Naomi Childers — Future Tense (1921) 🇺🇸
A player whose distinguished work has brought her renown, feels that her real success still lies ahead of her.
by Emma-Lindsay Squier
“And,” she continued while I hung breathlessly on her words, “you will always be able to hold the man you love.”
“Really?” I murmured, fascinated.
“Absolutely,” she reiterated. “And furthermore — you were born at midnight, weren’t you? Well, you’ll have success about midway in life. At the age of forty, I should say.”
“How thrilling!” I sighed. “And do tell me if —”
Then it suddenly occurred to me that I was lunching with Naomi Childers not to be told about my future, but to get the facts about hers — also her past. But she sort of took me off my feet.
The lunch had started out conventionally enough with soup and avocado salad — if that conveys anything to the Eastern mind — and I was just about to ask what she thought of the future of the cinema or some other time-honored query which every interviewer asks and which no fan cares to read, when she. leaning over the table to look at me intently, said, in her soft lovely voice with its soupcon of a Southern drawl: “You were born in December, weren’t you?”
I admitted it with pride. Also with amazement. How in the world —
“I can nearly always tell the month a person was born in by looking at them,” said Miss Childers. “I have studied astrology ever since I was sixteen.”
“You really believe in astrology, then?” I queried. Between you and me and the gatepost, I have leanings that way myself.
“Of course, I do,” she answered emphatically. “For the simple reason that I have never known a well-cast horoscope to fail. Everything that was prophesied for me in my chart, has, up to date, come true. Everything!” Her earnestness was in italics.
“Now, you —” she generously began again, and I interrupted her only out of sense of duty. I wanted to hear about myself, goodness knows. Who wouldn’t rather discuss the great I Am rather than the lesser You Are. But this was an interview. Besides she was paying for the lunch.
“Tell me what has been prophesied for you,” I urged.
She glanced down at a magnificent diamond, sparkling on the finger where a diamond ought to sparkle.
“Well,” she said, reddening a trifle, “my horoscope says that I am to be married twice, once at the age of twenty-seven, and again when I am about thirty-five.”
My inquisitive eyes asked a mute question, which my tongue — although belonging to an interviewer — was too polite to utter.
“I am twenty-seven now,” she answered, in response to my unspoken query, and she blushed again.
And what with the prophecy, and the ring — well, astrology is a wonderful science!
“I was born in October,” she went on, “about two o’clock in the morning. That means that if I will achieve success, it will be late in life.”
“That horoscope was wrong,” I interrupted triumphantly. “What about your screen success — now?”
She looked at me in that peculiarly intent way she has. She smiled, ever so little.
“I haven’t done a single thing that’s worth while,” she said simply. “Perhaps I will amount to something some day — but I doubt it.”
That, if you please, from one of the best-known leading women of the films, a woman of whom I had repeatedly heard the assertion — “She is a snob.”
And right now, while the salad plates are being removed, and the chicken giblets on toast are being waited for, let me say that Naomi Childers is not a snob. And she is not upstage. I take great pleasure in making these two statements. One reason is because I believe them. Another is because she asked me to make them.
“It hurts me so to be told that I am considered snobbish,” she said. “Heaven knows I don’t intend to be — I am just as human as any one else, and I know that I haven’t any reason to put myself above a soul. The whole thing is, I can’t be boisterous, and act the part of what they call out here in the West — ‘a good scout.’ I am naturally shy. A roomful of people actually frightens me. I can’t rush in and call out: ‘Hello, old kid, how are you. I love that shade of hair you’re wearing —’ I can’t do it. I am fond of my friends, and fond of books. But I don’t ‘kid’ the carpenters and the electricians when I’m working on a set. I’d rather read.
“I think most people take moving-picture work too seriously. They think if they get fan letters, and the newspapers begin to speak of them as ‘stars,’ that some sort of a pose is demanded of them. It’s nothing wonderful, you know, to be a screen actress, and I can’t feel any loftiness of spirit about it. I’m just as I was before I was ever on the stage or the screen, and I don’t think I’ll change.”
I didn’t tell Miss Childers this — the arrival of the chicken giblets prevented my doing so — but I believe that one reason for the wrong impression people get of her is from the kind of parts she has been made to do. She is invariably cast as a patrician, a heartless society woman or a sickening snob. Her aristocratic, almost Grecian, features lend themselves admirably to these roles. But off the screen she is an entirely different looking person. She is much more youthful appearing, and one misses entirely the suggestion of hauteur which she inevitably is made to register in her pictures. Her eyes are a wonderful gray that rest upon you frankly, quietly, and sincerely. Her complexion is an enviable cream and rose, and her mouth, which I had never noticed as particularly attractive upon the screen, is really charming in its contour. Her teeth are small and white. Her manner is that of the gentlewoman, natural, and unostentatious. I liked her immensely, all the more because I had half formed the popular conception of her from such snobbish roles as the society girl in “Hold Your Horses” and The Gay Lord Quex.
Getting back to facts concerning past and future, Miss Childers was born in St. Louis — hence the authenticity of the faint Southern accent. Diana was the name by which she was christened, but she didn’t like it, and so took Naomi, her middle name, when she went on the stage. There were several years of “trouping,” and, showing what an unusual person Miss Childers is — she liked the “one-night stands!”
“I love adventure,” she said in explanation. “The never knowing what is just beyond. Of course, I disliked getting up at six in the morning to take a poky train to some other town — but there was always the thrill of the unknown, wondering what the next place would be like, what would happen — I’ll always be like that.”
After the stage, came pictures, with Vitagraph, Metro, and later a contract with Goldwyn. She loved best of all her role in Basil King’s production, Earthbound, although she was a wreck afterward from crying for sixteen weeks straight. If you remember her role of the wronged wife, you will realize the emotional demands of the part. She likes comedy, too — particularly her part in Hold Your Horses. Her comedy is subtle, delicate.
“I just finished a picture for Frothingham,” she told me, “and now I’m off to New York. Why? I don’t know. I haven’t the least idea why I am going. Something in me is urging me eastward — my horoscope says that something interesting will come of the trip — and I’m going.”
I was curious to know more of the future as predicted by Miss Childer’s chart.
“Hard work for the most part,” she smiled, “a big offer, a disappointment, a lot of small successes, and later on” — her gray eyes looked far ahead into the years — “something really big. I don’t know what, I only have faith that it will come. If I put myself into a receptive state of mind for it, and do my best, nothing can keep it away from me.”
And I am certain that the big thing will come to her. If the chart said so, it surely will make good. I know I wouldn’t disappoint Naomi if I were a horoscope.
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Speaking of the Occult
We are mighty suspicious whenever we hear of a motion-picture player who believes in Astrology, Numerology, or any other unusual cult. It sounds too much like a pose. But this story rings true! We are glad to present it to our readers, believing that Miss Childers is as sincere an advocate of Astrology as this story makes her out to be.
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There is a depth to Naomi Childers’ screen characterizations that surpasses even her haunting beauty. Her charm is mysterious, ineffable. In the informal chat with her which follows you may find the secret of that charm — you may find the answer to what you have always wondered about her.
Photo by: Edwin Bower Hesser (1893–1962)
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, June 1921