“I’ve been working in the cutting-room,” replied she, “and that was fine--I mean it was fine--knowing just what you were going to get each week. But the ether commenced to get into my lungs and that’s why I’m looking around for something else.” Ingram promised to give her the desired position in the picture following “Shore Acres.” However, something changed his plans and instead he cast her for a wild and woolly Drury Lane melodrama called “Hearts Are Trumps.” To his surprise she seemed loath to accept this chance of returning to the screen. “Oh, no, I don’t want to try--I’ve given it all up, you see,” she kept protesting in a way that showed how completely previous discouragements had shattered her self-confidence. But he finally succeeded in overcoming her fears, and since then she has been his leading woman in every story except “Trifling Women.” It was not, however, until the appearance of “The Four Horsemen” that Alice Terry, the girl who, heartsick from her discouragements on the set, had wanted to retire to the comparative obscurity of script work, won the wide recognition which her beauty and her screen personality had so long deserved. All this I have just related I heard from Miss Terry, now Mrs. Rex Ingram, on the same evening when Ingram told me of his experience with Valentino. On this same occasion she and her husband mentioned that her next appearance will be in John Russell’s “Passion Vine.” In this her support will be Ramon Navarro, another dancer from whom Ingram predicts a success which may even duplicate that of Valentino. Anent both Valentino and Navarro, Ingram made an interesting observation. “A good dancer,” said he, “frequently makes a good screen actor. Why? Because he has both poise and repose, and I don’t know any better start than these.” In this connection do not forget that Chaplin is one of the most graceful of dancers. Although not a professional, he might easily have become so. _Chapter Seventeen_ ROMANTIC TRUE STORIES OF SOME SCREEN FAVORITES Another film triumph won only after a long siege of the citadel is that of Von Stroheim. Born of an old and distinguished Viennese family, the Baron von Stroheim was in another day one of those pictorial young officers who swaggered about the Ring Strasse, partook of café mélanges and fancifully whittled cakes at the smart confectioners’ on the Graben, sunned themselves where the bands play “The Beautiful Blue Danube” and other Strauss waltzes--in brief, lent themselves to that atmosphere, at once sprightly and sentimental, which made the fascination of prewar Vienna. Perhaps he lent himself to it somewhat too thoroughly, for he always smiles when you ask him how he first happened to come to this country. And the smile seems to hint at some youthful escapade.