Leatrice Joy — Hail — And Farewell! (1930) 🇺🇸
The movies have married again and taken unto themselves a most garrulous wife. And that's all right. The public seems to approve the mike and her new family of stage favorites. But it makes stepchildren of formerly fair and favored daughters like Leatrice Joy, for instance.
by Ann Silvester
Not that the new mamma wasn't nice to Leatrice, inviting her to the First National studio for A Most Immoral Lady and three other pictures. But somehow or other Leatrice's old feeling of love for her work was missing, so she has postponed her contract for the other films in favor of wandering through Europe with her vaudeville skit.
"It just isn't the same," said the lady whose hair is as raven as ever, whose eves snap as briskly as they did between scenes of Manslaughter, whose mouth turns up as provocatively as of yore. Always there has been something so clean and shiny about Leatrice, like black patent leather. Something very energetic and clear about her voice that will be the mike's loss. "I'm just as enthusiastic as I once was," she explains.
"The thing I miss most in these new topsy-turvy talking studios is that old camaraderie of movie life that was as much a part of the game's fascination as the actual shooting of pictures. It is a hackneyed phrase, but Hollywood used to be like one big family. Now it's like in-laws." Her eyes twinkled beneath the folds of a white sports hat.
"At the old Lasky studio, where I got my start in pictures, every one knew and was interested in what every one else was doing. When we were making Manslaughter, with DeMille, it was a familiar sight to look out over the cameras and see Gloria and Bebe, Monte and Bill. Or, before that, Wally Reid, or Elliott Dexter. But with these sound pictures, if a player payed a social call on the set of another player, he would be ordered off by a sound supervisor.
"The new regime reminds me of a young married couple who have inherited wealth. They are proud and intrigued — but find themselves growing apart from one another. No longer do they dare sit at the breakfast table and hold hands. What would the butler think? No longer do they feel free to steal a kiss during dinner — the cook might walk in. Well, that is just about what has happened to the movies. The personal element has gone — and I miss it."
She pushed a smart bag to one side to make room for her order of scrambled eggs and "tomahtoes," formerly "tomatoes," before the Vitaphone pronunciation came in.
"It used to be the policy to fit the story around the player's personality, and while that had many disadvantages, the star or featured actor at least felt that he fitted into what he was doing. Now they are purchasing any and every stage player and hoping to hit on somebody who can look the part, as well as speak the lines. All the way through A Most Immoral Lady, I felt I was wearing a second-hand dress — something that hadn't been selected with me in mind. And that hand-me-down feeling isn't conducive to your best work.
"When they brought up this play of Zoe Akins, Furies, I simply rebelled. I asked them if they wouldn't release me from my contract, until they had a story more suited to my personality. In Furies I would have played the mother of a sixteen-year-old boy, and as though that weren't bad enough, the character is so weak it is inane.
"In the meantime, I had an offer to tour Europe with my vaudeville sketch. That seemed infinitely more attractive to me than even four sound pictures. I like vaudeville tremendously — and who wouldn't look forward to Europe?"
The only fly in the ointment of that scheme is leaving behind her home, her small daughter, Leatrice, and her newly adopted daughter, Josephine. The adoption of the other child, because she wanted "a family," rather knocks in the head the rumor that Leatrice is contemplating marriage again. There is a man of wealth who is a very close friend of hers, but at the idea of marriage she merely shakes her head and laughs it off as Hollywood gossip.
"Both little Leatrice and I are crazy about our new little girl," she went on to explain the adoption. "I've already begun to feel that she is really mine. She's just as cute as she can be, seven years old, and as blond as Leatrice is dark. I have found that their society is infinitely more attractive than Hollywood parties, or theater openings, or all the other social activities I used to set such stock by. We spend our days at the beaches, and our evenings quietly at home.
"Even more amazing than an experiment in talking pictures is this experiment in a child's life. It is wonderful to see her eyes brighten at the sight of things she has never seen before. To hear her gasp with surprise over things she had not even suspected were in the world. As for her parentage? Well, I know all about her I need to know — that she is a darling, sweet child, and I love her as though she were my own."
All in all, if you have the idea that Leatrice isn't thrilled over sound pictures, you aren't far wrong.
"Hollywood is like a family of in-laws now," says Miss Joy.
Leatrice plays opposite Walter Pidgeon, in A Most Immoral Lady.
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, January 1930