Anna Q. Nilsson Tells Her Untold Tale (1929) 🇺🇸

Anna Q. is the star of whom it was surely written, ''She tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.'' Or words to that effect.

by Gladys Hall

Such being the case, to elicit a confession from one who has, apparently, spent her life confessing, seemed an all but hopeless task. For Anna Q. is everywhere known for her forthrightness, her honesty her complete freedom of speech. She has told things that other stars — and lesser persons— carefully leave untold. She has no inhibitions about describing to those interested the poverty of her childhood, the lack of luxuries, the actual deprivations she knew, the honest workaday people who are her parents. And for whom — though this you find out for yourself — she has done so much. She has no inhibitions, no false pride in describing her own working days when she first came to this country, a child of thirteen. Her career as nursemaid. Her days modeling for artists, photographers and modistes. She has never created for herself the well-known background of a conventual education, a title in the family, aristocratic poverty or any of the other hocus-pocus dear to the stellar soul and dearer still to the stellar press agent. She has dared to be herself in an industry where almost nobody is. And for this refreshing honesty and the courage that it takes, for this absence of all pretense and all pose, Anna Q., beautifully blonde and decorative, is doubly dear to her friends, both personal and journalistic.

This, then, is assuredly the first time in any public print that Anna Q. has revealed the things you are about to read. For like the majority of great-souled, fundamental people, Anna Q. has her reserves, her reticences, and keeps them hidden all the more deeply because they are few — and these revelations, these confessions, are thrice precious and thrice important. (Author's Note)

My middle name is Qverentia. It means 'ever seeking.'

"And I mention this first because it is the key-note to what I am going to try to tell you. The key-note, really, to my entire life. It is what I am: ever-seeking. Never quite finding. And so, ever unsatisfied.

"I have never known a great love. "I have never once experienced the devastating passion which makes the world well lost for love, or the like.

"Hard to believe, perhaps, considering my two marriages and some near-marriages' but true, nevertheless. "There are different kinds of love, of course. Different ways of falling in love. I know because I've had experiences of that sort. More than once. But never, never the great love. "And in spite of this, or maybe because of it, love has been the curse of my entire career. Love has been the one great stumbling block. "Love has always hurt me, never helped. Love has always wounded and worried, always dragged me down and never lifted me up. Love has taken more than it has given. I have believed where I should have doubted; trusted only to be deceived; helped only to go unthanked. Perhaps it is because I have taken second-best when somewhere deep down inside me I must have known better.

My Sixth Life

"'There is an answer to this, I think. I'm not sure. I don't really know. I'll tell it for the first time, now. And I've never told it before, partly because it was so tremendous an experience, partly because I've been afraid of being laughed at, and partly because of the uncertainty I feel about it.

"Well, some three or four years ago I went to a very famous psychologist, astrologist — whatever name you will. A woman. A very marvelous woman who claims the power to see into the past lives she believes we all have lived before, in other ages, on other planes.

"She read mine. She says that I am living my fifth or sixth incarnation.

"There is something very strange about it. It seems that two or three incarnations ago I was a young prince — in jail, she said. After years of weary struggling and futile desiring to break the bars that bound me — the bars of convention and tradition — I met a great astrologist. One of the wise ones of the earth. I ran away with this astrologist, with this wise man, and we traveled the earth tof ether and looked on life as it is not seen by casual eyes, was free — for a little time. Then the king, my father, died; and I was forced to return to my jail. I spent the rest of that life of mine beating my hands and heart to ribbons-against the bars, thirsting for the freedom I was never to know in that life again. And so, for the rest of my lives I am doomed ever to seek until I shall find it again, that lost freedom.

I Should Have Been Male

"True — or not true? Who is there to say.' All I know is that I have always had the strong feeling that I should have been born a man in this incarnation, that I am forever striving for a freedom I never seem able to find, that I am beating my hands and heart to ribbons against bars no less strong because they are invisible.

"In another incarnation — I can't remember whether she said it preceded or followed the one I have just told you about — at any rate, in another life of mine I was a very famous — or rather, a very infamous siren. A home-wrecker. A destroyer of hearts and faiths and hopes and happiness. She did tell me, too, that in every incarnation of mine I have been at the top of the heap. Whether for good or for evil I have always been on top.

