Fart Delusions

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 810, 2 November 1929, Page 27

Fart Delusions

Strange Letters to Actors

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES

The film fan has become an institution about whom stars themselves have varying ideas, but according to Jameson Thomas, the well-known English actor, they

have not yet had to form an actor's defence league against embarrassing fans.

The subject of his views was the peril of the screen idol, whose face attracts thousands of people. "People have a habit of shrugging their shoulders about us and saying: ‘Oh, yes; but he’s a film actor!’” said Mr. Thomas. "X have myself escaped from what promised to be an embarrassing episode. Threat From Woman "After I played in ‘The Farmer’s Wife,’ I received* letter addressed to me at ‘Applegarth Farm, Elstree.’ “That was my ‘farm’ in the picture. It was a rambling kind of letter from a woman In Sussex, who said that I had invited her to marry me and that, among other threats to induce her to consent, I had promised to kill her and all her rabbits.

"She was now willing to marry, and was on her way to me. I admit that it disturbed my sleep at nights. And then there came another letter, in the same writing, addressed to Mill Hill, where I live, and bearing the Mill PI ill postmark. I opened it in some trepidation. It explained that the woman had walked from Sussex to Mill Hill, that she was footsore and weary, and that she thought me a prince of movie villains, because I had married and ‘turned her down.’ "I broke my rule about answering film fan correspondence that day. I did not reply, but gave the letter to the manager of British International Pictures. I believe he consulted a

solicitor. Anyhow, I sighed with profound relief when no more letters came from her. But that was one of the unpleasant exceptions.

Fans in Colonies "I correspond with hundreds of ‘fans’ all over the world, and especially in the Dominions, Australia and South Africa. I have made some excellent friends of both sexes, who write and discuss everything from politics to farming. I make a point of answering every letter in the vein in which it is written. A royal welcome is waiting me in South Africa, I know, from friends I met through my films being screened there. "A woman who ‘recognises’ a film face as that of her long-lost husband can make things uncomfortable for a ‘star’ unless he can prove decisively, as Percy Mormont did, that she has made an error. There is nothing to safeguard us.' One might be playing a part, hero of villain, which suddenly

struck some person in the cinema as being exactly like the behaviour of her lover or husband. They might be very disappointed if they met us. A Meek Villain "For instance, there is Ernest Torrence, one of the screen's most brutal men, who has a habit of trampling on babies and kicking kittens. Actually he is the meekest man alive. He would be ill if he had to swot a fly. Supposing a woman, having seen one of his villainous parts, claimed him as her husband. Wouldn’t she be disappointed ? "Perhaps my best safeguard against any attack on my character is the fact that I have been happily married for two years. No. Mrs. Thomas does not object to my correspondence. Marriage lines are, after all, useful things to bring out in an emergency. They prove something. Many of my fellow English actors are in a similar happy and unassailable position. Even in Hollywood they keep the home together with great success.”