Motion picture actors and actresses; Motion pictures
Tellegen did not seem much more appreciative of her off the set. Often
when they were lunching together, for example, you overheard some
teasing reference on his part to the fact that she was some years older
than he. She never replied angrily to such remarks. Indeed, the general
criticism of her behaviour was that she was entirely too nice for him.
“Watch him! He’s as sure of her as he is of the ice-man coming around.
Why doesn’t she make him wonder a little?” So remarked one of a group
watching the famous pair as they sat together one day in the studio
café. The objection was well taken. Geraldine was bending toward her
husband with her accustomed look of rapt absorption. She was talking
to him eagerly with a frequent flash of the perfect white teeth. He,
on his part, was silent, absent-minded, even a little sulky. When he
answered her at all it was in monosyllables.
Time and again, in fact, studio folks beheld this metamorphosis of
the romantic and ardent lover of another California Summer into the
indifferent husband of this. And when it came time for the great prima
donna to leave, what a saddening contrast to that former day when
Tellegen had run madly beside the train bearing his love toward the
East! A recent Summer Miss Farrar stood beside her special train. The
fourteen personal attendants she had brought with her were running
hither and thither with her baggage and possessions. She, however,
seemed to know nothing of what was going on around her. For Lou
Tellegen stood before her, and she was looking into his eyes.
At last, just before the train started, she threw her arms about him.
All her dread of separation was in that embrace. You could see what it
meant to her to leave him even for a few weeks. And he? Listlessly,
with hardly one responsive gesture, he stood encircled by his wife’s
arms.
Yet such apparent indifference never seemed to quench the fire
kindled by that first glance of Tellegen’s on the Lasky lot. It was
almost unbelievable--the reckless lengths to which she, this careful,
methodical business woman, was driven by one despotic emotion. I am
giving now what was perhaps her most tempestuous departure from usual
standards.
During her second Summer with the Goldwyn Company, she had insisted
that her husband’s name appear on the bill-boards in connection with
her own. For some reason, however, the requested mention of Tellegen
did not appear. When Farrar became aware of this omission, what did she
do but take an automobile all through Los Angeles and tear down with
her own hands every offending poster. I admit that I was infuriated.
She, when I called her up over the phone, was scarcely more serene, and
for some time it was a case of Farrar _versus_ Goldwyn.
At this moment she was in the midst of a second picture, and she made
prompt use of that advantage. “Very well,” she threatened, “if you will
not feature Mr. Tellegen’s name I am going to stop work right in the
middle of this new picture!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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