HOLLYWOOD, beautiful little suburb of Los Angeles and famous as
America’s leading movie hot-house, is running pretty nowadays with its
many wondrous autos and, Oh! those numerous and naughty little,
palpitating bungalow intrigues.
The Mary Pickford-Doug Fairbanks romance, is almost old stuff with Mary
and Doug on a bit of a honeymoon in New York and London, while forty
eleven representatives of the daily papers accompanied them as far as
Arizona to watch the Moki Indians get their first glimpse of the screen.
One of the merriest rumors just now extant regards another member of the
Pickford family, to-wit, Lottie. Lottie is a live wire in the parlance
of the country clubs and cafes. In southern California, until the
“prohis” bore down, the word “country club” meant one of the nightly
places of revelry, stretched all the way from Vernon to the beach. These
places are somewhat on the blink now, but it has been known that a stray
“shot in the arm” has been seen to take effect. In fact a wagon load
recently was taken to the police station from Vernon.
But getting back to Lottie. For a considerable number of moons the night
black eyes of Mary’s sister beamed favorably upon a certain handsome
Apollo of the screens. It wasn’t a case of, wherever Mary went the boy
was sure to go. It was a case of, wherever Lottie went she took the boy
along. At ball games, country clubs, bungalow dances, midnight
revelries, Lottie and her lad were together. Then came dame rumor, and
she is a busy dame in these parts. Lottie’s man was playing with
another. So far as the public was concerned that was about all there was
to it.
But know ye, that Fatty Arbuckle, Roscoe he wishes to be called of late,
rented the handsome home on West Adams street, formerly occupied by
Theda Bara. In fact it is said that Fatty sleeps in the vampire’s bed,
which may or may not, weave his dreams with vampires and their dangerous
moods.
Fatty recently gave a party. He gives a lot of them. There were picture
girls galore and the wine flowed red and every other way, for Roscoe is
no derelict of a host.
It didn’t take twenty-four hours for Dame Rumor and her children to
scatter the news that “there was some ruction among the ‘Janes’ out to
Arbuckle’s joint last night.”
Just how it started was lost in the hurry of getting down to the
absolute certainty that Lottie Pickford and another girl staged one of
the prettiest scraps seen since Charlie Chaplin tried to lick his wife’s
manager at the Alexandria hotel recently. In fact the efforts of Charlie
as a pugilist are said to have been nil compared with the flavor that
Lottie and her rival put up. It wasn’t exactly Lottie’s rival either, so
the story goes.
Seems that Lottie and another girl were talking in one of the bedrooms
regarding the “cat” who had vamped the temporary affections of Lottie’s
former beau. A third girl was lying, supposedly asleep. She arose
suddenly and challenged, in behalf of her vamping friend what Lottie had
said. Then the riot started. One of our well-known artists stated next
day that it was the best he had seen since Young George and Steve Dalton
first met at Jack Doyle’s. Anyone taking a good look at Lottie would
opine that the girl, when angry, might be worth a bet in the real money
book.
Not much has been heard of Jack Pickford since he became mixed up in the
war time mess. It was no Hollywood secret that Jack was not an over
welcome visitor at the home of Mary and her mother for some time. Things
may have been calmed over since Mary settled down with Doug, or rather
tried to settle down with him.
Olive Thomas, Jack’s wife, recently returned from New York and Jack met
her with a Whiz Bang of a new car. Jack claims it cost him bucks to the
number of ten thou. Speaking of automobiles, Roscoe Arbuckle recently
received a specially designed motor car that is a humdinger. The price
is reported at $25,000. If it didn’t cost that much it sure looks it.
Thousands of people viewed the monstrosity for a week in the windows of
the motor works where it was turned out.
Of course the machine is simply to be used as an ad for the prolific
Fat. Some of the last words in autos have been seen around here, but
they all faded to a sickly, measly brown when Arbuckle’s came into
prominence. Arbuckle says he intends dazzling Broadway with it. What may
help some, if he uses it in New York, is the license number, which was
displayed while the car stood on exhibition here. The number was “606.”
“United Artists,” the “Big Four” and “Associated Directors” are familiar
terms here. Speaking of United Artists, we must pause at mention of
Charlie Chaplin and Mildred Harris. They are not united, not so anyone
can notice.
Shortly after their marriage last year, the doll-like little Mildred and
her mother were the observed of all observers at the fashionable St.
Catherine hotel, the Wrigley’s island palace at Catalina. Wistful
indeed, appeared the little girl as she sat day after day gazing across
the Pacific blue whence fly the famous Chaplin hydroplanes from the
mainland. The hydroplanes are a venture of Sid Chaplin. Charlie is not
in on the deal, though he makes the air trip occasionally.
