When a young man with his arm around a girl lets a lighted cigarette fall
inside his sport shirt and it feels like a drop of ice water, it is time
either to propose or go home.
* * * * *
Female detectives should be good lookers.
_Naughty New York!_
It looks like a pretty dreadful affair all the way ’round to me; here’s
Mrs. Lydig Hoyt says that skirts gotta come down because the girls are
wearing them to the ankles in Paris; but here’s little Betty Compson, the
movie princess, says they are not to come down—not even to the ankles.
“It’s the movie girls and not Parisian professional models nor New York
society women who make the fashions for America,” says Betty. Which,
when you come to think about it, is a terrible slam for Mrs. Hoyt—an
intimation that she is not considered a regular movie queen, in spite of
the fact that she shook the pink teas of the Four Hundred for a part in
Norma Talmadge’s company, and is now about to burst into the world of art
with a company of her own.
The truth is, New York society women have apparently gone dippy over
getting into the movies.
The other day I was out at the Griffith studio at Marmaroneck watching a
starving mob in rags crying for bread in the streets of ancient Paris.
Among the actors there was one who stood out. She was a shriveled old
woman with thin hands and haggard eyes. Her clothes were torn half off,
showing her shrunken breasts and bony shoulders. When “D. W.” gave the
signal for the action to begin, she fairly made you feel the agony of her
hunger.
When there came, at last, an interval in the work, she beckoned to a maid
who stood near the set. “Go out to the yacht and get me my cigarette
case,” she said.
It turned out that the old lady was a very rich woman with a garage
filled with imported automobiles and a steam yacht. She just had the
“itch” to act in the movies.
It’s a little secret that is giggled up and down Fifth avenue that one of
the “extra girls” in the ball room scene in “Way Down East” was Evelyn
Walsh, who is considered to be the richest unmarried woman in the world.
Mrs. Morgan Belmont was also in the same picture.
Perhaps it was the movies that did it; but anyhow, times have changed
in the old Four Hundred in New York. It is only the Texas oil
millionairesses who continue to elevate the haughty nose in mid-air and
give you a far-away stare.
Mrs. Belmont, when I saw her in a picture studio, was sitting on the edge
of a piece of scenery, smoking a cigarette that she had borrowed from
a stage hand. She was excitedly debating an exciting question. She was
contending that Jack Dempsey could have licked Jack Johnson when the big
dinge was at his very best.
It happened that I sat in a business conference with Anne Morgan the
other day. She was the most simple and democratic person present. She
sat still and listened until every one else had expressed his opinion.
Finally she threw away the butt of her cigarette and said abruptly, “Look
here. We are all talking around in circles and getting nowhere.” Then she
stated the case with the directness and clarity of a corporation lawyer.
“You know,” she said in explanation, “My father was a banker.” I wonder
if she thought she was telling anybody any news! J. Pierpont Morgan was
the said father.
Mrs. Morgan Belmont isn’t likely to squeeze Mary Pickford out of her
job. She was just in pictures on account of her name. In the case of
Mrs. Lydig Hoyt, however, it is different. She is really a marvelously
beautiful woman and may go far in the cinema.
Like most of the women in society, she is sick of gadding around tea
parties. This stuff may be all right in F. Scott Fitzgerald flapper
novels, but gets wearisome in real life.
Speaking of F. Scott Fitzgerald, I understand that Princeton University
is so vexed with this youthful prodigy that he discreetly omits the
usual dutiful visits to his alma mater. What’s ailing Princeton is Mr.
Fitzgerald’s book, “This Side of Paradise,” in which he told some painful
truths about college life. I couldn’t see anything so terrible about it;
but Princeton was touchy.
In fact, I don’t see how anybody could “stay mad” at this child of
genius. He is really a charming boy. He looks about seventeen, with
those he-vamp blue eyes. I understand that “This Side of Paradise” was
practically his own life, except that he really married the young society
flapper who “trun him down” in the book. She is a very beautiful girl and
the boy genius is obviously crazy about her.
Another “best seller” who is looking at the tall buildings of New York
is Harold Bell Wright, the sales of whose books have now amounted to
something over 9,000,000 copies.
The first time I ever saw the illustrious Harold was in Chicago, where he
had come to sell his first books. He was a green little country preacher
from a “riding” circuit in the Ozark mountains in Arkansas. He was so
green that a sure-thing man would have been ashamed to sell him gold
bricks. He looked pained when you spoke of writing for money; he said he
only wrote to give a message to the world. I saw him again at the Waldorf
the other day. He has made a couple of million dollars; got a divorce and
a Rolls-Royce and other modern equipment.
In spite of his enormous success as a best seller, I am told that Harold
has a canker eating at his heart. He grieves because the literary critics
will not take his work seriously, but “kid” him as a “he” Laura Jean
Libbey.
The other day, New York was electrified by a story that Hearst had
quarreled with Marion Davies and that that attractive young lady was to
cease to be a film star in the Hearst studios. But if there was a row,
Marion must have won the bout. She is not only still the queen at the
studio at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth street, but her brother-in-law has
just been placed in supreme command. I am told that everything is getting
on with peace and harmony—the kind of peace and harmony where nobody
dares to be the first to leave a group and always walks out of the room
sideways with his back to the wall.
