HER OLD FILMS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 8, 9 July 1931, Page 16

HER OLD FILMS

MARY PICKFORD'S FEAR

BUYING THEM UP

Mary Pickfoid of Hollywood dropped into town in a hurried sortie with tho Press at tho Grand Central Terminal and denied tho perennial rumour of an impending'separation fiom Douglas Fairbanks, fcays the "Now York Times." ' Sho confirmed repoits that she was buying up and destroying her old films as fast as sho could, hinted that sho might be almost ready to _rotire, and admitted she was 1 hinting seriously of going into tho cold cream business.

■ Tho '-.screen,- starftsaidftshe would sail on the..Bremen-: tp.,meet Mr. Fairbanks, who has', been -hunting::-big game.''and meeting .Oriental" 0 potentates ■in the East. : At noon sho .talked . with, her husband for twenty, niihutes by transAtlantic telephone frohv her apartment in tho Sherry .Netherlands, the athletic Mr. Fairbanks'-; ..having -just to his: suit ! 6:. : ,at.ftPafk-:;lane'iriftLondon after an.aftefiiodnftbfftgolf.ft ft

Miss Pickford, resplendent in a black coat witlr a leopard skin collar and a bit of glazed straw hat, stepped-from tho Twentieth Century-into a group of newscameramen and reporters. She posed • with good graco and skilfully parried tho questions hurled at hez - . "Douglas'and I have been denying that story for the last ten years," she said with a sniilo, in-answer to tho usual question.' VLet's sco, this is | about time, for the annual or tho &eminnnual denial. I would hardly be on my way to Europe to meet him if'there were any trouble, would I?" '■ HEB WILL. But it I was true, she went on, that sho had objected to handing herself to posterity in tile form of $omo dozens of reels of perishable celluloid. She had, therefore,' inserted a codicil in her will empowering her executor 1o destroy any of her films that wore left after her death. She owns all her recent pictures aud is rapidly tracking down the early one's. "I don't ..want posterity to laugh at mo," Miss Pickford explained. "I believe the motion pictures are in a very crude state now and will be simply laughable in twenty years.

"I doubt if. any of the great actors of the past would bo appreciated today if they had been preserved. And I believe, besides, l that the films have takon more than a step back'with sound. We havo limited ouiselvcs moro than ever. The .rasping noises .of tho talking pictures ,will bo ridiculous to futuro generations.!' Tho 'retirement story camo up, and tho little'actress said: ,

"I've been contemplating retirement for the last ten-years, but 1 haven't done anything'about it yet. I'd like to make one more picture, on tho order of 'Coquette,' and I'm looking for a play that will suit mc."

Miss' Piclcford admitted that there was some truth/in .tlie cold cream story, although-nothing had been arranged definitely. "I don't see any harm in it if a lot of young girl? want to use a kind of cold cream that I happen to like," sho said.