But never did Charlie appear to the knowledge of the vastly interested
hotel habitues. Ever with her slender, keen looking mother, the bride
waited in vain for her Lochinvar. Occasionally she danced with a
visiting picture personage. But Charlie—he came not.
Friends—friends always spread bad news—whispered that something was
wrong. The St. Catherine seemed a haven, welcome or not, of disconsolate
women. On the broad veranda sat the woman discarded by Earl Williams.
Inquisitive society dames raised their very proper eyebrows as they
passed and the mournful looking girl appeared as lonesome as any girl
could feel, even though Earl had, through his lawyers, handed over a
settlement admitted to be at least $40,000.
Charlie Chaplin has all the earmarks of a rather distraught young man.
He lives at the Los Angeles Athletic club. From his studio comes the
word that though he finally is working at another picture, his people
never know whether it will be a week or a month before he shows up to
don the old derby and the familiar shoes.
The fight between Chaplin and Manager Young of Mildred Chaplin was
funny. Young is fat and the idea of Chaplin trying to use his fists is
funnier than anything he ever did in pictures. Just what the real cause
of combat was hasn’t been thoroughly dissected by the scandal mongers.
Young says he was trying to protect Mrs. Chaplin from annoyance by her
husband. Chaplin says Young is a big stiff and that he (Chaplin)
certainly never annoyed his wife. He hasn’t—in public—because they never
appear together.
Just how the divorce proceedings will work out nobody knows. It is true
that Chaplin wishes he was out of it. It is believed that Mrs. Chaplin’s
mother is somewhat of a business woman and will have considerable to say
before the bones of the affair have rattled their last.
Fairbanks and Chaplin are very close friends. One of the newspapers
recently published a picture of Mary, Doug and Charlie, purporting to be
one taken immediately after the marriage, when Chaplin went to the train
with them as they left for an alleged brief scurry to some quiet haunt.
As a matter of fact the picture was one taken at the time the trio were
leaving on their famous Liberty Loan jaunt, upon which momentous trip
Doug and Mary are supposed to have “fallen” for each other good and
hard.
Poor Owen Moore has become a public goat. The former husband of Mary is
a likable enough fellow, quiet and with a winning way that can’t
restrain the undoubtable sadness which lurks in a pair of wistful eyes.
By the way, ninety-nine women out of a hundred probably would “kotow” to
Moore so far as looks are concerned, rather than to Fairbanks. Moore is
well set up and handsome in a masculine way. Doug never could be called
a thing of beauty and most of his cowboys display better physical form
than the agile laugh-maker.
All the testimony given by Mary at Minden would tend to indicate that
the hour in which Owen did not inject a lot of booze into himself, was a
rare hour indeed. If Mary asked Owen to come back to her as often as she
says she did, figuring he was the lusher as she sets forth, then indeed
Owen, if he loves the girl, hasn’t much of a kick coming.
The general opinion appears to be that Moore had the love of Mary very
much at heart but through his tendency for liquor, finally lost out.
Those who really know Mary Pickford swear by the character of the girl.
Those who really know Moore can’t dislike him. They simply figure he was
his own worst enemy and that in the desperate moments of her mental
torture the girl grew to care for the light-hearted Fairbanks and his
blithesome way.
Poor Owen is just now figuring in a suit for damages brought by someone
from whom he rented a house. The owners claim that everything was in a
mess when they came back and that an overflow of booze has considerably
depreciated the furniture.
Another Hollywood “Secret” has been shattered. It seems that a perfectly
good married man went on a visit to his “Secret” and before the evening
was done he was driving a joyful bunch of other men, with their
“Secrets,” in his latest buzz wagon.
Everything would have been O. K. but for the fact that the happy hubby
permitted his own “Secret” to sit in the back seat while helping the
other revelling benedicts to deliver their “Secrets” home. It appears
that the “Secret” of the car-owner went to sleep in her recess in the
rear of the car.
The night was foggy. So was the brain of this “perfectly good” married
man. He parked the car in his garage, forgetting all about the “Secret”
lying asleep in the back seat. Next morning a “perfectly trusting” wife
was surprised, when she stepped onto the bungalow rear, to see a
“perfectly wild Secret” dashing madly out of the garage, clad in
anything but up-to-date morning garb.
The betting in Hollywood is 100 to 1 that Nevada prosecutors or
politicians do not break the Fairbanks-Pickford marital relations. Los
Angeles herself—that is the heart of it—says, “Let them alone. They’re
married, aren’t they, however they managed to do it?”
