It turned out that the old lady was a very rich woman with a garage filled with imported automobiles and a steam yacht. She just had the “itch” to act in the movies.
It’s a little secret that is giggled up and down Fifth avenue that one of the “extra girls” in the ball room scene in “Way Down East” was Evelyn Walsh, who is considered to be the richest unmarried woman in the world. Mrs. Morgan Belmont was also in the same picture.
Perhaps it was the movies that did it; but anyhow, times have changed in the old Four Hundred in New York. It is only the Texas oil millionairesses who continue to elevate the haughty nose in mid-air and give you a far-away stare.
Mrs. Belmont, when I saw her in a picture studio, was sitting on the edge of a piece of scenery, smoking a cigarette that she had borrowed from a stage hand. She was excitedly debating an exciting question. She was contending that Jack Dempsey could have licked Jack Johnson when the big dinge was at his very best.
It happened that I sat in a business conference with Anne Morgan the other day. She was the most simple and democratic person present. She sat still and listened until every one else had expressed his opinion. Finally she threw away the butt of her cigarette and said abruptly, “Look here. We are all talking around in circles and getting nowhere.” Then she stated the case with the directness and clarity of a corporation lawyer. “You know,” she said in explanation, “My father was a banker.” I wonder if she thought she was telling anybody any news! J. Pierpont Morgan was the said father.
Mrs. Morgan Belmont isn’t likely to squeeze Mary Pickford out of her job. She was just in pictures on account of her name. In the case of Mrs. Lydig Hoyt, however, it is different. She is really a marvelously beautiful woman and may go far in the cinema.
Like most of the women in society, she is sick of gadding around tea parties. This stuff may be all right in F. Scott Fitzgerald flapper novels, but gets wearisome in real life.
Speaking of F. Scott Fitzgerald, I understand that Princeton University is so vexed with this youthful prodigy that he discreetly omits the usual dutiful visits to his alma mater. What’s ailing Princeton is Mr. Fitzgerald’s book, “This Side of Paradise,” in which he told some painful truths about college life. I couldn’t see anything so terrible about it; but Princeton was touchy.
In fact, I don’t see how anybody could “stay mad” at this child of genius. He is really a charming boy. He looks about seventeen, with those he-vamp blue eyes. I understand that “This Side of Paradise” was practically his own life, except that he really married the young society flapper who “trun him down” in the book. She is a very beautiful girl and the boy genius is obviously crazy about her.
Another “best seller” who is looking at the tall buildings of New York is Harold Bell Wright, the sales of whose books have now amounted to something over 9,000,000 copies.