"In this life I lived as a siren my role, my chief objective, my ruling passion was the ruining of men. I made them love me only to work disaster upon them. Like the Lorelei of legend I sat upon my velvet-clad rock luring men to their destruction. Like Circe, I turned them into swine. Toward the end of that other lift of mine there came one man — an onlooker. He watched, apart, remote, inaccessible. I spun every web I could devise, made use of every spell and enchantment, all to no purpose. This man was the one man I could not have. This stood apart and watched me, sorrowful and tinged with contempt. And for the rest of my lives I have been seeking him — or so the seer said — trying to find him again, never quite succeeding.

"I hope I haven't been a conscious Lorelei. Certainly I trust I haven't been a Circe. And I wonder, sometimes I rather more than wonder: is there one man on the fringe of my life today, one man who stands apart, remote, inaccessible, an onlooker? And if so, shall I ever meet him?

Wanted: An Idol

I don't know. Because I don't know and because it is all so curious and so apart from the every-day living of life, I haven't cared to talk about it. There may or there may not be any basis of truth. All I do know is that I am forever seeking and never finding; seeking the one man who would be for me. Bigger and stronger than I. Better. A teacher as well as a lover. A god as well as a man. This is what all women seek, consciously or unconsciously, if they will confess as I am doing. Because nature is undefeatable, a mate is the normal objective, and the need of idolatry persists in every human heart.

"And strangest of all, I think, is that in this incarnation I should have been given the name Qverentia, ever-seeking. Where my father got it — because he gave it to me — or how, or why, neither he nor I will ever know. He has no explanation. He never had heard of the name before. It just came to him.

"And that it is the key-note of my entire life is as true as the facts of the Zodiac.

"There have been numerous casual, or more or less casual, romances in my life. And all of them have had the quality of dream and of seeking.

"There was that winter in London a few years ago. While I was there I began to get mysterious and completely beautiful notes from a man I didn't know, had never seen, didn't e\'en know the name of. I knew nothing of him, nothing about him except that every day these exquisite letters would come to me. Beautiful letters saying beautiful things. I began, of course, to create a gorgeous romance in my mind. I built about this unknown man a dream so shining no man could hope to live up to it. I should have known that.

Less Than Dreams of Him

"After several days of this I chanced to discover that the man was stopping at the same hotel as I, that he had the adjoining suite. To let him know that I knew where he was I began to answer his notes. This went on for more days. Thrilling, throbbing notes, each containing some of the best of each of us, passed back and forth between us, under the door, each unseen by the other. He, of course, had seen me. I had not seen him — to know him. And every man I saw in the lobby, on the streets; every tall, beautiful mysterious stranger I met I would think to myself, 'This is he.'

"It couldn't go on forever, of course, and so, one day, I met him. He was not the man I had thought he was. He didn't measure up. He didn't look as I had thought he would look in those improbable dreams of mine. Charming. Gracious. But not — not he.

"Shortly after that episode I returned to New York. He had returned, too. One evening he called me on the 'phone and invited me to take dinner at his home with him and with — his wife.

"So much for dreams and the dreaming of dreams.

"There was my first marriage. I have never talked about it before because, in the first place, it happened when I was beginning in pictures; and in the second place it wasn't, and it isn't now, a happy thing to talk about.

"That first marriage of mine was prompted by a maternal emotion. Nothing more or less. Everyone told me how much he needed me, what I could do for him, make of him. He told me, too. He couldn't carry on without me. He couldn't stop drinking unless I helped him. He couldn't amount to anything unless he had me by his side. I believed him. I thought, 'He is mine, mine to take care of.' And this seemed to me to be a good and sufficient reason for matrimony. I wasn't in love with him. I knew that, too. Well, I married him; and for five difficult years I learned the bitter lesson that what a man cannot or will not do for himself no woman can do for him.

That First Mistake

"To marry a man to reform is to delude yourself with a folly that can never become a fact. These were five burdened years for me. And I got from under only when I realized that my service was no service at all.

"My second marriage was of much the same calibre, although the reasons for its failure were different ones. Simply, the whole premise was wrong again. He was not for me nor I for him. It was a second mistake.

"It has always been so with me; love, the deterrent, I have met everywhere.

"I wish to God I had had children. I should have had them. I want them now. Need them now. I might have found satisfaction in them, enough to fill my life. As it is, I shall probably marry again; and if I do, this time I shall stop working. I'll stay at home, have children, be domestic and be satisfied to be so. Human beings cannot live alone and be completely normal. Or I cannot. Home is necessary to me. A companion is necessary to me. I can't be happy alone.

