STARS AT THE BEACH.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 255, 27 October 1928, Page 5 (Supplement)

STARS AT THE BEACH.

CAMPS, CLUBS AND BUNGALOWS. HAMON XOVARRO'S PRIVATE THEATRE. ELINOR GLYN'S PERSONALITY. (By D. M. MONTGOMERY.) (Copyright to the "Auckland Star.") Week-ends and many a fine evening after work in the studios fiadi the Holly-' wood stars up on the coast at one of the beach clubs, cruising in yachts big and little, riding, hiking, hunting and living in camp, their own bungalows, or a beach club. There are any number of beach clubs up at Santa Monica with jazz bands and dancing, and elaborate searchlight arrangements for floodlighting the sea for the convenience of nocturnal bathers —and also just for the sake of the fairylike effects. Norma Talmadge spends a lot of her time in her lovely beach place at Santa Monica. Harold Lloyd and his charming wife, Mildred Davis—she used to be his leading lady—are at their Beaside home every moment they can spare, too. Tom Mix runs off to his farm on Catalina Island whenever he can get away. Bebe Daniels has a beach house right on the sand. She works hard, but you find her there every Sunday, right into the winter. Miss Daniels' home was th« first one I saw. She invited me up for Sunday, and I joined half-a-dozen others —she has hosts of friends. We found her in a dashing beach costume — a white, cool, sailor blouse and wide trousers, sandals on her bare feet, basking on the timber terrace. In the big living room a cosy fire was burning. We changed into bathing suits at once, and spent the rest of the day in them, alternately sunning on the warm beach ajid coming into the bungalow for a sandwich—and Bebe's sandwiches are not the sort you get at station buffets—and

running out again to plunge into the surf in the little canoes with rubber balloon things on the sides to keep them from tipping over.

Ramon Novarro I met at a party up at the Gables Club at Santa Monica one week-end. He asked me to dine and see an amateur performance in the private theatre in his house in Los Angeles. (He is one of the film stars who do not live up in the hills district.) This was somewhat of an honour, for Novarro, a Mexican saturated in Spanish traditon and custom, had all the exclusiveness of the Latin-American.

He had a special Mexican dinner of hot seasoned dishes for my benefit. The show afterwards was in Spanish, and so I did not understand the allusions in the little revue. But the songs were sweet, the dancing remarkably good.

Ramon himself sat at the piano—he is an accomplished musician—and sang some old French love songs and Mexican ballads. I gathered from the general laughter of the little crowd of his friends about me in the comfortable opera armchairs that the ballads were comic.

I had a talk with Novarro afterwards, Bitting on> a sort of roof garden which we reached upstairs at the back of the stage. He struck me as a demure and earnest young man. He is not of the fast-living set. Apropos a studio quarrel I had mentioned, he remarked: "It isn't ambition that makes trouble, it is rivalry, which in small minds breeds envy and malice. Here in Hollywood the people who are struggling are happy; it is only those who have achieved who are discontented.

"When I was working as an extra and in small parts, I was always happy, because I was always living in the future. I always looked forward to the time—which is now—when I could be free to do great things. But I am no freer now to do them than I was then."

He gave me a singularly vivid insight into the' realities of the motion picture game. Thalberg, the producer, had outlined a great story for him—"Romeo and Juliet"—but he didn't know whether it would come off.

Ronald Colman, the lean young Englishman who made his name in "Beau Geste" and "A Night of Love," would make a better Romeo, I think. He has more "body" than Novarro—a depth, a wistful look, that the Mexican youth, who is hard, like all Latin-Americans, does not possess.

Ronald Colman and Richard Barthelmess, outdoor men both, are dear friends, and spend week-ends together at the latter's beach cabin, when they are in Hollywood—both are often in the East now. I motored over there one Sunday, with Dick Powell, and was taken surf-bathing. The three piled on to a' surf plank, which was hitched to the stern of a motor boat. The motor boat let off at a terrific pace. They survived, balancing precariously, the spray dashing furiously over them, for maybe half a mile; and then they fell off with roars of spluttering laughter into the blue Pacific. I was in the motor boat, havinsr declined with thanks an invitation to join the others on the plank. . I had tea with Elinor GMvn one afternoon and we .talked about Hollywood, love, happiness* and "It." Mme. Glyn does manage to make Hollywood talk

about her. This "It" is still a topic of conversation everywhere. No one knows quite what it means —and, frankly, I don't believe clever, subtle, Mme. Glyn does either. But if you haven't got "It," you aren't interesting. That is about how it goes.

