Ingenious Hints to Ingénues

Advice to the Curious on how to Attain and Retain a Girlish Innocence in Screenland

PATRICIA COLLINGE

FIRST, you must be brought up in a convent. Always remember that! No selfrespecting ingenue ever acknowledges any other form of upbringing. A few reckless souls have braved convention and have been brought up in finishing schools, but these have generally turned out vamps, and we are now only concerned with ingenues.

So, you will start in a convent. Any convent will do. Only you must be sure that it has a photographer in attendance, as photographs of your cloistered girlhood will be needed later on (See movie magazines). These pictures should reveal you in simple convent garb— designed by Lucille—with your hair in ringleted profusion flowing down your back. It will continue to flow down your back as long as you remain an ingenue, and a long time afterwards.

After leaving the convent, you will step straight into stardom. There seems to be something about the seclusion of a convent that, without any further experience, fits an ingenue for a movie career. If you don't believe me, read any interview with any ingenue in any motion picture magazine. Consequently, I do not need to burden you with any advice about acting. In fact, you won't have to think about your acting at all. You will find it will come quite naturally—to your director. I will, therefore, content myself with a few hints gathered from personal observation of the silver-sheeted heroine, on the only subject you will need to bother your head about—clothes. You will discover that clothes play a tremendous part in your career. Of course, in the case of a vamp, clothes are a secondary consideration; but for you, an ingenue, they are practically everything.

Sport Clothes

FOR a first lesson in this important act, let us imagine that you are going to play the part of a pampered heiress in a society superfilm. The first scene is a hunt breakfast, where you meet the poor but horsy hero with whom you fall in love. Under such circumstances you will naturally wear white breeches, shooting boots, a peaked cap, and a sleeveless polo coat, showing a georgette waist. (This last gives a touch of femininity to an otherwise severe costume.) The ensemble will be completed by wearing your hair in curls—lots of curls—and of course, down. I think I had better make it clear, before we go any further, that your hair will hang loose through every scene and in all situations, unless you are betrayed. In the plot, I mean. Then you put it up. However, I hardly think that this complication will ever arise. You may be almost ruined several times, but, owing to a certain narrow-mindedness on the part of censors and the present public demand for sweetness and purity, your ruin will never be complete.

To resume; later, in the scene on the golf links, where you save your hero from the evil intentions of the villain with the aid of a well-aimed half mashie, you will need sport clothes. Ruffled organdie is very fetching on the links, but if you wish to be more technical, something neat in knickers with a yachting cap will be more appropriate. And, as most of the shots will be taken on the greens, you will naturally wear pumps with nice, sharp, high heels. For further atmosphere, you can putt with a golf-club. It doesn't really matter what kind of a club, because, with the aid of the camera-man, you can run down a 30-foot putt with either a brassie or a niblick and invariably sink it. Remember that the movie camera can lie like a gentleman.

The next scene of importance will be your coming out ball, where you refuse the villain and break your ambitious mother's heart. For this debut, any last year's dinner dress will do. Just swathe it with pink tulle, wear all your curls, stick to close-ups, and that's that.

This being society a la cinema, your coming out ball will wind up with a swimming party in the ball-room tank. Your swimming costume, however cannot be suggested here. It depends on a number of things, for the most part anatomical, but, at any event, there will be very little to bother about.

How to Dress at Bedtime

NEXT will come the great bed-room scene, where the villain breaks into your room and you are rescued just—but only just—in time by the hero. The villain will be cast out into the night, and the hero will be acclaimed. Of course, his presence near your room at midnight will be accepted without question. Life is so uncomplicated in the movies. However, in this bed-room scene you will need more clothes than at any other time in the picture.

The first shot will show you getting into bed.

Here you are disclosed in a nightdress heavily encrusted with rosebuds, lace, much ribbon and, possibly, a little tulle. Over that you will wear a neglige of silver lace, also covered with rosebuds, a cap to match, and finally, openwork silk stockings. You discard none of these. You wear them all to bed. You will go to sleep in a sitting position, backed by eighteen small lace pillows, and naturally with all the lights on. As a result, when you are aroused by the villain and jump from your more or less downy couch, not a strand of your hair will be disordered, not a rosebud disarranged, nor will there be a single wrinkle in the cap, the nightgown or the neglige.

After rising, you will put on another neglige and mules.

The last scene of all will be your wedding. The dress for this occasion is not important. Your bouquet will hide the worst of it, and you'll be entirely covered with tulle. The final close-up will reveal you and portions of the leading man with the minister reading the marriage service. During the ceremony, be very sure that you and the groom both stand with your backs to the minister—but this last admonition comes under the head of realism, which will be taken up in another lesson.

There are just a very few hints to help the ingenue in her step from the convent to the screen. Take, for instance, the matter of your daily life. Although convent-bred, you will find education of little or no use to you. Of course, a little knowledge will not really hamper you, but don't overdo it. A library is very useful as a background, both for the purposes of photography and publicity. Learn a few names for quoting, such as Balzac, Harold Bell Wright, De Maupassant and Freud.

Ten Test Questions

LL other study must be centered in your art, in the interest of which the following ten questions may prove valuable, as a correct knowledge of the answers will do much to forward you on a successful career.

1. Divide a custard pie in half. Apply with the necessary velocity to a given surface. Add four barrels of flour, two of soot and one of molasses. Add two policemen and one runaway Ford, and then subtract all humor. How many laughs will the result get in a two-reel Skreeming Komedy?

2. Witness the screen adaptation of any popular play or novel and find the original plot.

3. Give two reasons for the popularity and success of the bathing girl.

4. Add number of years spent in cloistered convent. (See proceeding lesson.) Add number of years spent in actual work. Subtract one press-agent. How old is an ingenue?

5. What did Barrie think of Male and Female?

6. Add two hundred badly dressed supers to one star, dressed by Callot. Add four bachelor orgies, one shiny-haired hero, and one similarly sleek-headed villain. Add one bulging and lorgnetted matron with a gray wig, and one large reception attended by supers who dance the two-step. Subtract all good manners. Add one suicide, one murder, one near-seduction; and divide by six reels, nineteen art titles and forty-seven close-ups. Explain why the result is called a Society Drama.

7. How much does a Million Dollar Movie cost?

8. At what age do caption writers leave school ?

9. At what age does a moving picture star put up her hair?

10. How many dollars are there in Sex?