"I am a fatalist. I believe that what is to be will be, that it is written, and neither attempts to escape nor attempts to force matters can change one jot of it.

We Are Ruled by Fate

"Everything I have ever had in my life, everything that has ever happened to me, has just come to me. The good as well as the bad, the bad as well as the good. I have had nothing to do with my own life. I don't believe we can help what we are very much. I do think that every so often in life there are two paths to take, two turns to choose from. But two turns, two roads only, and almost always there is someone or some set of circumstances to give us a push in a direction we are not certain of.

"I believe that everything that happens is for a purpose. When I had my accident seven months ago, I began to rail at this accursed fate of mine. I swore at the jade like a trooper. Then I began to think. I had plenty of time to think. And I believe I changed. I learned a patience I had never known before, a tolerance. I, who had always been impatient of illness and of pain, intolerant of other people and their way of doing things, fierytempered, hasty.

"I have never known fear in all my life. Of anything. But if there had been a vestige in me before the accident, it has gone now. When people came to see me in the hospital — and in many cases strangers came where people I had thought my friends stayed away — they asked me, 'Aren't you afraid you will be lamed for life?' And my answer was, 'No. I've never thought of such a thing.' I hadn't. I knew I wouldn't be. Because I don't deserve a punishment like that. I may have deserved a warning, a penalty, but I do not deserve a life-long penalty. It wouldn't be fair play.

"And I am completely without fear today. Neither fear of old age, poverty, loneliness nor death can daunt me. What is to be, will be.

My Twin Desire

"As a child, to put the horse after the cart, I had no fiery ambitions of the usual sort. I didn't want to be an actress, a poet, a sculptor. I had never thought of such things. In my country, among my kind of people, girls are brought up to scrub and sew and clean and bake — and that is that.

"But I was born with a twin desire: to go to America and to make money. The two were one in my mind. I can't remember the day when I didn't know that some day I should go to America and make money.

"Oh, yes — and I did want to be a beauty. Not for any specific reason that I can think of, but just to be one. And this desire came to me one night when I was watching a little trapeze artist in a traveling circus. I watched the girl, her golden curls — probably a wig — her fluffy ballerina skirts — doubtless tawdry and soiled — and I went home and cried over my own straight hair and scant cotton frock. I longed passionately to have curly golden ringlets and to be as beautiful and mysterious as this poor little circus child looked to me.

"After my arrival in America and after I had run away from the family friends who had brought me over, and even after I had been working as a nursemaid for some little time, I was walking along the street one day when an artist stopped me. He asked me to pose for him. I had never heard of posing. I didn't know what he was talking about. But I understood that he meant to pay me some money, and I said, 'All right.' It just came to me, you see. On the street, like that. I did pose for him and then for others. Photographers. Dressmakers. And while modeling gowns I met Alice Joyce — still my dearest friend — and Mabel Normand and others; and gradually these contacts led me to the screen. Things have just continued to happen to me, without any will of my own.

"And here I am.

"If I have not realized the most shining of my dreams, neither have I been made cynical or bitter by the reverse side of life. Funny, but no man has ever made an indecent proposition to me.

"I have never been placed in compromising positions. Scandal has kept clear of me. And this despite the vast amount of talk there is about the Babylonia of Hollywood. Perhaps it exists. Perhaps it takes two to make any kind of a bargain. Perhaps I have no It. I must consult Elinor Glyn about this.

"Perhaps I am seeking that which I cannot find; after all, who knows?

Photo by: Russell Ball (1891–1942)

Photo by: Fred Hartsook (1876–1930)

Photo by: Russell Ball (1891–1942)

Hiding behind the mask of masculinity. But you can't fool us, Anna Q. Nilsson. Take off that golf cap; we know, you.

Photo by: Woodbury

Stocks are bonds in this instance, wherein Fay Wray poses in one of the instruments of punishment required in the filming of her soon-to-be-seen picture, "The Four Feathers".

Collection: Motion Picture Classic Magazine, March 1929

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Confessions of the Stars series:

• Blanche Sweet (October 1928)
• Constance Talmadge (November 1928)
• Betty Compson (December 1928)
• Bebe Daniels (January 1929)
• Aileen Pringle (February 1929)
• Anna Q. Nilsson (March 1929)
• Lois Wilson (April 1929) 
• Corinne Griffith (May 1929)
• Bessie Love (June 1929)