SOUL MATES OF THE SCREEN

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 285, 2 December 1925, Page 22

SOUL MATES OF THE SCREEN

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS. John Worth, the famous Hollywood producer has raised to stardom and married Gloria Kaill, only to find that the beautiful actress' love is given to Russell Blame, a great lover of the films. Worth refuses to divorce Gloria, and introduces to Hollywood a new star, Rhoda Mirande, whom he discovered in the orchestra of a little cafe. Rhoda is tlie daughter of Lucie- .Mirande, a wandering artist, who leaves her at the age of eleven to lie brought up in a Paris convent.

• CHAPTER V. At eighteen, Klioda Mirande thanked the Good Sisters for their mothering patience, for imparted graces, and two acquired arts; then wandered on. Strangely, none of her father's talent with paint and brush was mirrored, perhaps because she received no encouragement. Lucien Mirande, tlie murderer, must be forgotten, the Good Sisters determined, his legacy stopped sharply as the guillotine nipped his neck. To sing, to play a violin was art enough; thus endowed, Rhoda felt equal' to tills undiscovered world despite the Mother Superior's dissuasion. So her feet turned towards Paris; satchel in hand, hair a purpling plait, she descended the •hill while the Mother Superior watched and prayed through the iron grille. "She is a child who/ walks in sleep. God spare her the awakening." Nothing was spared. A voice, sweet enough in psalmody, lacked liquid passion of opera, the verve, the rittle-rattle—bang-bang of jazz. Parisian managers, persuaded after many months to hear her, decided that. During those months she existed, barely existed, by her fingers' cunning; rich American women gave her fine laces to mend; with one she travelled to London and stayed there, strong in a new dream that wove about her violin. The concert stage fascinated, tantalised, was unattainable. She had not the money to undo the kindly, expressionless damage of worthy nuns. She played in a greasy Soho cafe,- gained a dash of technique, progressed—if change and travel be progress—from one restaurant, one city, one country to another; a_d as her father's eyes had contained two moods, so two governed her

The men she met were legion and alike. They presented no mystery, no temptation although they offered much. She seemed to understand them so thoroughly; she, could have changed places and made their overtures with better grace. Inevitably Rhoda answered in terms of sympathetic understanding and negation as'though regretting inability to subscribe to some worthy cause. In consequence acquaintances never became friends, and love remained an abstract, occasionally considered in the same way that she wondered what she might do with a million dollars. Simply she didn't know. Both seemed beyond possibility. .-At twenty-five, to Tios Angeles, imprisoned between mountains and sea. For fifteen dollars a week and supper free, Rhoda Mirande' helped a three-piece orchestra to make music loud enough to subdue kitchen clatter, low enough to preserve the timbre of voices cajoling across tables-a-deux, whereon single, short-stemmed lamps flooded' silver and napery yet shaded faces mysteriously— that a woman might lie with her tongue and be not betrayed. It was a furtive restaurant, a place of innocence and guilt. Here from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. she scraped her bow; then, emerging to clean night, shook herself to dislodge from hair and clothes unholy contagions of scent and smoke.

John Worth waited. She brushed liis proffered card aside and drew-her worn coat tighter. "Thank you, but I prefer to be just a musician." "I am offering you an opportunity to be something else." Rhoda Mirande laughed her infinite understanding. "No, not that," Worth corrected quietly.and urged his card on her. "I am a motion picture director. I dropped in here to-night, hoping to find a type." "So I represent the women you ex-' pected to infest this place?" "No. Thaf's just it. You don't." Worth took time to study Rhoda. Speech and bearing betokened more than surface polish. She had inherited the world and could chooße her own .strata, taking colour of each, yet retaining individuality. Had he found her cloistered Worth would have accepted such condition as calmly as he did the cafe of cajolement. To attain the sphere he planned she needed only the inspiration of her own beauty, now repressed. Dress her, dress her hair, unfurl tight braids, quell disorder and build all high; show one goal, one ambition; inspire her; watch her leap!

