Mabel Ballin and Hugo Ballin — The Ballins (1922) 🇺🇸
It’s downright discouraging. There’s nothing you can do about it. I’ve tried — goodness knows I’ve tried. Imagine two people — but you couldn’t. Nobody could. I couldn’t either, if I didn’t know.
by Delight Evans
I’ve watched them — sometimes secretly. Then I’ve met them at dinner and at luncheon and at tea. I’ve been to their house. I’ve watched them work. I’ve run into them unexpectedly at banquets and balls and first-nights. I’ve followed them up the Avenue. I have slunk around corners and peered from doorways at them. It doesn’t do any good.
They’re real.
Their life is an Open Book. There are no eccentricities. Nothing you can put your finger on and say triumphantly, “There — I knew! They are artists, after all!”
She [Mabel Ballin] might be the wife of a banker or some other business man. He [Hugo Ballin] might be her husband. They have a nice apartment in town in a nice location. They have a nice country house in Connecticut. They have a nice car. There’s nothing to give them away. The apartment is young and quiet. She hasn’t a boudoir draped in purple — or even rose-color. He hasn’t a portrait — by himself. There are no photographs of her about. Their dog is a nice white bulldog that barks at strangers. He smokes a pipe — not the bulldog. Once in a while she smokes a cigarette. When she takes out her cigarette case she shows it to you and says it came from Italy. She bought a dress the other day that she likes but thinks it is too grand for her — she doesn’t feel like herself in it — it has rows and rows of pearls all over it — she hides it in the closet but gets it out sometimes and gloats over it —
They go to the studio together. Here, I was sure, an eccentricity would rear its ugly, but interesting, head. But no. He wouldn’t show off worth a cent. He was excited about a set and said so. He didn’t swear; he smoked. The actors came up and offered some suggestions. He called her Mabel. At night when they’re too tired to go to a theater and aren’t entertaining she reads to him. Scenarios — just scenarios. They have to; all the time. Because they can’t afford to spend a million dollars on every production, they have to be economical; and so they do the work of readers and continuity writers and cutters and designers and film editors and just about everything.
The other day I met her, rushing up Fifth Avenue. “I’m on my way to the library,” she said breathlessly, “to look up an old English melodrama that Hugo may do; we’ve looked and looked and can’t find it.” And it did remind me of “Alice in Wonderland.’’ He writes the continuity all by himself, principally to were established, then. People began to talk about them — in a nice way, you understand.
Their real triumph was Jane Eyre, into which both of them put their best, because it’s the sort of thing they like to do. A delicious Jane, La Ballin experienced the thrill of seeing her name in large letters and warm praise in the papers; Hugo, too. They took it calmly and went right ahead with their next production. “The Luxury Tax” isn’t what they particularly like to do; it’s “society stuff,” and these two quaint creatures much prefer the lavender-and-old-lace of “Jane.” Obviously, this couple is “old-fashioned.”
You may wander into a picture gallery and see one of his paintings. You may hear that she is getting to look more and more like Bernhardt [Sarah Bernhardt] — and she really has a quality which is reminiscent of the great Frenchwoman when she was twenty-four; you may hear he is making a picture forty-five reels long; you may even, some day hear them being discussed by somebody or other and learn that they are temperamental, like all these artists —
If you do, don’t believe it. I know better. The Ballins will always be — the Ballins. In spite of all I’ve said, I’ll be tremendously disappointed if I ever do find out that there is an eccentricity lurking about somewhere.
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She is little and slim, with gold hair recently bobbed by herself. Her beauty has been solemnly classified as chiseled and cold. I suspect she laughs at that
Photos by J. R. Diamond
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Hugo Ballin: artist and director. He would never be referred to as Mabel’s husband any more than she is ever referred to as Hugo’s wife
Photo by J. R. Diamond
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The Difference
The critics of the films have always bemoaned the fact that the producers are quick to make capital of scandal. They have wept and wailed at the publicity-seeking actors and actresses; at the undignified uncommercialism of it all. A few of them are foolishly grasping. But not all.
We wish they would consider a certain recent case. In the Roscoe Arbuckle [Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle] tragedy, there was involved an actor named Lowell Sherman. He had appeared on the stage for some years and was known as the most popular “villain” on Broadway. He played in Griffith’s [D. W. Griffith] “Way Down East,” and then was engaged by Goldwyn to come west and make pictures. He made one film for that company — “Grand Larceny.” He had a contract with another company which, we understand, was broken when the “Fatty” Arbuckle scandal filled the newspapers.
Goldwyn had the name of Lowell Sherman erased from the billing of “Grand Larceny.” His prominence in connection with the case was not played upon; it was ignored. The film company, in a quiet and dignified manner, chose to pass up any publicity of this nature. Decency, he felt, was preferable to dollars.
A Broadway producer of plays, yclept A. H. Woods, made Lowell Sherman one of the stars in a new production called “Lawful Larceny.” His name is blazoned on Broadway.
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A New York woman, who accused a man of pinching her in a motion picture theater, has been exposed by the judge before whom the case was tried, as a fraud whose favorite indoor pastime seemed to be making false charges against men. Men paid no attention to her, so she had to attract attention some way. It developed that only a few months before a respectable married man had been unjustly sentenced to jail on a similar charge which the young lady had made.
Ain’t men awful?
Collection: Photoplay Magazine, April 1922