And now that we are speaking about Hearst—Like all men of brilliant mind,
he has his little eccentricities. His is that he never can find his
automobile. He owns some twenty cars, but never can find one. He brings
his car downtown; forgets it and walks away to the nearest taxicab.
The chauffeur waits around until he knows that W. R. is lost again and
goes home. Wherefore you invariably encounter Hearst riding around New
York in sad and disreputable looking taxicabs. Occasionally, he asks
his subordinates if “anybody knows where I left my automobile.” Hearst,
however, is a man of penetrating intellect. Don’t let anybody tell you
the old yarn about his success being due to his brilliant subordinates.
He has a mind that cuts like a slashing knife.
To meet him personally, you would think him the newest and meekest
reporter in the Hearst service. He comes into the offices of his hired
men with a shy bashful air and usually says, “I hope I am not in the
way.” But just let them try to disobey his orders and see how meek he is.
Wow!
Our old friend, Wilbur F. Crafts, the reformer, has spent a busy summer
in New York. He has been horrified in turn over the Dempsey-Carpentier
fight, over the frightful case of some girls who wore one-piece bathing
suits at Atlantic City; over some good respectable families who wanted
to walk down to the beach in their regular clothes, with their bathing
suits underneath and slip off the top layer, thus foiling the bath house
robbers. Wilbur also had a spasm of excitement because Tex Rickard had
some children from Panama giving some exhibitions of swimming in his big
pool in Madison Square Garden.
Some time ago, in a censorship hearing, I actually heard the Rev. Wilbur
admit that he was wrong. He had presented a bill he wanted passed,
creating a national censorship. One of his friends on the congressional
committee raised his eyes humbly to the chandeliers and said he wanted to
offer a criticism. Rev. Crafts said he always welcomes honest criticism;
he tried to do his humble best, but if wrong, wanted to be corrected;
hence he would yield to the congressional gentleman and accept his
amendment. The amendment was to boost the salary of the job Rev. Crafts
was after from $4,000 to $8,000 a year. He certainly yielded like a
Christian martyr.
But about these girls and their one-piece suits that shocked Atlantic
City almost beyond human endurance.
Near Atlantic City is a little strip of beach called Somer’s Point. When
the police chased the Annette Kellermanns off the beach at Atlantic
City, the mayor of Somer’s Point said they could come to his beach, b’
gosh. And so they went—and so the road around Somer’s Point has been
blocked all summer—and so Mayor Robert Crissey, who is seventy-two, but
has young ideas, is famous. A discreet man is Mayor Crissey, nevertheless.
After the first Sunday of the girl show, he issued a statement in which
he said he thought one-piece suits were all right. “And,” he added with a
burst of real inspiration, “I am going to buy my wife one just like ’em.”
Some one has lifted up his voice and wept because, among the other famous
New York gin palaces to go with incoming prohibition, is the far-famed
one formerly run by Tom Sharkey, the old sailor heavy weight fighter.
Tom was a funny old fellow with not much more than a distant acquaintance
with English grammar and such.
When he completed his fine saloon, one of his first visitors was his
former manager, Tim McGrath. They looked over the place together. At
length Tim said to him, “Tom, you have a fine place, but there is one
thing more you should do to it.”
“And what’s that?” said Tom suspiciously.
“Right here above the entrance you should have a fine big chandelier.”
“Yeh, I know,” replied Tom, yawning, “But who would I get to play it?”
That “Garden-of-Eden” party with naked young ladies dancing, outside
of Boston, which cost Adolph Zukor and Hi Abrams, the movie magnates,
$100,000 to quiet, and which may cost the Massachusetts district attorney
his job, was the second time this year the aforesaid magnates have burst
into fame.
They—at least one of them—is said to have been in the big stud poker
party in which a slick gent with marked cards took in a circle of movie
men for a cool $500,000. They had him arrested, but dropped the case
because the department of public charities of New York set up a claim
for five times the amount of the money lost as a penalty for playing
poker—which is the New York law.
I can tell you a little secret about that game. That slicker would have
been trimming them yet except for the quick wittedness of Norma Talmadge.
It was at their home—of herself and her husband, Mr. Schenk—that the game
had been taking place once a week for months. Coming suddenly into the
hall, Norma saw the slick guest slip a pack of cards into his overcoat
pocket and take another pack. She told her husband and the slicker was
caught red-handed.
Even New York, the town of spenders, gave a little gasp when the “Spanish
Jade” stepped out of Greenwich Village and went shopping on the Avenue.
The lady’s real name is Elizabeth Darrow. She was the belle of the
village, when a young naval officer named Frederick Linde Ryan blew
in with his new uniform and innocent illusions. He was married to the
“Spanish Jade” and they began housekeeping on Riverside Drive.
The boy, struggling along on his naval pay, tried patiently and loyally
and uncomplainingly to pay; but his debts soon amounted to $20,000, with
cigarettes at a dollar a pack and chocolates at $5.00 a pound. The other
day the case was brought into court at the instance of one of the boy’s
friends and the court ruled that the boy need not continue further to pay
the bills.
As a sort of free circus the “Village” does well enough for a little
while; but it would seem a dubious place to find a wife.
* * * * *