Page:Screenland October 1923.djvu/67

SCREENLAND



motion picture people now in the limelight were to advertise in the classified sections of the newspapers, their bid for business would read like this:

''For Sale: Sorrows. Nationally advertised, guaranteed to bring tears and sympathy. Seller, realizing enormous publicity value of the great tragedy which has marred his life, offers his sorrows to the highest bidder. Address Hollywood, Box, 23, P. D. Q.''

Sorrow is the most salable commodity in the world of fillum and hokum. For sorrow is the woof and warp of hokum.

The public dearly loves to feel very sorry for someone, to see in the flesh or in the film the person for whom it is sorry. Of all our emotions, we enjoy our sympathy, our vicarious grief, the most. The public never loved Wally Reid so well in life as they did in his heartbreaking death. So its interest turned to Mrs. Wallace Reid and it was natural that she would be approached by motion picture producers with starring contracts. She had a sorrow for sale. No doubt high motives actuated Mrs. Reid when she made Human Wreckage. She wanted to save other fellow-creatures from the agony which poor Wally suffered.

There are rumors that little Bill Reid will be put into pictures. No doubt his mother has been offered contracts. Bill would be a good bet for the same reason that Mrs. Wallace Reid was a sure-fire box-office attraction. And to add to his sales, value, Bill—called Bill plainly for all the five or six years of his life, by both his mother and dad—Bill has had his