LIFE AT HOLLYWOOD.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19505, 13 June 1925, Page 8

LIFE AT HOLLYWOOD.

MART PICKFORD AT WORK. A CHAT WITH DOUGLAS. TWO BUSY CELEBRITIES, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks will visit Australia, and possibly Kew Zealand. during an Eastern tour at the end of this year 'says Mr David Worrall, writing from Hollywood), but they will not produce an Australian movie. Mr Fairbanks says Australia, like America, is too young and must wait until it becomes mellow before it will have sufficient interest for the rest of the world. Other “movie” studios at Hollywood, however, do not raise this objection. and several prominent “movie” men declare .that they will screen an Australian story if they can get one good enough. Just now the adjoining studios of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks are the most interesting at Hollywood because of the huge make-believe Eastern and Spanish cities and castles which remain from “The Thief of Bagdad,” or are being used in the film now being made by Fairbanks, “Don Q.” An interview with either of the principals, however, was regarded by the underlings as an impossibility, beep use both Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks are regarded as two of the most inaccessible people in America They are both hard workers, and find it necessary to raise a barrier against the crowds of admirers of both, Mr Worrall, however, succeeded in obtaining a short chat. Douglas Fairbanks talked animatedly while squatting on the verandah rail, at the rear of his office, and occasionally leaped down to make a .little drawing on the : grass to illustrate his meaning. He has an engaging personality. He was dressed in old white flannels and a faded green jersey, and. when he finally left to watch the filming of an act for “Don Q.” it looked almost uncanny to see the lithe figure, so familiar on the screen, walking in real life among the remains of Moorish temples, Spanish streets, and gloomy old castles. “LITTLE ANNIE ROONEY.” Mary was busy acting in a far corner of her allotment, or “lot,” for “Little Annie Rooney,” and all round her was a most realistic section of New York elumdom. It is true the broken old fences were just out of the carpenters’ shop, where they had been made and singed in a furnace by artists, but it took, a close inspection to reveal the sham. Mary wore slum child’s clothes, with her wonderful hair in plaits. Her face was smudged and thick with paint. But even in her paint she was beautiful. To her interviewer she was just like a nice little girl, or a gracious queen. Like a queen, Mary was surrounded by her courtiers, among whom were her French maid and her French teacher, from whom she learns the language in between acts. She had just gone through, for the twelfth time, a fight with a pack of youngsters, and even then the producer was not satisfied with the synchronising. so hot and sticky in this paint,” she said with a smile. Her maid gave her some scent on a handkerchief and she gave her interviewer a sniff to make him feel that he belonged to the party. THE COMING HOLIDAY. “Give the people of Australia my affectionate greetings,” she finally requested. ‘Tell them that I’ve wanted for a long time to visit them, but I’ve been so busy and it is so far away. I want to do three pictures before our next vacation, and then we’ll go to Australia.” When told that she would find Australia or New Zealand a wonderful background for a “movie,” she exclaimed against it. “We always put our work behind us on our holidays,” she declared, “and it costs so much to make a picture away from Hollywood.” Mary has an attractive voice, and neither she nor Douglas Fairbanks have much American accent.