The first Sunday morning after their meeting they motored to a deserted studio where. "Worth made screen tests; the next, they went to inspect. Because Rhoda wore no make-up the lens discovered unseen blemishes and magnified careless coiffure abominally. One minute and Rhoda was destroyed. "Don't show mc any more," she begged. 'Tm hideous." "Wait a while. If this hurts, don't look until I tell you. There's one Shot I want you to see, though. . . . Now!" Her hair had been drawn back tightly, flattened to her head. An oval, shorn and sexless as a skull, filled the screen brutally, interminably. Worth leaned forward, then drew back well content. " The woman who can reveal her forehead and still be worth' loking at is more than beautiful," he said. "You'll find an evening dress in the dressingroom. Put it on and call mc. I want to make you up and play around with your hair for some more tests." It puz_led Rhoda to know a man as she came to know Worth during the next two" months. He ignored externals now; insteal counselled, analysed, and, in that frank way of his, revealed to Rhoda pictures of herself so true that they shocked, • disturbed, eventually helped < her to" understand. She still played at the cafe, tenanted the stuffy hoarding house by Worth's instructions. TO surprise others, a woman must surprise herself. Rhoda's transformation when made must be instantaneous—a C °__ street' lamp, blear in fojr which banished tired houses and muffled noise of night, witnessed their contract. Ihey had walked from the cafe, Worthy as though he already had tramped far; Rhoda conscious of the man's rcsrret. The lamp's thin radiance .thinned his face. He nodded" towards the stoop and clouded doorway of Rhoda's home. "You'll be glad to leave?" "More than glad,", she answered. " You've opened up something for mc, too big for thanks."

By GAYNE DEXTER.

" Someone else once told mc that," ho muttered more to himself than to her. "In the end you may not thank mc either. Really I have done little, iliss Mirande." " It is more than anyone else has. And you've never said why." " Oh, I just like to dream and create, and see the limits or infiniteness of my creations. That sounds absurd. But take-yourself for instance. If I am the means of awakening in you one spark that yemr children and your children's children will develop into flame I succeed. If there is no spark, it is my failure, not yours." Rhoda managed the question she had feared to attempt before. " Must not both successes and failures be paid for?" . Worth answered from a long silence. "I know what you are trying to ask. Did you ever hear the story of Pgymalion who loved the ivory statue of the maiden Galatea? I have already created my Galatea? Coming right down to movies, Miss Mirand, you are a business speculation. If you reach the point where I can use you as a star in my own productions, we both gain. If you are even moderately successful in other pictures, pay me.back as you'd pay a booking agent. Ten per cent out of your salary. But only until whatever I invest in you is wiped out. That releases you from all obligations. We'll forget about failures, Rhoda Mirande," weighing the name. "Rhoda Mirande, distinctive, exotic, mystic." * "And more or less fraudulent," she •suggested. "No; merely another illusion. Hollywood loves them." Chuckling now, lie guessed the titles some publicity department would bestow. "Rhoda Mirande — the Living Sphinx! Rhoda Mirande—the Vamping Venus! Rhcda Mirande—Sorceress of the Screen! Can you live up to any of those ?" "Give mc the proper setting and I'll be the Original Sin of the Cinema," she laughed with him. He studied her once more, made and discarded a decision. "The setting should be a lair. And yet " The maid, a motherly soul, entered, and busied herself with unguent jar 3, while waters purled distantly. "Do you mind telling mc your name?" Rhoda asked. "I have forgotten it." Crinkled lips answered peacefully. "Everyone has forgotten it. I am Mammy Gastin, the first 'mother' in moving pictures. I was one of the" old Kinegraph Company's stars in 1908." Rising, Rhoda gently took a, veingrown hand. "But why do you do this?" "Movie people didn't earn much then, and I was worn out when the big-money days came along. The boys and girl's wanted to help mc; they thought I'd be happy in a quiet home of my own in the hills; so they bought mc one." Mammy Gastin shook her head and confessed to the carpet. "I just couldn't be happy away from it all. I love the smell of the movies. If you're a trouper, you will, too."