The novelist —she is a director and scenarist now, more than a novelist, and seems to have settled in Hollywood, which is making a lot of money for her —lives in a very beautifully decorated apartment at the top of the opulent Ambassador Hotel, a mammoth place, with some 30 shops on its ground floor, 16 lifts and great public reception and writing rooms and lounges on each floor. Here, she escapes the traffic noise 3 of the boulevards. It is an exquisite nest.

She has a great reputation for genirosity in Hollywood. She has befriended. may a lame dog. One o-f her remarks has struck very brightly in my mind. "Happiness is love, perfect love. But perfect love is so rare—a miracle of spiritual, physical and mental blending —that one can dismiss it when one is talking in the ordinary way about the search for happiness. Certainly happiness is not to be found in money or fame or success. I think that it means giving, helping, doing something for someone else. That is where real 'happiness lies." I wondered, as I sipped her China tea, how many of the rich stars of Hollywood would subscribe to that sentiment to the extent of putting it into practice. Success is apt to make so many of them as hard as nails. But they have their generosities. The line club house for extra girls in Hollywood owes its existence to the generosity of the wealthier members of the film colony.

Later on I was Mme. Glyn's guest at a party at the Coconut Grove at the Ambassador's. The Grove has a dais floor, which can be engaged for a private party. Being slightly raised from the main dancing floor, it overlooks it and makes quite an effective private preserve. This preserve Mme. Glyn engaged. A contretemps occurred. Mme. Glyn is not an easy-going hostess, one of those casual women who say carelessly to friends: "Bring -whom you like," or issue invitations broadcast. It is an

honour and a privilege to be madame's (they call her madame in Hollywood) guest; and she is quite conscious of it.

On the main dance floor that night Bessie Love was dancing, the daintiest, prettiest girl you ever 6aw. Bessie saw a private party on the dais floor and' a lot of her friends. So, in democratic American fashion, she gave forth cherry greetings and joined in with her escort.

Mme. Glyn did not recognise Bessie Love. All she knew was that strangers had intruded. Breach of etiquette! She sent for the head waiter, and told him to request the intruders to leave. They were flabbergasted. But they left. Then someone with more tact and savoir faire than the rest, whispered to Mme. Glyn that that was Bessie Love. Whereupon Mme. Glyn was flabbergasted—and sent a polite message with her apologies and an invitation to the offending couple to present themselves upon the dais again. Then Bessie was presented to Mme. Glyn. County England looked ait democratic America. A smile broke. -Atid all was well.

Bessie Love gads about. as much as anyone and dances the Charleston and the Blues better than almost anyone, little Sally O'Neill and Joan Crawford perhaps excepted.

I went up with a couple of other men to call on her one fine morning. As we arrived at her pretty, bungalow we heard the gay twanging of a nlml»u. Bessie, in sports shirt and short skirt and fiat-heeled sports shoes, was reclining gracefully along the sill of her wide open window, strumsiing away in the eunshine.

Mme. Glyn is the only author who has so impressed her personality on Hollywood that they not only allow her to have the free run of the set, but permit her to interfere and give orders. I found this out when I went to see them making a film for which she wrote the scenario. Sitting beside the director, she watched every move. "On© moment," she insisted. The director obediently held up and turned to her —and he is usually a Czar of -a director. Madame didn't like the action there. Clara Bow, of the wild orange hair and ultra-short elsirts —Flaming Flapper, Hollywood calls her—should react in this way, not that way, to this particular situation.

Clara Bow reacted-madame's way. Mme. Glyn dresses in grey for the set and she has a charming office at the studio in green—"restful and at the same time inspirational," she explained to me.

Clara Bow celebrated her choice as an Elinor Glyn heroine by buying a more dignified riding habit than the one she usually wears—white breeches and a boy's jacket. And she gave a little breakfast party to celebrate it, and then we tJI went riding. She looks well on a horse. She has a quaint home —a biggish, low place, with gardens, arbors, terraces, tree-shaded patios—'laid out round a central low towar, with ■ Norman-castle effect, with turret and battlemente complete. She has been reported engaged more times than almost any other gijrl, but when I left Hollywood it was said that she really " was going to' marry * this time. The man is a famous director.