Maybe Los Angeles prognosticators are wrong. Maybe Nevada means
business. But the prevalent sentiment is that, unless their love-ship
hits the rocks some other way, Mary and Doug may woo and coo until
dooms-day—except at such times as they see fit to invite the newspapers
en masse to dinner or load down autos and Pullman cars with scribes who
would fain not invade their privacy.
Hanging and wiving go by destiny. For every Jonathan Wild there is
somewhere an adequate John Ketch; from the ends of the earth, noose and
neck rush to meet each other. For every Jack there is some compliant
Jill; from all the plains and valleys the couples scramble up to the
difficult ark of matrimony. Sheba travels to Solomon and the event is
set down in the book of Kings. Caesar rules over Rome and Cleopatra over
Egypt, but the wet sundering leagues cannot separate them.
Nat Goodwin, it is true, never married Lillian Russell, but the universe
felt that something had gone amiss. So says an American journalist—one
of the kind who knows everything. He continues: Destiny had fallen down.
How then should Mary Pickford and Douglas fail to swing into the orbit
calculated from the beginning? If she is not queen of her particular
Sheba, Sheba never had a queen. If he is not the gayest of Solomons, at
least he has written a book, and unquestionably he rules his jovial
dominion in his own right. In this wedding the royal line crosses. It is
as expected and as gratifying as the conclusion of a feature film.
Obstacles have kept the prince and princess apart, but obstacles do not
last forever. After the conflict there must be peace, and before the
final curtain there must be a happy ending. How evil are those
dispositions which interpret this amalgamation of splendours in economic
terms; which hint that the joint revenue of the pair—to judge by figures
made elaborately public—will be three times what he earned before; which
calculate that his income will actually pay her income tax.
* * * * *
Beneath her feet a trace of sleet,
Alas, she seemed to slip,
She tried to stop, she fell kerflop,
We heard a startling rip.
A saint might cuss and make a fuss,
By righteous anger stirred,
But oh, to think, a maiden pink
Would use that awful word.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_=French Convict Curse=_
_Rev. “Golightly” has favored_ THE WHIZ BANG _with another able
article for the September issue. It is a story on the practice of
witchcraft, with its revolting rites, throughout the West Indies and
the three Guianas. The story holds the reader’s attention from start
to finish and gives an exposé that would put the ouija board and
clairvoyant mysticisms to shame. Get the September number and read
Morrill’s story of the human hyena which kidnaps children, the goat
without horns, and the “loupgarou.”_—THE EDITOR.
=BY REV. “GOLIGHTLY” MORRILL.=
Pastor of People’s Church, Minneapolis, Minn.
POOR devil! He was an escaped convict from French Guiana—haggard,
half-starved, barefooted; his shirt torn as if to show his torn heart,
his trousers ragged; bareheaded, blue eyes, a mat of brown hair, and a
neat mustache and beard, reminiscent of the Parisian boulevards. He
didn’t look half so ferocious as his black, British gorilla of a guard,
who dragged him on our boat, and later transferred him to the train
bound for Georgetown, Demerara, to languish in jail till the French mail
steamer arrived to take him back captive to Cayenne. I took pity on him,
gave him some fruit, chocolate and money, wished him a bon voyage, and
was sorry I couldn’t give him his liberty as well.
French Guiana is a penal colony, a prison of 35,000 square miles,
bounded by Dutch Guiana, Brazil and the Atlantic ocean. Out of a
population of some 40,000, 10,000 are convicts. While there are exports
of balata and phosphates, the principal ones are gold, cocoa, hides,
rosewood and rosewood oil, the last shipped to France as a substitute
for attar of roses. But the glitter of the gold is dimmed by the shadow
of the prison, and above the fragrance of the rosewood rises the stench
of political putridity, convict crime and corruption.
From her earliest history, Cayenne has furnished an inspired chapter for
the Devil’s Bible, written with finger of fire in ink of blood. In the
first of the seventeenth century the settlers not only had before them
the interesting fate of being massacred and devoured by the cannibal
Indians, but a providential blessing in the form of their mad commander,
Sieur de Bretigny, who, not satisfied with torturing the 400 colonists
with gibbet, gallows and wheel, amused himself by instituting pleasures
called “Purgatory” and “Hell,” in which he forced them to relate even
their dreams as to a father confessor; if he were displeased, he
maltreated and killed them. The next batch of settlers mutinied en route
from France, and on arriving here so angered the Indians by enslaving
and plundering them that the natives forced them to take refuge in a
fort where Famine and Disease were the red man’s best allies.
