 |
Back
to Motion Picture Autobiographies
Case
7: [Untitled]
"You're
a bold, brazen hussy," rasped my younger but infinitely wiser brother. I had
just confessed with seemingly incredible naivete that I was pursuing a man,
that I had told the man I was pursuing him, and that I needed some fraternal
assistance.
"My
dear egg, what you mean is that I'm a damned nuisance," I corrected him. He
snorted.
"You're
plain crazy. I told Puppy you'd get funny notions hanging out at that dinky
picture house every Friday night and seeing the impossible impossibly achieved.
Who do you think you are anyway - Clara Bow in `Get Your Man' " [1927]?
"Well,
yes and no," I murmured, and that however ambiguous it may seem, answers the
question of the effect of the movies on me. I didn't see ~ a movie until I was
nine; the country town we lived in didn't have any. i For a year or so, a motion
picture was starkly a series of moving l pictures, stripped of all coherence
and connotation. I preferred them to 1. my uncle's stereopticon set because
they were "alive" and because nobody told me to "pick them up and put them back
in the box." From the first pictures to which my father took me I have vague
recollections of sinister Chinese faces; terrified women fleeing from luring,
staggering men; angry men standing over cowering women; and train wrecks that
- were my idea of "lovely messes."
When
I was about eleven, my father allowed me to visit the "houses of iniquity" somewhat
more often, but confined my diet to Mary Pickford, Marguerite Clark, Charlie
Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and other staples. I never conceived any great fondness
for any of them except Charlie Chaplin, and to this day he has been a constant
source of delight to my weary heart. I liked none of them well enough to care
if Puppy saw fit to restrain my attendance.
Then
I sinned. Puppy packed me off to see Mary Pickford in "Little Lord Fauntleroy"
[1921], but neglected to go along and steer me in the right direction. With
an innate tendency for coming out at the wrong place, I emerged two hours later
from having seen Anita Stewart in "The Yellow Typhoon" [1920]. She had played
a dual role assisted by a blonde wig, and she had done exciting things the like
of which I had never dreamed. She became my idol. Gradually, sometimes with
and sometimes without my father's permission, I became devoted to Priscilla
Dean, Wallace Reid, Tom Mix, Bill Hart, Betty Compson, and Olive Thomas. By
this time I was quite capable of following a plot, but I was still so untutored
in the ways of the movies, that I actually suffered in my fear that the villain
would finish chewing up the table between him and the heroine before the hero
arrived. O height of innocence!
Most
pictures are comedies to me now, but then, when I was in grammar school, pictures
of the type that I have mentioned were the only outlet for a sense of adventure
that was no longer dormant but that was necessarily "playing dead." I would
never have considered running away from home; I was far too passive a youngster
for that, but my desire to attend any kind of movie disturbed my father greatly.
Only once in my life have I seen him too amazed to punish me for my misdemeanors.
I wanted to see Anita Stewart; he ordered me to stay home and practice on the
violin. I remember ripping all the strings off my violin, snatching the hair
out of my bow, and scattering everything in the middle of the floor. That incident
marked the crisis in my desire for escape. I realized sulkily that it was futile
for me to consider emulating Anita Stewart's escapades. With a stubbornness
that amazed even me, I decided never to see another picture show. It seems that
I was fool enough to insist upon making some sort of a melodramatic gesture;
and, strangely, I alluded to my theatrical resolution for a year.
When
I was fourteen I began again, with a gang of boys ranging from eight to fifteen
years of age. Every Friday night we supplied ourselves with chewing gum, popcorn,
and peanuts and stampeded the nearest movie house, familiarly known as the Dinky.
We followed the serials regularly, but now I was much too blase to find them
other than amusing. We never failed to see a "Western," but I found myself incapable
of taking them seriously. Fred Thomson and Tom Mix were the favorites. Lon Chancy
supplanted Anita Stewart. I can laugh at him now, but I couldn't then.
Alberta
Vaughn was our favorite serial star. She gave me an inkling; of what I could
do with that sense of adventure of mine. Alberta had a j good time in her own
back yard. I confess with infinite amusement that the good Catholic Germans
in the neighborhood were relieved when I came to college. All summer this long
- legged girl in her teens, who'_ should have been learning to bake and sew
for her future husband, ran wild, climbing fences and trees and telephone poles,
and riding on the gasoline tank of a yellow puddle - jumper. I discovered that
garter snakes were harmless, and the members of the gang strutted around with
snakes folded up in their pockets when they weren't tying them in knots, around
their necks. When I came away to college instead of getting married (of course
there was not hope for one as insane as me, but I might have decently become
an old maid) I definitely proved that I had no sense.
Naturally,
I couldn't exist indefinitely without living affected by the low element in
the movies. The first impression that I conceived was an extraordinarily simple
- minded one. The girl's part was extreme haughtiness toward the man. It would
never do to give him the idea that she might be so unmaidenly as to waste a
second thought on him. The hero, however, knew better, and persevered in all
manner of bravery. Finally, by rescuing her from some danger that two grains
of forethought would have kept her out of, he rejoiced in having her subside
in his masterful arms. There was a boy in the Gang just about my age. We had
a sentimental hallucination after this fashion. My role of haughtiness was easy;
his "brave deeds" consisted of bossing the smaller brats, playing mumblety -
peg with amazing dexterity, climbing out of the second story window of his barn,
and walking the back fence as skillfully as a cat. I never got to the point
of subsiding in his arms, although I used to lie awake nights planning situations
that would justify my doing so. Until I was seventeen, I firmly believed that
I would be a ruined woman if I ever let a man kiss me, and all the desires that
the movies aroused were counterbalanced by my father's lectures.
Having
recovered from my first impression of love, I became interested in the sexual
aspects of it. I had seen "The Sheik" [1921] earlier and found only the desert
warfare interesting. The next time I saw Rudolph Valentino, I was interested
in his technique. Again I changed my favorites. John Gilbert, Ramon Novarro,
Gloria Swanson, Richard Barthelmess, Norma Shearer, and Ronald Colman were the
stars of the pictures I preferred to see. I was never able to imagine myself
in love with any of the male leads, but I was in the habit of picturing boys
that I knew playing the roles of certain stars while I took the female lead.
t There's no sense denying that I was tremendously curious about this kissing
business. I stubbornly set out to find where the attraction lay. I tried putting
myself in the place of the heroine while the picture was going on, but still
I was unsatisfied. I'd inveigle my boyfriends into the time, the place, and
the mood only to remember my father's countless admonitions. Then I gave the
pesky thing up, but by this time I was beginning to find myself rather amusing.
Now,
I can go for weeks without feeling the urge. My sense of adventure is not so
blatant as formerly. I have filed it down to braggadocio and usually content
myself with avoiding doing consistently what is expected of me. Occasionally
I "go on a tear;" the incident of pursuing the man quite brazenly was one. He
never blinked an eyelash or misunderstood. If I'm eating peppermints on the
elevated, I toss the conductor one if I feel so inclined. He makes a hundred
if he catches it and doesn't ask me for my telephone number. I still frequent
the movies in a more or less desultory fashion, and sometimes I find beautiful
photography, or a fine bit of interpretation, or genuinely clever funniness.
Their infinite capacities for molding and crystallizing the thoughts and ideals
of the people will find intelligent direction in time.
|
|
