Julanne Johnston — Spotlight for Julanne (1923) 🇺🇸
In Hollywood, that quaint, quiet, little village of broad shaded streets and squatty stucco bungalows wrapped in celluloid, Fame has a way of eluding the more persevering sisters and brethren only to step from behind a eucalyptus tree and say to a casual passerby, “You’re it!”
by Charles Henry Steele
Fame knights the lad who manages to support a Talmadge or a Gish; a chaplet of laurel graces the fair brow of the lady signed by the platinum mailed fist of De Mille [Cecil B. DeMille]. And another sesame to world-wide publicity and Sunday rotogravure section is to become Doug Fairbanks’ [Douglas Fairbanks Sr.] leading lady.
That’s what Julanne Johnston has done. Bruce Barton, Sophie Irene Loeb, Dr. Frank Crane, and the rest of the finger-pointers could find no topic for pulpit work here. Julanne’s success simply proves that it doesn’t pay to worry, work, or strive too mightily.
There have been practically no trials and very few tribulations in Julanne Johnston’s young life. She is a tall, willowy girl with a fine fragile beauty that lingers in the memory longer than the flaunting poster type in four colors. A career has been a casual affair in her scheme of things. Never has she sat on the mourner’s bench with the extra crew, waiting for the casting director and hoping for a part. If it pleased her to dance with the St. Denis troupe for a few months, in leisurely tour, she danced. If vaudeville offered entertainment she ventured away from the Hollywood bungalow she shares with her mother. Nothing has held her for long.
If you don’t rush the casting offices, they will rush you. There are dozens of beautiful girls in Hollywood looking for jobs, yet every week comes news of a new beauty being imported from “The Follies” or another of the Venusian gardens. Julanne Johnston never dogged directors from morning till night beseeching work, so it was not long before directors sought her out.
This is a complex world, if every one only knew it.
Not more than four years ago Miss Johnston was accustomed to answering “Here!” when the roll was called at the Hollywood School for Girls. Then during one summer vacation she attended the pirouette seminary conducted at Denishawn by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn.
Dancing delighted her. Her dancing delighted the canny Miss Ruth. The combined effect of these enthusiasms found Julanne touring with the Denishawn dancers that fall, instead of picking up ideas about calculus, indigenous plants, and how to greet a gentleman bearing a letter of introduction from a mutual friend recently deceased. School faded into a hazy background.
At this point it strengthens the continuity to observe that Mrs. Johnston is one of those charming, highly modern mothers who have sufficient faith in daughters, mankind, and things to let ambition lead the way.
Following a merry sojourn with the Denishawn disciples of Terpsichore, Julanne returned to Hollywood.
“Mother,” she said, “I think I shall act in the movies. But only in the good movies.”
She was as good as her word, and even better to look at.
Rarely enough did the picture people successfully lure her before the camera. Universal City was too far to go, and after you were there, she asked calmly, where were you? Metro had no trolleys near that made connections with those near the Johnston ménage. Comedy factories were too unfamiliar with chivalry… The idea of storming the swinging doors of the casting offices never even occurred to Julanne. Once she appeared in a picture, other directors learned of her decorative influence, and offered her bits. But as may be gathered by the conscientious reader, Julanne chose carefully and critically before venturing before strange Bell-Howells.
Occasionally she was deployed by a Lasky director to lend éclat to a Broadway cabaret or a boarding-school frolic; now and then she graced a ballet sequence; in the Realart comedies of dim memory she was often cast opposite Wanda Hawley… Transient artists of the camera, among them Baron de Meyer and Count de Strelecki, noted Julanne’s piquant profile, her innate poise, her graceful figure and said, each in his own way. “She was born to be photographed!” Forthwith they photographed her — the De Meyer portraits winning grand prixes and medailles innumerable at foreign expositions. Some of his work served to illustrate stories, in Hearst’s.
Aside from her appearance in a village flirt role in a picture that valiantly starred David Butler (a negative little thing called Fickle Women that achieved slight circulation) Julanne has never been called upon to “act.” As well expect a Fragonard tapestry to act. Or a Greuze, or a Delia Robbia frieze, or a Botticelli…
She has a temper and a pronounced sense of humor and a pictorial quality, strongly defined in the accompanying photograph, that will carry her far, but I have no idea whether or not she can act. However, since such considerations do not seem to hamper Barbara La Marr, Claire Windsor, and other scenic treats. Julanne need not worry. As a matter of fact she won’t. She isn’t egotistic, but there is a strong streak of fatalism running through her cosmos. I’ve known her to break a date, pleading a headache, then chance being found out at the Cocoanut Grove with another more favored cavalier. “If I’m to get away with it, I’ll get away with it. If not — see to-morrow’s paper for the answer.”
Following the Butler chromo came an offer from Ferdinand Pinney Earle, then working on The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. With laudable foresight Julanne rejected with thanks. (The picture, owing to differences between Mr. Earle and the financial backers, has never been released.) [Transcriber ’s Note: The movie was finally released in 1925] Vaudeville looked amusing, so Julanne essayed a solo or two in a dance-revue act that reached New York in three months. “The Follies” beckoned, but the lure of the California climate was stronger, and another two months found Julanne back home with her mother.
She did a picture opposite Charles Jones, and served as premiere danseuse in Tourneur’s fanciful The Brass Bottle. She added to the scene at Crystal Pier on warm afternoons, and danced with playmates at Marcelli’s, or Sunset Inn, or the Ambassador evenings.
Then one balmy June clay the telephone carried over the wires a message fraught with importance. Douglas Fairbanks wished Miss Johnston to come over for a test.
“I was tried for the Slave Girl in The Thief because it was a dancing part and I am a dancer. The test was sent on to New York where Mr. Fairbanks had gone — then came the surprise. I haven’t got over it yet… He wired back engaging me for the Princess!
“We’re all simply steeped in the atmosphere of old Bagdad and the Arabian Nights, and every one seems to feel that the sets and costumes are the most gorgeous ever conceived.
“I’m working hard and the funny part is, enjoying it!”
Advance glimpses of the forthcoming successor to Robin Hood reveal lovely Oriental Julanne, of youth and beauty.
Advance glimpses fail to reveal, however, that she is mindful of matrimony, enamored though she is of Anatole France, pèche Melba, siestas, George Moore, Verlaine, Hayakawa, May Wilson Preston’s illustrations, and Paul Whiteman’s symphonic jazz.
It is altogether unlikely that she will be pointed out for long merely as Douglas Fairbanks’ leading lady.
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, December 1923
Photo by: Alfred Cheney Johnston (1885–1971)
Collection: Screenland Magazine, December 1923