Volume 2 — Our Movie Gossips

Elinor Glyn is pursued by the ghost of “Three Weeks” and the gossips are trying to catch her flirting! Mary and Doug aid Bennie Ziedman in courtship for Marjorie Daw! Rudolph Valentino turns the tables of his separation-wife, Jane Acker! Bill Hart and Jane Novak may get married and live in Spanish “duplex”! My, my, what morsels of gossip we hear from our bevy of Hollywood and Los Angeles correspondents!

Pity Poor Elinor Glyn! Screen folk, suspicious because England’s titian-haired authoress wrote “Three Weeks,” are reported sleuthing around the Los Angeles hotels and cafes and the Lasky studio, trying to catch Mrs. Glyn flirting! Leastwise, the gossips are busy, and the dainty morsel upon which they are chewing is none other than Mrs. Glyn’s purported fondness for dancing.

“Where’s Mrs. Glyn?” they ask around the Lasky studio.

“Oh, somewhere dancing, I suppose,” comes a reply in much the same tone as was used during the war when the ladies danced while friend husband dodged Whiz Bangs in France.

Mrs. Glyn’s famous novel, “Three Weeks,” might have been her worst personal faux pas. At the great Navy ball in the Ambassador hotel, she remained for the most part of the evening on the balcony overlooking the ball-room floor, accompanied by one of her youthful actor admirers, and as her gaze passed over the heads of mere ensigns, four-stripers looked up, but feared to tread, maybe. At least, Mrs. Glyn did not dance with many, according to the correspondent of this great family journal.

Mrs. Glyn is writing a new story for the Lasky company. Of course the Lasky people aren’t telling around just yet what the story is to be about, but the gossips whisper that it’s to be like this:

A girl, born of a Russian dancer mother, and a staid American father, grows up into a beautiful woman. However, everyone who knew of her mother’s wild, wild life, fear the girl will develop into the same sort of female. But she never does, until, way out west, she is bitten by a snake. Then she becomes so, so wild! Just what form her wildness takes, has not yet been ascertained. At any rate, the hero is right there at the climax wishing she wasn’t wild (?) so he heroically sucks the poison from her wound and quiets her nerves again! It’s called “The Great Moment.”

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It seems that since “Mary” and “Doug.” have been married, they have turned into regular old match-makers. They are working on all their friends. Can it be they are just now concentrating on sweet, blonde Marjorie Daw, who is one of Mary Pickford’s most intimate friends?

Marcel De Sano, the dark, handsome and entirely morose Universal director is believed infatuated with the fair Marjorie just now. He recently attended an informal little house dance in Hollywood and lurked in a shadowy corner all evening because Marjorie was not with him. Mary and Doug. are quietly and intensively working overtime to interest Marjorie in Bennie Ziedman, business manager for “Doug.” Now, Bennie is entirely cheerful, he’s a nice unaffected little chap whom everyone likes and they say Doug. pays him some fat salary! Bennie hasn’t his supposed rival’s mysterious South-of-Europe eyes and hair, but he’s an enterprising, live-wire Yankee. Now, Mary and Doug. are a couple of sly, old match-makers. Maybe they know they will spoil everything if they urge Marjorie to choose Bennie, or if they knock any of her other suitors, so they adroitly throw Bennie and Marjorie together on many occasions. Whether Bennie and Marjorie are aware of this or not is a mystery.

Quite recently, Doug. was frightfully interested in purchasing a home at Santa Barbara. Of course, it being a business matter, Ziedman, the business manager, must needs go along to inspect the property. I think they even kidded several hopeful real estate dealers into believing that Mr. Fairbanks was really intending removing his famous family to Santa Barbara. At any rate, it made it possible for them to take Marjorie and Bennie to Santa Barbara for a week-end trip and throw them together for three complete days.

Nothing has developed yet, but all know Bennie’s blush and his chronic suffering from shyness. Perhaps he hasn’t yet roused his courage, or is handsome De Sano getting in his quiet, intense deep stuff? All Hollywood wonders!

* * *

Rudolph Valentino, the handsome young Italian actor who plays the lead in “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” is the husband of Jane Acker, who also plays leads in pictures. Valentino, it will be remembered, once was Joan Sawyer’s dancing partner in vaudeville.

Well, anyhow, the Valentino family separated about a year ago. For a time, Rudolph was heartbroken over the separation and urged his mutual friends to help him make up the difference. Just then, Jane had offers galore from film companies and she was believed upstage and independent, and to have refused to consider Valentino for a second session. Now, lately, the tables have turned. Valentino has made a great hit in the Metro photoplay taken from the biggest seller of last year. He can just about command his own salary in filmdom from now on. And, wife Janie hasn’t had such an easy winner. With dozens of companies ceasing to produce, offers haven’t come bounding in at an alarming rate. Or perhaps Jane didn’t know husband was such a capable actor and could make such a hit? Can it be she at last realizes what a precious jewel she has lost, and that now it is Jane’s turn to hope they make up, and Valentino’s to assert manly indifference toward the fair sex entirely? Hollywood wonders how it will come out.

* * *

Close friends of Bill Hart say he is to marry beautiful Jane Novak, who has played so many leads in Hart pictures. All the evidence seems to point that way. Bill declared through the press that April 2 last, was his final day in motion pictures.

Jane will receive her final decree of divorce within a few weeks now. Bill is building on to his lovely home in Hacienda Park. The Spanish mansion now is divided into two sections with a long roofed corridor running between. The new wing of rooms has lately been added to the lovely mansion. Is Bill going to be a truly modern husband and keep his own sanctum sanctorum at one end of the mansion for himself and allow his wife to have a number of rooms in which she, of her own free will, may roam as she pleases? Most wives would never be bored with the sort of Bill who planned his romantic nest with such nicety!

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Only Four Months

“The Blue Velvet Band,” “The Face on the Barroom Floor,” “Johnnie and Frankie” and scores of other red-blooded poems will appear in the Winter Annual of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, “Pedigreed Follies of 1921-22,” which will be published in October. This year, Whiz Bang’s greatest entertainer will appear four times the regular monthly’s size, and will contain, for the most part, brand-new stuff, but for the benefit of new readers, stories and verse from early issues will be reprinted. Only four months to wait! Don’t write for last year’s Annual! It was sold out within thirty days!

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A Short Story

His young wife laughed till she creaked as he slowly drank his iced tea.

“You are laughing,” he said, wiping his well-formed lips with the hem of the tablecloth. “Why?”

“I just happened to remember,” she said between gasps, “that I put the cyanide of potassium in the iced tea instead of the rat trap!”

It was too droll. He laughed heartily as he slid under the table.

* * *

A Single Woman’s Geography

Cape of Good Hope—Sixteen.

Cape Flattery—Twenty.

Cape Lookout—Twenty-five.

Cape Fear—Thirty.

Cape Farewell—Forty.

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Men

Men are what women marry. They have two feet, two hands, and sometimes two wives, but never more than one collar button, or one idea at a time.

Like Turkish cigarettes, men are all made of the same material, the only difference being that some are a little better distinguished than others.

Generally speaking, they may be divided into three classes, husbands, bachelors, and widowers. Bachelors are a commodity, husbands a necessity, and widowers a luxury, especially when making love.