Quotes

[In a 1989 interview] There aren't many of us left who remember the Hollywood of those far-off days when pepper trees lined Vine Street, but I don't think contemporary writers have depicted it accurately. It was not a modern Sodom and Gomorrah, nor was the use of drugs commonplace. The few actors--and I do mean few--who did use them were called dope fiends, and their careers were usually wrecked by scandal. The worst thing my girlfriends and I ever did was roll our stockings below the knee and do a little necking with our beaus in rumble seats. We danced, we went to football games, and we read the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay and the novels of [F. Scott Fitzgerald]. We did drink, of course--it was mandatory during those days of Prohibition--but not to excess. On the whole it was an age of innocence . . . and I was one of the most innocent.

[About working with Charles Ray in The Girl I Loved (1923)] He wasn't just acting in those scenes. He really was in love with me. I've never talked about it before, but I suppose that is why he chose me for the part. He could have had any one of a dozen actresses. I wasn't aware of how he felt at first, and it was only later on, as the film progressed, that I realized it. It became rather uncomfortable for me, especially when I realized the rest of the cast was aware of it, too. I remember Edythe Chapman, a fine character actress who was playing Charles' mother, taking me aside one day while the crew was setting up the next scene, and warning me to be careful. "He is a married man," she said.