Whom Mr. Goldwyn pronounces the greatest comédienne in the world.
MAXINE ELLIOTT
As she appeared in “The Eternal Magdalene” in 1917.
“My Liberty bonds,” she answered, “There are only fifty thousand dollars worth of them, but if they will tide you over you may have them.”
Those interested in the personality of Mabel Normand can receive no more illuminating introduction to her than the incident just sketched. There are a hundred tales of this characteristic response to any human appeal clustering about the name of Mabel Normand. One which came directly under my observation relates to a poor girl with a dependent family. This girl was stricken with tuberculosis and, although Mabel did not know her, she became interested in her condition through a friend of hers. Immediately she went to see her, and when she left she pressed something into the sick girl’s hand. It was only after she had gone that the other realised what her caller had left. It was a check for a thousand dollars.
Nor does Mabel wait for the large demand upon her sympathy. Gifts from her come unprovoked as manna. She is likely to go out and buy a hundred-dollar beaded bag for a stenographer in the organization, and just as likely to invest a corresponding amount in remembering somebody whom she has met once and happened to like.
I used to find it very hard to get Mabel to a set when the set was early in the morning. Extras and other members of the cast would have been waiting there for hours. The director would be fuming. At last somebody would be sent to investigate the whereabouts of the missing luminary. More than likely she would be found writing letters in her dressing-room.
“But I don’t feel in the humour this morning,” she would sometimes say to me, pleadingly. “How can I go down there and act that way?”
My associate, Mr. Abraham Lehr, made frequent attempts to correct this habit of Mabel’s. He found himself forever frustrated—indeed disarmed—by the charm of manner, the delightful playfulness which Mabel possesses so abundantly.