Succeeding colonization companies were failures. Mismanagement and
Misfortune were president and vice-president of the ventures. For
example, in 1763, 12,000 volunteer colonists came to French Guiana, with
the promise of free lands, which proved to be free graves. By 1765,
11,000 died. They landed and lived in mud and water; there were no tools
for tilling the soil, yet they had a shop to make skates in this
equatorial clime; drinking water there was none, probably because they
thought it would rain or they might be able to get wine; rivers rose,
and not knowing how to dike them, those who lived through the fevers
died from the floods. Such colonial schemes are finely satirized by
Daudet in his “Port Tarascon.” At best, the French are the worst
colonizers, whether here or in Tahiti, Marquesas, Caledonia, Panama,
Algeria, Canada and Martinique. Cayenne next became the criminal
cesspool of France, costing the lives of hundreds and 800,000 livres.
During the French Revolution men were arrested in Paris, paraded before
the populace like wild beasts in cages, then shipped to Cayenne, the
white man’s grave. Of 600 Royalists transported here and landed on the
Sinnamaire River without shelter or food, two-thirds perished. Often
they were brutally murdered before reaching there, according to De
Vigny’s story of “Laurette or the Red Seal.” The country was dubbed the
“dry guillotine,” and it is said that a prisoner who had the choice
between it and the blood-wet one in Paris, chose the latter.
In 1852 free transportation was offered as a “favor” and more than 3,000
accepted. In 1854 Napoleon III, that third-class Napoleon, made Cayenne
a penal colony for his political enemies, as if he hadn’t already enough
crimes to atone for. Between 1852 and 1867, 18,000 exiles were brought
over, although New Caledonia for the next 20 years became the
ticket-of-leave tourist resort. In 1885-7 confirmed criminals, and those
with more than 8-year sentences to hard labor, were shipped here.
However, they have proved unfit for government employment. Convicts
formerly sent to Caledonia had such lease of long life, that they are
now sent to Guiana to reduce living expenses. Grave-digging, next to
gold-digging, is the principal occupation.
In Cayenne, the majority of the prisoners are negroes, Arabs and
Annamites. Now most of the outcasts are sent to unsaintly St. Laurent.
Formerly they were herded at Cayenne, the three Iles du Salut, on one of
which Captain Dreyfus was imprisoned, and the Kourou River, La Mere
being reserved as a home for the old and sick. The convicts have trades,
and are bakers, carpenters and tanners, etc. They make curios, such as
balata boats, whips with Kaiser and dog heads on the handle, separable
tables, fibre vanity bags, and cigar-cutters in the shape of a
guillotine. They are employed as balata-bleeders and in gold-camps, and
have built some thrifty miles of road in the country where there is
little agriculture or cattle-raising. The little money made is spent on
rum and tobacco, and the franc notes saved are tightly rolled up in a
small cylindrical receptacle which they use as a suppository to prevent
robbery—nevertheless, horrible murders and mutilations are common. There
is the cut-throat class sent here from Paris for life. Inhabitants tell
you that if they boldly and insultingly beg you for gold, you should
give them lead. Then there is a harmless class made up of those
convicted three times for some petty offense.
Cayenne twice a year. The culprits had steel-cage cabins to prevent them
from jumping overboard and swimming home across the Atlantic. As the
Athenians sent youths and maidens to be devoured by the Minotaur every
year, so this monstrous country eats up 2,000 convicts annually. In the
old days, when a prisoner died, the corpse was sewn in a sack, taken to
the water and a bell tolled. The sharks knew the sound and instantly
rose to the surface, making it black with their fins as they hastened to
the funeral meat. Felons with sentences for more than five years are
compelled to serve an additional term of the same period as settlers in
the colony. When a contractor wants convict labor, he gets it from the
government for so much money if it can be spared. The “liberes,” though
having served their term, are not free to leave the colony, and since
the work is done by the regular prisoners, it is hard to land a job.
Accordingly, many starve to death, unless they steal provisions. They
may be skilful artisans, but have no tools, are not wanted in town, so
they go to the country to loaf or pilfer, where they are arrested and
punished as tramps. Often for petty theft an overseer ties his victim to
a tree and beats him with a balata whip. When they do procure work it is
big with little wages. It is impossible for the white man to work in the
sun or stand like a black man all day in the water. Many convict camps
are abandoned on account of unhealthy surroundings.
