Motion picture actors and actresses; Motion pictures
The night following Miss Farrar’s arrival we gave her a dinner at the
Hollywood Hotel. This dinner included among its two hundred guests, not
only the leading representatives of the screen colony, but a number of
distinguished sojourners. Among the latter may be mentioned Mr. John
Drew and Miss Blanche Ring.
At this dinner-party Miss Farrar turned to me almost at once with her
habitual question. “And now surely,” she pleaded, “you’re going to tell
me who is to be my Don José?”
De Mille and I exchanged a haggard glance. Many, many times had we
shuddered together over the thought, “What if she doesn’t like him?”
Our previous experience with stars had taught us not to minimise that
possible calamity.
“Tell me,” repeated our great planet. “Not another minute will I wait!”
I was just about to reply when I looked up. A tall young man
had entered the door and was now walking toward us. He was only
twenty-three. His evening clothes were by no means faultless, but the
face above them was flushed with excitement. The blue eyes shone. I had
never seen Wallace Reid look more like the beautiful and romantic young
man of the daguerreotype collection.
“There,” I whispered, watching her tensely, “there is your leading man.”
She had already noticed him and as he moved slowly toward us she never
took her eyes from his face. At last, just before he reached us, she
began slowly nodding her head. “Very good,” she whispered, and the
smile with which she said it lingered as she repeated the encomium.
“Very, very good.”
I do not need to dwell upon the relief afforded to us by that smile.
I venture to suggest, however, that it may have brought corresponding
heart’s ease to Wallace himself. For he was then young and
inexperienced and I have no doubt that for many days previous he, too,
had been quailing before that grim possibility, “What if she doesn’t
like me!”
A number of the screen people were inspired with awe of Miss Farrar’s
reputation. “I bet anything she’s up-stage,” several of them predicted
before meeting her. That evening disarmed all such fears. So simple
and friendly, so gay and unaffected, was the Metropolitan star that
everybody went away singing her praises. I soon found, indeed, that
the ancestry of the Irish seas had dowered her with more than that
flowering vigour of look and manner. She has the warmth of personal
approach, the ability to get along with folks of all descriptions, that
characterise the Irish race.
This element in her character was brought out particularly in the
studio. It was not long before everybody there, including “Grips”
and “Props”--the local terms by which are designated respectively
the electricians and the property men--were calling her “Jerry.”
This intimacy of reference was a token of real affection and it was
deserved, for she seldom passed the most humble worker in the studio
without a smile or a friendly word.
[Illustration: LOU TELLEGEN AND GERALDINE FARRAR
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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