Gypsy Norman — The Countess Stooped to Conquer (1924) 🇺🇸
From the stately halls of a picturesque old French chateau to the mob lots of the Hollywood extras is the difficult pilgrimage that Gypsy Norman traveled with fortitude and pride. For Gypsy is a real countess.
A while back many impecunious titled foreigners flocked to Hollywood, some with mythical glories, a few genuine. La Comtesse Edita de Beaumont reached the mecca of all screen aspirants when their novelty had worn off and the flurry occasioned by employing coroneted” extras had subsided. Besides, and this is the astonishing thing about her, she didn’t tell anybody she was a countess! That fact came to light when a Los Angeles society woman who had known her abroad told it.
Other impoverished nobles sought gold and publicity in Hollywood by parading their titles and with haughty airs of condescension intensely irritated our own girls competing with them for screen work. But Gypsy wanted to win by ability alone.
The widow of a French war officer — of a distinguished family — Edita, la Comtesse de Beaumont, was left with her little boy to care for on a ‘very small income. Estates of vast proportions went to ruin and their sale netted but little. That, she decided, must be saved for the education of Pierre, her boy.
“What could I do? I had not been trained to earn my living.” Her English is perfect, that quaint, schoolbook English, with a slight accent. “An ironic awakening that was, for me. I had clothes, perhaps a distinguished air, but of actual beauty, I had none. I was no longer a girl. That is not such a handicap on the Continent, where the mature woman is preferred to the youthful actress who knows nothing of life.
“I wished to learn to act and became an extra in the European productions immediately after the war. For months so hard I worked, in the big mobs, jostled, trod upon… Non, it was not what you call an easy life.
“I studied, learned, and gradually I progressed. After a time I was featured. I then decided that, with this experience, I should have no difficulty in your Hollywood. Others had been warmly received, so here I came, with my Pierre. Surely I should be given an opportunity? But no… I had no press agent, no shouting to precede me; I was unknown. Here conditions I found so different. Not experience, not mature intellects, did your directors want for their films, but youth and prettiness.”
Though she shrugs aside the hardships that have been hers, they are of interest because of the splendid manner in which she bore them, a lesson which our own girls might well study. The woman who had been bred upon the finest traditions, who had been served in the smallest wants, suffered actual privations. She made friends with her neighbors but shared her heartache with none.
“You can’t compete with these youngsters,” they told her, sometimes kindly, again with a brutal frankness. “Maybe it’s true, about your European cinema work, but we’ve heard that tale so many times.”
A while back a change crept into our screen demands; fundamental training began to be more appreciated. With the new trend, Gypsy won her chance. Week by week, in small bits, once again she worked her way up the hard road which she had traveled before; again she studied and learned, adapting her experience to the new methods. Until, in the Fox production, “Gentle Julia,” she played her first real part in an all-star cast, that of Bessie Love’s older sister.
She is yet far from public acclaim and doubts if unusual favor will ever be her portion. But a good living is now rewarding her struggle and she is able to give her small Pierre advantages.
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Photo by: Nelson Evans (1889–1922)
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Collection: Picture Play Magazine, June 1924