“That was because you got your impression from my screen self. I am afraid I have a dual dress personality. My modiste knows that simplicity is the keynote to what I wear in private life but for the stage or screen that is a different thing. Everything must be perfect for the character I am portraying and as extravagant as necessary. I don’t mind being bizarre and exotic for the silver sheet.”
During the interesting two hours I spent with Louise Giaum I never once got up the courage to tell her why I had been so anxious to meet her. It is 8. ticklish thing to tell a good looking woman to her face you think you look like her or at least that you have been told you do. She could so easily point out some charming bit of difference like, “Oh, but your nose is not so good as mine!” or “Don’t you think I must be at least two inches taller and my eyes are brown, you know, not gray,” and “Is your hair naturally curly, too, doesn’t it save one a lot of time?”
Miss Giaum has the distinction of photographing like no one else on the screen and while the cameramen have also said that of me, it is no reasonable proof that we photograph alike. Anyway we have a lot of tastes in common. We both like chocolate ice cream sodas and Blanche Sweet and English bulldogs. When Louise Giaum comes back to the screen, I don’t think she will have any trouble revamping the public, no matter in what garb she decides to do it.