Poorly fed, the prisoners stalk around like spectres. They receive
scanty rice rations for the amount of work they do, and are compelled to
beg from everybody. Their murderously-minded Corsican keepers look like
fiends in human form, provoke to kill, and like the followers of Marquis
de Sade, take a mad pleasure in torture, gloating over the suffering of
the wretches they starve and flog. As companions I prefer the thief and
assassin convict to the jailer with his white cork helmet jammed down
over a low forehead, his shaggy black brows and lashes from which flash
heartless glances, his long, bandit-like mustachios, framing a savage
slit for a mouth, and his brutal jaw. Far from the restraint of
civilization he becomes a beast in fury, and loves to torment his
charge. Hearts as well as stones are broken in these prisons. The
convict’s complaint is useless, for his letters are censored, doctored
and amputated before they reach home. There was one American down here
for stealing. He told a friend of mine he could be trusted up to $500,
but any amount over that he would steal. Escaped prisoners taken back to
Cayenne are often chained to the deck, lashed and kicked by ruthless
black guards, and left to wallow in their excrement. The mouths of the
rivers are well guarded, and all told there are about 700 police who set
the springs to this death-trap. Camps are insanitary and full of
disease, insects and vermin. After work the exiles are thrust into dark
cells of decaying barracks. Still they have some privileges besides
death and torture. They are furnished a piece of ground with necessary
tools to work it; allowed to send home for their families, or to have a
contract marriage if they have been here two years and shown good
behaviour.
If the convict escapes, the French officials don’t care much. He prefers
the savage jungle to his savage keeper, fleeing to the bush not half so
wild, through fen and flood to Brazil, Dutch and British Guiana. With no
weapons for game or hook for fish, they grow mad with hunger, kill each
other and have cannibal feasts, for which they are guillotined if
captured. To avoid ambush they go in gangs, and when they eat or rest
watch the four points of the compass. Just as America had an underground
railway between the North and South to aid the fugitive slaves, so in
Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana, there are agents of a society formed in France
who provide food, clothes and money to aid the convict’s escape. There I
was informed that the American Bauxite Company engages escaped convicts,
and gives them a chance. However, in holy British Guiana, if caught,
they are sent back or given so many days to leave the colony, in which
case they often fly to Venezuela. Recently there was a frightful murder
in the bush, a man’s head was chopped off and placed in a canoe to shoot
the falls in order to cover traces of the crime. But as in Eugene Aram,
guilt could not be hidden, for the canoe went over the rapids and falls
without spilling its gruesome cargo; it was beached, discovered; the
assassins were tracked; and an aeroplane was sent from the penal colony
which swooped down on the murderers like a bird of prey and carried them
off to prison.
Paradoxical as it may seem, the salvation of Cayenne is the convict—he
does the work. I talked with a man who employs convicts and he said they
were all “good” workers. Many of the other inhabitants, who sweat to get
balata and gold, are just as bad outlaws, their life being one guilty
round of drink, seduction, cruelty and crime.
The colony is full of physical as well as moral lepers. Like the other
Guianas, elephantiasis, leprosy and filthy diseases scurf and scourge.
The jungles are full of envenomed serpents. As for heat, the country is
a few degrees above the equator and many above the boiling point. This
dirty land is washed by the Atlantic, although the ocean does not, as
Euripides says, wash away the wounds and stain of the world, but rather
washes them here from France. Like a New York garbage boat carrying
refuse to the sea, French convict ships dump the offal of humanity on
these shores. The Pilgrims came to America with religious convictions,
somewhat different from the convictions criminal and otherwise those
Frenchmen held who settled Canada, Caledonia and Cayenne. Climate here
is one long season of sorrow. Guiana is an outlaw country, a jumping-off
place of the world, a back-door to perdition; a dominion of dolour,
despair, mud and blood, where Death is the jailer who frees. The cities
of Cayenne and St. Laurent are cities of dreadful day and night where
spread
“Infections of unutterable sadness,
Infections of incalculable madness,
Infections of incurable despair.”
Faith, hope and charity are banished the colony, and the prisoners are
the saddest and weariest of men.
La Belle France has succeeded in establishing and maintaining a hell on
earth in French Guiana. Dante says, “There is a place within the depths
of hell called Malebolge.” His prophetic eye must have seen this colony
accurst, for he peoples the ten gulfs of that eighth circle of the
“Inferno” with seducers, thirsters for gold, grafters, thieves,
peculators, hypocrites, robbers, forgers and counterfeiters—and punishes
these lost souls with terrible heat, horrible leprosies, poisonous
serpents, filth and scourging demons!
* * * * *
=Bold Bad Willie=
(From the Imperial Review)
The teacher was explaining to her class the difference between concrete
and abstract.
“Concrete,” she said, “is that which can be seen, abstract that which
cannot be seen. Now, Willie, give me an example of the concrete.”
“My pants,” said Willie.
“Good,” said the teacher. “Now give me an example of the abstract.”
“Yours,” replied Willie.
Anticipation: Realization: