***************************************************************************** * T A Y L O R O L O G Y * * A Continuing Exploration of the Life and Death of William Desmond Taylor * * * * Issue 57 -- September 1997 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu * * TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed * ***************************************************************************** CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE: Antonio Moreno ***************************************************************************** What is TAYLOROLOGY? TAYLOROLOGY is a newsletter focusing on the life and death of William Desmond Taylor, a top Paramount film director in early Hollywood who was shot to death on February 1, 1922. His unsolved murder was one of Hollywood's major scandals. This newsletter will deal with: (a) The facts of Taylor's life; (b) The facts and rumors of Taylor's murder; (c) The impact of the Taylor murder on Hollywood and the nation; (d) Taylor's associates and the Hollywood silent film industry in which Taylor worked. Primary emphasis will be given toward reprinting, referencing and analyzing source material, and sifting it for accuracy. ***************************************************************************** David B. Pearson has set up a mirror of the Taylorology web site at http://www.uno.edu/~drif/arbuckle/Taylorology/ ***************************************************************************** Two color reproductions of posters from William Desmond Taylor's films are available on the web. "Huck and Tom" (1918) is available at http://www.lightside.com/ampas/ampasimages/tom.html "The American Beauty" (1916) is available at http://www.lightside.com/ampas/ampasimages/amer.html ***************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************** Antonio Moreno Several prominent silent film actors and actresses were close to the vortex of the Taylor murder. One such actor was Antonio Moreno, who spoke with Taylor on the phone less than an hour before Taylor was killed and was with Taylor several times during the week prior to his death. Moreno's phone conversation with Taylor was in progress when Mabel Normand arrived at Taylor's home on the evening of February 1, 1922. The following items are: (a) an "autobiography" written by Moreno in 1924; (b) two interviews from 1919; (c) a clipping regarding the settlement of Moreno's lawsuit against Vitagraph, which was filed shortly before the Taylor murder and was the subject of Moreno's business meetings with Taylor; (d) Moreno's statements regarding William Desmond Taylor, which provide some information on Taylor's activities during the last week of his life, and; (e) some rumors pertaining to Moreno. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * [In the following biography, words which were italicized in the original article have been surrounded in asterisks.] November 8 - December 13, 1924 MOVIE WEEKLY The True Story of My Life by Antonio Moreno "To see ourselves as others see us..." This should doubtless be the way to write a story of one's own life. But it is so hard to know *how* others see us, even hard for a movie actor, who has his finger somewhat on the pulse of public opinion through the agency of fan mail. The only way that *I* can tell my life story is plainly and simply as it has happened and as I have felt it. It is said that every life is a story, no matter how uneventful it may seem to the person living it. This theory gives me courage to tell my story. If the story is not as romantic and colorful as might be expected, it will be because of two reasons, one being that I am not a writer and have little or no idea of how to give glamour to circumstances and events. And the other and probably the most important is that my wife says that I am "a Latin without the Latin temperament." Thus, I haven't even *that* dramatic instinct to help me out. Then, too, I have always had the impression that autobiographies should be written at the age of eighty or ninety and published after death. I'm a bit afraid to see the story of my life in the cold light of print while I am still alive and still living that life. It's hard to have a true perspective on a thing you are still doing. When the request came for me to write this story, I shuddered and shrank from what appeared to me to be an ominous business. How to go about it? My friends reassure me and tell me that everyone, or nearly everyone, is writing life stories about themselves. Some of them thinly disguised as fiction. Some of them baldly and frankly what they are. Perhaps some of them are doing this sort of thing from the same motive that inspires me--self preservation. By self-preservation I do not mean the earning of sustenance, the well- known daily bread, but as a means of salvation from fantastic fictions which are woven about a person who chances to be caught in the limelight. Most of these stories are anything *but* true. Whatever may, or may not be said about my own story of my life, at least it *will* be *true*. I've read the most incredible publicity tales about, for an instance, my rise from dire poverty to dazzling riches. I've read the most romantic accounts of minutely described romantic adventures in which I have been supposed to be the protagonist and hero. I may have wished that some of these sensational events had happened to me, but am forced to admit that very few of them ever did. Excepting in the minds of the ladies and gentlemen who thus honored me with their imaginative pens. Still, with due credit to the much-maligned press agent, I will say that some of these accounts were based, at least *based*, on fact. I refer to the stories retailing my early state of poverty. The only reason that they were not all fact is due to my failure to go into enough particulars to make sufficient data for a good story. Somehow, I dread living over again, even in conversation, "the days that the locusts have eaten." According to my recollection, there was no gala demonstration in Madrid, Spain, when I was born. Although I do believe that for a time, at any rate, my father considered me an attraction about on a par with a bull fight. He thought I was good entertainment. He was even a little bit proud of me, because I was huskier than most infants and promised a long and vigorous career with my fists or my lungs or something of the sort. My father, by the way, was named Juan Moreno, and he was a non- commissioned officer in the Spanish army. He married my mother, Ana, after a very charming and danger-fraught romance; in the face of strenuous objections raised by her family, one of the oldest in Spain, which considered a mere soldier beneath it in rank and dignity, not to mention social suitability. Therefore, I was the child of a true love match, which may or may not mean anything. Shortly after my unheralded entrance in the Spanish capital and my christening as Antonio Garrido Monteagudo Moreno, my parents moved to Seville. Beautiful Seville. If I were I poet, I might expatiate at length about Seville. Being only a Latin "without the Latin temperament," I can only feel the beauty of it in my blood and remain, forever, I fear, inarticulate. Nevertheless, the city of Seville, with its languorous charm, its underlying and overlying sense of smoldering excitement, is the great city of Andalusia. I once thought of Seville as a beautiful woman with fever in her veins. I don't know--is that a charming analogy? No? It is, too, a somnolent city. A city that is dreaming underneath her sleep. A song from an upper chamber may be answered far down a narrow, quiet street. I, myself as a small boy, have heard such a song, have answered it-- The thrum of guitars, the chatter of men and women, slurring like silk drawn across white hands, all are uninterrupted by the blaring noises of traffic. Yes, Seville is a jewel set in orange groves, palms that wave like long green arms and the continual spray of fountains. In my childish mind these things were jumbled--spray of fountains--songs answered and unanswered--songs that came from dim, mysterious recesses, that were filtered out through jalousies and casements--palms and the heavy-hanging oranges. To enter the cool, flowered shade of Seville is like awakening from a troubled sleep in a garden of tranquil beauty, where twilight reigns in veils. The real charm of the city unfolds at twilight, as though that twilight took off her shrouding veils, or else as though some lovely nocturnal flower were unfolding. At twilight, the people gather in the gardens or at the river side to talk or to listen to the music. For there is music everywhere. here at there at a barred window may be seen the faces of two lovers, the man leaning against the iron lattice, the woman within guarded by the screen, whispering, whispering for hours. It is a curious kind of privacy one finds in Seville, for there are no blinds, no curtains, to hide the view of the rooms and patios, filled with their sense of cool serenity. Seville, as you may know, is famed for the beauty of its women. They have that "golden pallor" accentuated by black, flashing eyes and shining, very dark hair and a dignity of graceful languor that lends to their mere beauty a magnetic charm, a mystery--I like mystery in the beauty of women. Perhaps that is childhood impressionism hanging over. Psychologists say that all the impressions that really matter, all the impressions that we carry with us into maturity, are made before we are seven. I think that is somewhat the way it is with me. Some day I shall go back to Seville. My wife and I plan a long trip there one of these days. I want to see whether I can now recapture that first fine beauty, that sense of things unseen-- To make a brutal contrast, I used to go, as a child, to the slaughter place, and there learned much about bull fighting. It *is* a brutal contrast- -latticed windows and pale lovers--music and gentle talk--and then, the slaughter places. But life is like that. Contrast. Perhaps it is as it should be. But it should, also, go to prove that nothing is improbable or too extreme. I have heard, I have had, stories criticized on the grounds that they were "too extreme, too improbable." Nonsense. Nothing in life is too extreme or too improbable. Nothing, as a matter of fact, is ever quite as improbable and extreme as the contrasts of life itself. Real life. For instance, I, who was brought up with the idea of the priesthood, live in Hollywood and am on the screen. But this comes later on. To go back, I was fascinated by the slaughter place. More fascinated, I am bound to admit, than I was by the pale lovers murmuring at their latticed casements. Boy-like. It was my youthful ambition to be a torero. Actually, one of my playmates was destined to become the idol of Spain, where the torero is highly honored. This chum of my boyhood was Gallito, who was killed in the great plaza at Madrid while engaged in a bull fight some short while ago. All Spain went in mourning for him. He was the popular hero, more beloved than any ruler. The huge amphitheater in Seville, which I used to visit regularly, holds 14,000 people. The seats are arranged in tiers. One pays more to sit in the shade than in the sun. *I* sat in the sun. This amphitheater is a picture worthy of Maxfield Parrish. Above is the rich blue sky, a reflection of the sapphire sea beyond, and below is the hot gold sand of the arena. The sunny side is a mass of flashing color; poor folks resplendent in red, yellow, green and purple. Vivid hues from handkerchiefs, parasols and mantillas heavily embroidered with flowers. On the shady side sit the more aristocratic, the white mantilla predominating, overshadowed by the countless sombreros of the men. Vendors of sweet wine, fruit, fans and pictures of the toreros press through the crowds. And over all, higher and deeper than the sky, hotter and more vivid than the sand, is the thrilled sense of excitement and expectation. A trumpet brings silence and the bull fight proper. The bold, flaunting colors that pervade the scene are carried into the ring as the toreros appear in the brilliance of their attire. Amid roars of applause, mad shouts and rending shrieks, the fight goes on, while over the hot gold sand spread crimson stains blackening in the suns. If I go on thinking back on much more of this scarlet life of the amphitheater I will be writing just that, a life of the amphitheater rather than the story of my own life. But so fascinating does it appear in retrospect and so large a part did it play in my childhood, so much has it always influenced me that my life story would not be complete without some detailed mention of it. Any person who has so richly embroidered a background in his or her life cannot help but be influenced by it. It leaves an impress never to be forgotten. One is molded by it whether consciously or unconsciously. Well, then, my father died while I was still a youngster. Owing to the extremely straitened circumstances in which my mother found herself, my schooling was curtailed, but such elementary education as was afforded I received at a boarding school in Cadiz, where religious training was the dominant element. We were, I may add, in *extremely* straitened circumstances. My mother's family, aristocratic to their very finger-nails, were, at the same time, aristocratically impoverished and besides, they had never quite forgiven their daughter for her alliance with a soldier of Spain. Aristocrats so seldom do forgive. It is, forgiveness, one of the humbler virtues. My earliest recollection of Cadiz was of the shipping that came into the harbor. It stimulated my budding imagination. Whence came those precious cargoes? Whither were they going? I wished violently that I might sail with the ships, put into far ports with them, return home laden with fruits and spices, silks and jewels, or whatever their cargoes were. I rather veered in my ambition, I had wanted to be a torero, but, in Cadiz, I leaned a bit toward the sea, toward ships-- The sea was more bloodless but quite, I thought, as dangerous. In Cadiz I learned to swim and sail and row. I emulated the fish in swimming, my friends told me. I think I excelled most, perhaps solely, at that sport. My chief diversion out of the water was angling for the finny residents beneath the surface. A good catch meant a proud and boastful hour or so for me. When I was a little over nine years of age I was obliged to leave Cadiz and school, too, in order to assist my mother by earning a little toward the maintenance of our home. We moved to Algeciros, a village opposite to Gibraltar, which same is mostly inhabited by tourists. In Algeciros, I obtained employment at a bakery and worked late at night and in the early mornings carrying loads of new bread and rolls to the stores and various market places. I worked about eight or nine hours each night and received in payment one peseta, which was considered magnificent remuneration. During the day I attended school, but was, for the most part, too dog-tired, too sleepy, to take in much of the instruction that was doled out to us. Many and many is the time when I have been smartly reprimanded for falling soundly asleep at my desk. The only consolation I had was that I was also too tired and sleepy to care very much what they said or did to me. I was anesthetized alike against punishment and learning. After six months in Algeciros, we moved to Campamento, a small coast town between Algeciros and Gibraltar, where, by the way, my mother still lives. In Campamento we lived in a cottage near the church and I, with another boy, was taken into the choir. This event was one of the very few bright spots in my poor mother's life at that hard time. Her devout soul was thrilled at the happy circumstance. I then became an assistant to the padre and helped him in his duties of preparing for the masses. While there was no remuneration, it so greatly pleased my mother to think that I was helping at the church that mere money, greatly as we needed it, didn't seem to matter. It was my mother's great ambition that I, in time, might aspire to become a priest. To this end she prayed daily and nightly and many and earnest were her talks to me. Beautiful, earnest talks, talks striving to instill the sacerdotal instinct into my small brown body. Talks that, thought they did not serve their explicit purpose, have served other purposes and have never left me. However, and needless to say, mine was not the sacerdotal instinct. If I must, and I know that I must, tell the truth, I was always looking for a chance to get away from ecclesiastical duties and studies and go among the Englishmen's polo ponies at Gibraltar. My greatest pleasure was to be asked to hold the player's extra ponies for which duty I was more than recompensed by a shilling. I dared not tell my mother where I spent my spare time, she being of the opinion and hope that *all* spare time should be given to the church, and great was her state of speculation as to whence came so many shillings, inasmuch as my time was known to be without pecuniary value. About two years after our arrival in Campamento, a change came into our lives. We had been two years, then, in Campamento when my mother married again. It took me some time to "get over it." That is, to adjust myself to the idea and to the new scheme of things. I had been, for so long, the man of the family. The only man. Upon my small but sturdy shoulders there had devolved that sense of responsibility that only an only son with a widowed mother can ever quite feel. I had got used to the thought that in our world there was only my mother--and me. I had grown to feel, even if I never voiced it, that I was the one to whom mother must look for the material things of life and that mother was the one to whom I must look for the spiritual. I had begun to think that mother and I were a small world. Our small world. Our responsibilities, problems, worries, small joys and sorrows, were ours alone. There simply was no one else. I think that whatever a parent does has an extraordinary effect upon a child. We marry and sometimes, very often, we marry again. We live our different lives of love and work and ambition. But somehow, we seldom think of our parents living exactly the same kind of lives. Exactly as vital, exactly as needful. It had probably not occurred to me that, having me, my mother might have been lonely, sad. She was sufficient to me. I must have thought that I was sufficient to her. But I could look up to her. I always needed to look up to a woman. That is why a flapper has never seriously intrigued me. Aspiration must be an integral part of my feeling for any woman. Aspiration and admiration. But could my mother look up to *me*--a boy of eleven? And a boy, at that, who had demonstrated a preference for polo ponies over and above the joys of the sacerdotal life? Ah, I fear not! My mother was always kind and sweet to me. I am sorry for boys, for men, who cannot look back to the same cherished memory. It must take away something very *necessary*. Looking up to my mother, as I did, gave me my need always to look up. Where I cannot first admire, I cannot love. So, then, my mother married again. Boy-like, I had been utterly oblivious to any incipient romance. And when my mother announced to me that she was going to marry the man who was a market gardener in our town and who had spent frequent evenings with us, I was amazed. My world flopped over on its other side. She did marry him and shortly after the marriage he opened a small store. My mother helped a little with the business and so did I. And from the small store there grew up quite a business and, eventually, a farm was purchased with the proceeds of the industry. I never cared particularly for the farm, nor for the life of the farm. After the first exploratory interests abated, I began to grow restless. Somehow, natively, I was more interested in human beings and the behavior of human beings than I was in cattle and vegetable life. The slaughter places, the vivid amphitheater, the faces of the people who congregated there to watch the gory sport, the sea, the sipping wharves, these things, these places held me spellbound, where the farm was a negative interest. My mother and my new father, seeing these signs of restlessness, did all that they could to interest me in the farm and in the business. It was my mother's hope always to keep me with them, to have enough money, eventually, to educate me as the men of her family had been educated and then to have me pick out some profession that would befit a gentleman. She had, by then, I think, finally abandoned her hope of the priesthood for me. Although it did crop out now and then, like an ecclesiastical fever slowly abating. She would read to me in the evenings, the lives of sainted men, stories from the Bible, histories of the church. And I tried to listen, but my adventurous spirit was, I fear, with the toreros or with the sea-bronzed men and their mysterious cargoes. Then, too, tourists came to Campamento in the winters. These tourists became my friends. Many and many a tale of many a far land did I hear from the lips of some foreigner wintering it there in sunny Campamento. And instead of these tales making me more content with my native land and my allotted life, I became more and more restless, more and more eager to get away. As far as possible. I felt that I would never live my life in Spain. Some of the tourists were especially nice to me. They took an interest in me. Perhaps they sensed the eager, questing spirit that hung so hungrily on all their words. In exchange for my conducting them about Campamento, they, in their turn, conducted me, mentally, around the portions of the world from which they were variously come. I would go home fired with tales of London and Paris, Chicago and New York, Berlin and Vienna. But especially New York. America. There, there, I felt, would be my final abiding place. There I would find sea and plains and the great cities. There I could spread out and learn and live and be one or all of the many things I had dreamed. I would tell my mother of these things, these places, and with such a light on my face that she would sigh and turn away her face and say, "Antonio will not be with us long." Often, too, these tourists would take me to the theaters and there, certainly, I sat enthralled. Why, I thought, in the theatre one *can* be all of the things one has dreamed about. One can be buccaneer and torero, sailor and poet, lover and adventurer. I had often wondered how, in one lifetime, I could ever manage to achieve all of the roles I, at various times, saw myself enacting. The stage was the solution. Yes, in the theater all things were possible. This I kept to myself. I didn't quite dare to tell my mother that the son she had dreamed of in the priesthood was hankering for the stage. My mother didn't quite approve of the theater. To her it was a snare and a delusion. Something to be approached timidly and gingerly and from the outside only. Nevertheless, these occasional and enchanted glimpses were what bred in me my first desire to go on the stage. It was while I was employed as a helper on the buildings for the annual fair that I became acquainted with two gentlemen from America: Mr. Benjamin Curtis, nephew of Mr. Seth Lowe, who in 1901-2 was mayor of New York, and Mr. Enrique de Cruzat Zanetti, a graduate of Harvard. These two gentlemen were making a tour of Europe, the "grand tour," as we call it on the continent. There were two of the tourists to whom or on whom I bestowed, that winter, my unswerving allegiance. My huge admiration for them, lavishly expressed, and my breathless interest in all they told me about America evidently caught their fancy. They made a chum of me. I became more confidential with them than I had ever been with anyone excepting, perhaps, Gallito. I dared to tell them things I didn't even dare to tell my mother, for fear of hurting or shocking her. They were men. They would understand. I liked men better than I liked women. I always stood in awe of women. I still do. And yet, perversely, no doubt. I like best the women I stand most in awe of. I even went so far as to make brave enough to invite them to my house where, with great ceremony, I presented them to my mother. I somehow felt that this was a Great Occasion. I felt it even more when, after our dinner, Mr. Curtis began to talk very earnestly to my mother about a subject that was of intense interest to me--myself. He said a great many things about me that I did not understand and am not sure that my mother quite did, either. Flattering things. I hadn't had many flattering things said of me before. I wasn't used to it. And the upshot of that long evening talk was that they asked my mother's permission to place me in a school at Gibraltar. What an evening! Certain times, certain memories stand out in retrospect like dashes of scarlet against a drab background. Most of life is drab rather than scarlet. Most lives go along in uneventful routine. The performance of duty. The getting of cake and bread. Perhaps it is better so, for then, when the scarlet moments come, they light up all around them with a brilliance they wouldn't have if they were more frequent. There are times when we know, be we young or be we old, that we have come to a cross-road. That it is up to us to point a finger and that, whichever way we point, we begin at that instant to travel a new road, back which we may never walk. Or, if we do walk back, it will be all different. *We* will be all different. All this bears upon that evening in Campamento when Mr. Curtis and Mr. Zanetti were talking with my mother, concluding by telling her that they wanted to send me to school in Gibraltar. If anyone ever writes a biography of me, it must be up to that person to tell the flattering things Mr. Curtis said of me; it must be sufficient for me to say that both of these gentlemen told my mother that I seemed to them destined for "better and bigger things" than guiding tourists, getting odd jobs at the annual fair and otherwise picking up odd pennies and an even odder education about the streets and byways of a rather unenterprising little town. They thought that I had latent talent, they said. They couldn't quite tell what it was. Perhaps I couldn't quite tell, either. But education, influences, different environment would bring out whatever of Genius or her lesser sister, Talent, there lay buried within me, and it seemed to them that I should be given a chance. I remember that my mother was silent for a very long while. The gentlemen had been persuasive, no doubt of that. They had appealed to her maternal pride, but also to her maternal sacrifice. She had worried about me many a time, I knew that. She had felt that I was out of my element in the life I was living. But she knew, too, as I know now, that we had come to a cross-road, she and I, and that, if I accepted the patronage of these gentlemen, she and I would never travel the old road again, in the old way. Her silence seemed to me very long, indeed. I felt the element of drama being lived in that candle-lit room. My mother and these two gentlemen; they held my Future, my Fate, balanced in their hands. How could they be so quiet? I wanted to rend the waiting silence with a shout. But whether of grief or triumph I couldn't tell. Finally, with a dignity that was not lost upon me, young as I was, my mother bowed her head in acquiescence. She had accepted! There was much hand-shaking and many pats on the head and the interchange of words of wisdom. Then the gentlemen drew my mother further to one side and they conversed in undertones while I sat in my corner of the room, stubbing my toe against the rung of my chair. When they had gone, my mother made no particular demonstration. She was more than ordinarily quiet, as I remember it. She simply said, "You have had great good fortune; I pray that you may always live up to it." I knew that she had made two renunciations that night: one, of her son as wholly hers; the other, of her son as a priest. That dream she interred then and there. What further renunciation she had agreed to I didn't know at that time. Within the week I was placed in the school at Gibraltar. But I didn't like the routine and confinement of the school. I had lived my own life, as it were, too long for me to accept gracefully routine and schedule. I was miserable, stupid and unhappy. I wanted to be with my American friends. With them, I felt, I could learn far more than ever I would learn at Gibraltar. I have never been able to learn a thing unless I wanted to. I have always had to have things presented to me with color and with personal interest. When Mr. Curtis or Mr. Zanetti told me things, I drank them in eagerly. I got something out of it. I knew that I would get little or nothing from the school. I wrote frantic letters to Mr. Curtis, telling him how I felt about the matter. I showed him just what I was thinking and insisted that if I could be with him I would learn all that he wanted me to. I would read, I promised him. After the interchange of several letters, Mr. Curtis told me that he was in ill-health, that he supposed I knew what I was talking about, that he didn't believe in making education a bitter pill to be swallowed and afterward abhorred and that he had arranged with my mother to take me on a tour of Spain with him. I was, he went on to say, to act as his attendant, give him his medicine, attend to other little duties that might come up in the course of traveling. Thus I was taken on a tour of Spain. On that tour I learned many things. I learned a certain poise and self- reliance through the duties imposed upon me and the sense of responsibility I felt for Mr. Curtis and his comfort. I read a great deal under Mr. Curtis' guidance and suggestion. And I fell in love! While we were stopping in Seville, my old home, I met Conchita Perres, a girl with whom I used to play now and again as a child. The reunion became, at first sight, as they say, a romance, and I fell violently in love with the exquisite senorita. First love! First love has been written about by so many people better able to handle its delicate cadences than I ever could that I will scarcely try. It would be like rudely rubbing the bloom from a fragile memory. Best to leave it in my heart. I used to take her for walks in the evenings along the river Guadalquivir. Always, of course, we were accompanied by a duenna, the omnipresent chaperon of Spain. And, I suppose, as is the case with most boys, all sorts of other things awakened in me with this first awakening of love. I began to have a sense of what life might really be about. I began to realize that I couldn't merely drift about from place to place with no definite goal in view, whimsical--I must plan out what I was to be. I must go forth into some sort of an arena and come back triumphant. We made great plans, Conchita and I. I sketched a future for myself, and also, of course, for her, that I had never even thought about until I came to take these walks along the Guadalquivir. I thought of Gallito and suggested that I might be a torero, but Conchita was a timid soul and did not care for so ambiguous a future. I might be a poet, I thought. Poetic blood coursed for the first time through my enamored veins. But Conchita was also practical and didn't seem to think very favorably of my future as a poet. I might be an actor. Well, Conchita thought that might be possible, but one had to wait so long before one could attain any eminence as an actor. All this talking, this planning, this dreaming was good for me, though it led to nothing immediate. It at least cleared the way for me to make some sort of concrete plans for myself. Never again would I drift as I had drifted. Those plans for the future--alas, they were never to be realized. Though I should not say "alas," I know. Only that I feel a pity for all the bright young plans that go astray, that never are fulfilled. And they begin so brightly, with such a shining faith. Soon, all too soon for me, I had to go on with my friend and employer. But I did not forget my promises or my love, and several years later I returned to Seville--an Conchita. Of this second reunion I will tell later on. I think that parting from Conchita, my first love, was also the first *personal* tragedy of my life. The first tragedy in which I, myself, played the leading role. I had suffered in childish fashion when my father died. But then I had suffered more for my mother than myself, who was too young for grief. Children so easily, so quickly forget. Just as they harbor no grudges, nurse no grievances, so they bear no lengthy griefs. Later on, I suffered because of the privations my mother had to undergo. But then, too, my grief was for my mother. For myself, I rather enjoyed the somewhat hand-to-mouth existence. I had more freedom than other boys; I didn't envy them their wealth nor their advantages. For me, each day was a great adventure. I made my own days more than other boys did. So when I was torn away from my first love, I knew my first personal suffering. I began to see deeper into things than I had seen before. I felt a surging of warm sympathy for my mother and for what she must have suffered at my father's death. I had now known before. Odd, how we can only learn by our own experience. No matter how near we may be to the experiences of others, even our own, we never really KNOW until our own hearts are broken-- or we think they are. I thought that my heart was broken when I said farewell to Conchita, telling her, with tears in eyes and voice that one day I would return, bidding her to wait for me and never to forget me. *Helas!* Then, feeling very old and wise and sad, I set forth with Mr. Curtis on the resumption of our tour of Spain. I was playing, albeit unconsciously, a new role. I was the broken-hearted lover, beloved figure of romance. If Mr. Curtis perceived my emotional predicament, he either took it too lightly or too preciously to speak about it to me. Perhaps he didn't care; perhaps he didn't dare. I suffered in what I considered a noble and lofty silence. We visited Cadiz, Ronda and many other Spanish cities. During the course of our travels I was constantly asking questions about America. Next to the subject that most occupied my thoughts America came next; maybe *first* and I didn't know it, or wouldn't admit it. And when I received my replies, I was filled with wonder that there should be such a marvelous place on the face of the earth. For me it was the veritable El Dorado. I dreamed of the days when I should go to America, win my fortune, return for Conchita --Towering castles, there in Spain! When Mr. Curtis and Mr. Zanetti returned to Gibraltar to embark eventually for America, I begged them to take me with them. I made them the most grandiose promises as to what I should do once I got there. They need have no fear of me. Nothing was too difficult for me to promise, if only I could reach the Promised Land. For they made it just that to me--a Promised Land. They insisted that I must have more education and that if I pursued by studies conscientiously they might one day send for me. They sailed and left behind me so great an incentive that I faced school with an enthusiasm, a zest, I had never manifested before. I had to prove my mettle with my mind. Well, if so, then I would do it. I would have preferred a more active and grandiloquent way of proving my right to go to America, but I was, even then, enough of a fatalist to know that what is to be is to be. Study was even more than ordinarily difficult for me just then, too, for it was constantly besieged by the twin mirages of Conchita's face and my El Dorado. They began to seem to be linked together. It was only a few months later, maybe six or seven, that my mother informed me I need no longer go to school. Astounded, I asked by what right I could break my promise to my guardians. My mother smiled, that sad-wise smile of hers and told me that Mr. Curtis had cabled for me to join him in New York. All this had been arranged before he sailed for America, unbeknown to me. I was to prove my mettle, prove the reality of my desire to go and then, if I gave evidence of making good, I was to be sent for. My wild joy was shadowed for a moment at the thought of leaving my mother. Far more permanently now than ever before. Alas, it was only for a moment, as time goes. I knew that this time I might, in very truth, never come back. Or that, if I did come back, it would be as the man and not as the boy. When my mother said good-bye to me this time she would never see the boy Antonio again. I knew that she was realizing this very same thing. And again I was confronted with the splendid spectacle of the maternal sacrifice. Though it broke her heart, she would smile at me over the shattered bits. Gallant creatures, mothers. We had a week of preparation, during which I was too busy to have much time for sentiment. Clothes to buy, school business to wind up, friends to say farewell to, Conchita to write to. And at nights I would lie long awake, tired in body, but feverishly active in mind, dreaming of the country to which I was actually going at last. I felt, too, that I was going to meet my life-test. There, in America, I would either fight or fail. I would be a Failure or I would be a Success. America should be my proving ground. As I stood, at last, on the deck of the steamer looking back at the little village where mother and I had lived so happily together, a choking feeling seized me. My newly attained manhood now threatened to desert me. I wanted to be a little boy again. I wanted very much to cry, but the sense that such a demonstration would be unworthy of an explorer setting sail for America sustained me until the steamer actually began to draw away. Then the tears came, and finally dignity collapsed altogether under a violent and combined attack of home-sickness and sea-sickness. An American lady on board very kindly came to my rescue, giving me motherly comfort for the first trouble and oranges for the second. I recovered and felt that the fact that an American had put me on my feet again was a favorable omen. For the rest of the voyage I was very much myself; the spirits of youth rose like a hoisted flag and flew victorious. When the Statue of Liberty emerged from the mists I gazed at it with an awe close to the sublime. It seemed to me to be the embodiment of all the beauty and magnificence with which I had invested America in my dreams. I had been a little bit afraid that America wouldn't be what I had dreamed-- and here was a dream come triumphantly true. I thought then, I think now, that the placing of that goddess in the harbor was of divine inspiration, for to so many lonely hearts and fainting spirits it has been the symbol of welcome and hope. The first face I saw in all the crowd on the pier was that of Mr. Zanetti. With him was his housekeeper, Mrs. Finney, who received me with all the affectionate solicitude a youngster seldom receives except from his mother. Dear, good, ample soul--now that she has passed on I think of her often with admiration and gratitude and know that if the rewards meted out in the world beyond are just ones, hers must be doubled at least for the warm love she brought to the heart of a lonely little boy. It was Mrs. Finney who taught me English and gently and persuasively showed me the necessity for studying three or four hours every day. So grateful was I for her affection and the deep interest she took in my welfare and progress that I studied as never before; even began to love what had always been with me either a grim duty or a means to a desired end. Only a few months after my arrival in New York, Mr. Zanetti decided to go to Cuba on business and asked me if I wanted to go with him. I was still boy enough, as I am today, for that matter, to think going on voyages the most splendid business in the world and told him, in my newly acquired English, "Of course! You bet!" My Cuban experiences are among the most pleasant in my life, as I look back on things. I shall never forget the hospitality, friendliness, great heartedness of the splendid people on that enchanted isle. Today, was I write, one of my keenest anticipations is another visit to my Cuban friends. While in Cuba Mr. Zanetti was married, and today the son of that marriage is a student at Harvard. The finest compliment I can pay him is to say that he is a replica of his father. When I returned to the United States the problem of what my next step was to be confronted us. We decided on--but I shall go on with this later. When I returned to the United States from Cuba we were, as I have said, confronted with the problem of what my next step was to be. That the next step was, of course, to be educational goes without saying. Conclaves and discussions resulted in the decision that I should be sent to Northampton, Mass., to school, and to Northampton, accordingly, I went. At Northampton, I resided in the home of Mrs. Morgan, a widow of a Civil war veteran, who had lost her only son. Like Mrs. Finney she gave me such an affection as I'd only known with my own mother. My big regret is that she did not live long enough to share in the more successful part of my life. I would have liked to have proven to her that her belief in me was not wholly unjustified. Whenever I hear men speak cynically or skeptically about women I am not only indignant, but I cannot understand it. When I grow very old and many things, no doubt, grow faded and dim, certain warm and glowing memories will remain with me, and most of these memories will have been given me by women who have ministered to my life, always unselfishly, always tenderly, encouraging, consoling, blessed with faith. After quitting school with about the same stock of experiences and successes and friendships as marks the school days of most boys and young men, I took a position in the Electric Light and Gas Corporation at Northampton. They say that a Spaniard has no sense of humor, but Mrs. Morgan, were she still here, could testify otherwise, for she never forgot my remark upon obtaining this job: "Hum!" I exclaimed, "I have studied in Spanish, English and Latin in order to become a gas meter reader!" I had many amusing experiences making such translations. One is, I think, especially amusing and also illustrates the opportunity for character study that the humble occupation gave me: I was sent to the story of a Chinaman on the outskirts of Northampton to examine the gas meter. The shop was always brilliantly illuminated but the meter, mysteriously, never contained more than two or three coins. As it was impossible for anyone to tamper with the meter without being detected through the mechanism, the superintendent couldn't for the life of him make out what was wrong. I looked over the meter carefully but could find no signs of manipulation. And yet I was sure that the Chinaman was getting a big return of gas on a very small investment. I decided to take upon myself the role of Sherlock Holmes and elucidate the mystery. At dusk I saw Mr. Chinaman come to the door and carefully look around to ascertain whether or not there was anyone about. Then he went to the meter and put something in it that illuminated the shop like a cathedral at Easter time. I immediately hastened to the store, opened the meter and found that my ingenious friend had stocked it with a piece of ice the size and shape of the required coin. After serving its purpose the ice, of course, melted and drained away, leaving only--the mystery. This was only one of the experiences I had that made the job of meter reader full of human interest, even excitement and intrigue. It has made me quite positive that no job need be dull and mundane if you look for the elements of drama to be found. Life is lived at interesting angles wherever the angles may be placed. I remained with the Gas and Light Company for about six months. All the while I was thinking of a career on the stage. Either in my conscious mind, or else in my subconscious, this ambition had never really deserted me since the days when I visualized myself as torero one day, sailor to far ports the next, great lover the next. Besides, there was Conchita, waiting to hear of my success. One could not remain in the capacity of a gas-man with Conchita in view--I new that. I began to burn with restiveness and the desire to get my foot on the first rung of the ladder I ultimately wanted to climb. I hadn't of course, thought of pictures as a career at that time. So very few had. The legitimate stage was my goal. One day, and also via the gas-meter job, my opportunity came. Maude Adams was playing in Northampton in one of Charles Frohman's companies. They were rehearsing for "The Little Minister." I had always been an intense admirer of the lovely Maude Adams and I determined, rather soaringly, no doubt, that my debut should be made with her. I approached the manager and made application. He gave me one of those hard, cigar-in-the- mouth scrutinies and evidently felt in the mood for making a "discovery" for he gave me a small part in the production. He was probably not half so surprised at himself as I was at him. I had aimed high, but after I had, thus swiftly, really attained my purpose I knew that I hadn't actually hoped for so much after all. I went home in a perfect glow of triumph, told Mrs. Morgan with shaking voice, wrote letters to Mr. Curtis, Mr. Zanetti, my mother and Conchita and slept the sleep of the gods that night. I remained with the Company during the run of the piece and also through the runs of "The Sister of Jose" and "Peter Pan." I omit to say that the town of Northampton did *not* go dark when I deserted the Gas and Light. I felt now, that I had really achieved the first great step in my career. My being in America, the kindness and interest of my American friends was beginning to be realized. I had started in to gain what I had come for, what I had been educated for and believed in. And with this realization there came to me a desire to take a trip home to see my mother, my sweetheart and my beloved Spain. I felt that I could go back wearing at least the sprouting leaf of the crown of laurel I had set forth on my adventures to gain. After I had finished my theatrical engagement in 1910, I started on my homeward journey. I stopped in Paris for a month, saw the theatres, enjoyed myself as a young man of the world for, really, the first time "on my own"; then I went on to Madrid where I visited the house in which I was born. I then, with palpitating heart and eager pulse, hurried on to Seville where I intended realizing the dreams I had dreamed with my adored and beloved Conchita. I hadn't heard from her in some months, but took her silence to mean that she was awaiting, breathless, my actual presence before her. My first hour in Seville was spent in dressing in my best and seeking out her house. That walk from my hotel to her home will remain with me as long as I live. It was, in a sense, the very pinnacle of my youth and my dreams of youth. So far on my way I had known sorrow and privation, but I had also known warm friendships, faiths that had been kept, loyalty and sympathy. I was ingenuous. I believed in men and even more especially in women. I had, I thought, begun to make good. I had now come home, triumphantly, even as I had promised, to claim my love. All of my study, all of the hours reading gas meters, all of the hopes and efforts were to culminate tonight in the arms and on the breast of my Conchita. It was a veritable paen of a walk. I felt as though my feet hit, not pavements, but air. The blossoms seemed to drop about my head. I felt like holding out my arms to take into them Seville, beautiful--and mine-- I was received at the home of Conchita with true Spanish warmth and cordiality. But I felt, vaguely, that there was a certain formality and a constrained manner in the reception for all its old-world courtesy. When Conchita came down to greet me, more beautiful than even my longing dreams had pictured her, she did not come to me as I had dreamed she might, to my arms, straight to my hungry heart. I felt that the moment demanded swift, decisive action, lest I die of the cold fear that suddenly pressed in upon my glowing hour with fingers as cold as death. When, in that moment, I found my voice and asked her if now she would marry me and return with me to America, she told me that she did not consider me in a position to marry and furthermore that in my absence she had become affianced to another. I cannot say, even now, today, just what a blow this was to my youthful and ardent soul. As I stood there, speechless, the doors of the sun closed to upon me, feeling that the tragedy of all the ages had dropped upon my stooped shoulders, her fiance made his appearance at her window and I-- I bowed myself out of my first romance. After all, I thought as I made my exit, the first touch of bitter irony searing my thoughts, after all, my theatrical experience had been of *some* use. Without it I'm sure I could never have made such a gallant exit. I had entered that house a boy. I left the house a man. For me, things might grow to be better, they might grow to be worse. I might dream again, or I might never dream. But whatever the result, nothing would ever again be quite the same. I rejoined the friends I had met in Seville and we visited many Spanish cities. I wanted to travel. To keep going, to be on the move, that, I felt, was my only hope of banishing Conchita from my mind. We traveled, then, my friends and I. We visited the cities. Sometimes we threaded curious little places topped with castle towers or grim forts where people hurried out on their iron balconies to stare at our lumbering motor winding in and out of the crooked streets. After riding for hours through olive orchards or past cultivated farms with odd thatched out- buildings, hobbled horses, shepherds with their flocks, women waving flags at the toll-gates or jogging past on their heavily-laden burros, we finally reached the marshes of the Salinas, where the salt obtained from the evaporation of the sea water is piled alongside the canals in numberless, huge glistening pyramids. In a few minutes we would be honking across the narrow, flat and sandy spit connecting the mainland with the rocky islet of Cadiz--the Spanish Venice--where again I was amid the shipping scenes that had fascinated my boyhood. From Cadiz, then, our train climbed the hills to the Grenadine heights toward our next stop--the Alhambra, where we hoped to induce the guards to unlock its portals, so promptly closed at sunset. A few well-invested pesetas and the key was turned; we stood in the land of magic dreams, the Moorish paradise. The first glimpse of this wondrous ruin should be by moonlight; in the soft, mysterious beauty of night you feel the witchery of Oriental romance. As through a silver veil we saw, that night, the softly- colored decorations of an Arab's tent, bordered with the oft-repeated Moslem inscription, "There is no Conqueror but God!" During all the trip through the old-familiar places, I thought of two things: the inexplicable defection of Conchita, and the coming reunion with my mother in the home at Campamento. This meeting was the more delightful because of the anticipation. And also, perhaps, because I had not only my small success to lay at her feet, but my wound to be healed by her tenderness. This meeting, at any rate, fulfilled every expectation. The few weeks I spent there with my mother were rejuvenating and filled with spirit. I will not attempt to describe them; they are too personal. Suffice to say that I felt again my great ambition to succeed, to qualify for the sake of those who expected so much of me. And expected it so confidently. On my return from Europe, I set about my career with a fresh zeal. I first obtained an engagement from Sothern and Marlowe, playing in their repertoire of Shakespearean plays. In summers I played in stock companies to gain a greater versatility. Finally I decided to seek an opportunity on Broadway, the Mecca of the theater folk. I visited New York and there renewed my acquaintance with Helen Ware, then under the Belasco regime. Some little time before, in Northampton, I had met Miss Ware and she had encouraged me to persevere in my theatrical work at a time when I was feeling rather discouraged and depressed. It was Miss Ware who assisted me in obtaining an engagement to play a young Spanish count in "Two Women." I was fortunate in securing a part so suited to my type and my ability. The newspapers approved of my performance --how proud I was of *that!*--and thus I was retained for a tour of Cleveland, Chicago, Montreal and other cities of Canada and the United States. In the autumn of that year I joined John Gates, who was managing a company playing "Thais." The cast included Constance Collier's husband. My part was small, but I profited a great deal by studying the work of the splendid players in the leading roles. Later I joined the Wilton Lackaye company to play a young Italian secretary in "The Right to Happiness." Then came a vaudeville engagement followed by the juvenile lead in "The Old Firm," with William Hawtrey, brother of Charles Hawtrey. While again playing with Constance Collier, I met Walter Edwin, an old Englishman, who had understudied Sir Henry Irving and Beerbohm Tree. He had just finished an engagement with the Edison Picture Company and he advised me to try the films, as he thought I would be suited to the requirements and as he also thought there was "a big future" in pictures, and the ones who got in on the ground floor, etc. I believed in the soundness of Walter Edwin's point of view. And with this belief in mind and little wotting (as the old novelists say), what this next step was to lead to, I followed his advice and applied at the Rex Studio for a movie job. I began as so many others have begun in the past and, doubtless, as so many others will begin in the future. As an *extra*. I was one of the many doing "atmosphere" in a two-reeler, "The Voice of Millions." Marion Leonard played the heroine. I liked the new work, despite the fact that I had gone to see about it rather unenthusiastically and simply on advice. I liked it and, more, I prophesied, to myself, at any rate, something of the gigantic and important thing it has now become. I received but five dollars a day, but I determined to stick to the studios. There began to shape in my mind my first definite "scheme of things entire." The films--here was where I belonged. To the films I would give my allegiance, my time, my ambition. To this end I secured an introduction to David Wark Griffith and once more obtained a place among the extras. I wasn't daunted. If I couldn't rise out of the rank and file, then I could never rise at all. I believed in opportunity and thought I should recognize the first knock. It wasn't easy. I worked hard, lived frugally and had little or no pleasure, excepting that I found in my work and my fellow associations. One day Mr. Griffith called me to him and told me that he had decided to make me a regular member of his stock company at a salary of forty dollars a week. The elation I felt when thus recognized by Mr. Griffith far surpassed any feeling I had when I later achieved stardom. While with Mr. Griffith I played in pictures with Mary Pickford, Blanche Sweet, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Lionel Barrymore and the late Robert Harron. And I think we all, Mary and Lionel and Lillian and the others as well as I, look back upon those days of penury and progress with a feeling of profound appreciation. If not actual nostalgia--It was a rare and happy family, surging with eagerness, borne high on the wings of work and ambition, fired by enthusiasms and beliefs. How we dreamed! How we builded! What futures we erected in clouds beyond the sight of mortal eye! When I had worked up to the munificence of one hundred and twenty five dollars a week, considered positively plethoric in those days, I was introduced by Howard Chandler Christy to J. Stuart Blackton, then one of the officials of the Vitagraph Company. It happened that S. Rankin Drew had been taken suddenly ill and someone was needed to fill his place in the company with his father, Sidney Drew, and Mrs. Drew. Commodore Blackton made me the offer and I accepted. I certainly had courage or audacity or "nerve" or *something*, to attempt playing with artists as superior as Mr. and Mrs. Drew, but I managed to get by in "Too Many Husbands" to the satisfaction of the Vitagraph, and so I became leading man and eventually co-star. For four years I remained with the Vitagraph, then transferred to the Pathe to appear in serials with Irene Castle and Pearl White. After appearing in Kipling's "The Naulahka," a Pathe feature, I returned to Vitagraph to star in serials, the last of which I also directed. Shortly thereafter I again took to "features," among which was "Three Sevens," from the novel by Perely Poore Sheehan. About this time, too, I began to feel that serials were not doing me the amount of good they might do, or rather, that feature stories would do. My friends, fan and otherwise, began to proffer me the excellence of their advice. It all led to the same thing--break away from serials; go into stories where your Latin temperament (if I have one), your type, will be more *valuable*. I felt definitely that I had gone as far as I could go in the sort of thing I was doing and that I must either "step out," or remain one of the background. A remunerative background, no doubt, but not quite the sort of thing I dreamed for myself. I began to bestir myself. Well--with struggle here and there, and a great deal of wrenching and red tape, I finally managed to hoist myself out of the type of work I had been doing for so long, pretty nearly *too* long. And the first result was "My American Wife" with Paramount, and "Look Your Best" and "Lost and Found" with Goldwyn. I was on my way! Famous Players-Lasky eventually contracted with me and I have made "Flaming Barriers," "Tiger Love," "The Spanish Dancer," "The Border Legion" and "Story Without A Name" most recently. During the beginning of this work I migrated to California, there to take up my abode and there, too, to meet the lady who has become my wife. Perhaps it is not given to every man to meet his Ideality. It was given to me. A woman, gracious and poised, lovely and cultured, intelligent and charming--my wife. It was, too, the sort of a romance that Jeremy Taylor once described so aptly as "true love." He said, "True love is friendship set on fire." It was so with us. I met my wife as Mrs. Danziger and we were friends, good friends, for some time before the idea of love and romance came to us as a fitting and beautiful consummation. It was while I was away on exterior one time, in the South Seas, that I suddenly, swiftly and poignantly realized just what this friendship really meant to me. It was like lightning illuminating skies that had been dim and wonderful before, but were now rent asunder, revealing, not friendship only, but friendship crowned with love. When I returned to Los Angeles, bearing my secret, I was afraid to put my fortunes to the test. It seemed too much to hope for. Here I had been at the very side of the love I had dreamed of for years--how did I dare to *know* whether or no my dream was to come true? I finally, and very falteringly, proposed one evening when four of us were playing Mah Jong. I suppose that I felt the need of support if the heavens should fall on me, obliterating my dream. So agitated was I that I used the name of the other woman playing with us instead of my wife's name--Daisy. What the happy culmination of that proposal has been, all of my friends know. We were engaged; we were married; we came to New York for our honeymoon. We have built a home in California and we are, I dare to prophesy, going to "live happily ever after." In reviewing my personal experiences, I have aimed at no "message." Neither have I told a history of "How I Became a Success," for I do not consider that I have achieved success, save in my personal life. Otherwise, there *is* no such achievement in life. The way to success has no ending, it is a constant and perennial striving upward. The only real formula for real success is Work and Faith. All may achieve this sort of success for all may work and the only happiness, the only success, is in *labor*. Other rewards do not count, comparatively. The joy of leisure is an illusion. The chief reason for my liking serials for as long as I did was because they kept me constantly at work, whereas feature pictures do permit of a week or more idleness in between. To occupy myself during some of these brief periods, I have written this autobiography. Thus you may perceive the fruits of idleness! The End * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * August 24, 1919 Louella Parsons NEW YORK TELEGRAPH Most people christened with the handicap of Antonio Garitarrido Monteaugudo Moreno would die in the attempt to live up to such a name. Not so young Moreno. He has kept on going and has done his level best to live up to his ancestral drawback. It smacks as much of romantic Spain as Murphy does of potatoes and Ireland. And it smacks truly, for Antonio Moreno is a real Spaniard, not a camouflaged nicknamed one conceived for motion picture purposes. He was born in old Madrid and set sail for America to make his fortune, at the tender age of fifteen. Young Moreno, who still retains a faint accent, said it was Helen Ware who first put into his head the idea that he might be able to do something on the stage. Miss Ware happened to be on the boat carrying Tony to the New World, and it was her encouragement that induced him to make the effort to become an actor. "I couldn't speak a word of English when I came to this country," went on Mr. Moreno. "I was a stranger in a strange land indeed. My landlady used to give me lessons, pointing out this is a fork, this is a spoon, this is a knife, until I learned the necessary nouns and could make myself understood." After remarking upon Mr. Moreno's success in struggling with a new tongue he laughingly said there were times when he could not get the right word in time to express a thought. "One day Tommy Meighan and I were having luncheon with David Warfield," he said. "I came a little late and, in explanation, I started to tell Mr. Warfield of the beautiful woman I had met on my way to the hotel. "'Blonde or brunette,' he asked. "'Mediocre,' I said, and Mr. Warfield and Tommy have never stopped laughing at my mediocre beauty. They will never believe I meant to say medium." Mr. Moreno's trip to New York was in the nature of a vacation for a good little boy. It was Albert Smith himself who told Tony he might have a week in the gay city. "And," said Tony, "when I get here the theatres are closed, prohibition has struck the gilded cafes and there is no place to go. All my friends say come on out for the weekend, but I am only here one weekend, so what is there to do?" Later, Mr. Moreno explained prohibition really meant little in his life, since he only took a drink with the boys to be a good fellow. He didn't really care much for liquor, but he had come all the way in the hopes of seeing Frank Bacon in "Lightnin'" and Fay Bainter in "East is West." "It's a case of when a feller needs a friend," he said. "Here I have been on the Coast working hard, and looking forward to my vacation in New York and the strike, which has all year to happen, comes at the very moment I arrive in town." Tommy Meighan and Jack Pickford, both pals of young Moreno, had the same sorrowful experience, though Mr. Pickford was there for some time before the theatres shut their doors. They all went back to the Coast together to work in different studios for different film corporations. Olive Thomas helped the entertainless situation all she could by giving a birthday party for Jack last Saturday on his twenty-third birthday at their country place in Rye. The party was in reality a week-end affair and lasted until Monday, when duty called the guests to the Twentieth Century train. To go back to the beginning of our story, Mr. Moreno did get on the stage, and, after making himself known, he was engaged by Vitagraph for pictures. The Moreno-Storey pictures are well remembered as being some of the finest made at that time. Mr. Moreno played opposite Edith Storey and they were considered one of the best teams in pictures. Then Miss Storey went to Metro and Mr. Moreno went to Pathe. But he admitted there was always a hankering in his heart for Vitagraph, and Vitagraph had never replaced him, so after a year with Pathe he signed a new contract with Albert Smith, one which benefited him financially and made him think perhaps after all it was a good thing he went away, for he was appreciated when he came back. Serials seem to be Vitagraph's intention for their returned star. He has just finished "The Fighting Peril," or some peril or other, and is to make another thriller. Deep in his heart he hopes to make features again, but now his popularity in serials will not permit the change to me made. "If people go to see one one time in a feature," said Mr. Moreno, "it is not so much of a compliment, but if they go for fifteen weeks and follow your adventures in a continued picture it is proof that they like you and want to see you, so sometimes I am glad I am in serials, for they have their compensation." Antonio Moreno is an interesting chap who has by sheer strength of character and hard word educated himself in the ways of America, both in literature and in business. He loves his adopted country even more than his sunny Spain, he says. "I went back a few years ago but I have become so entirely Americanized I was out of place. I love the romance of my country," he said, "the beautiful moonlight nights, the serenades, the songs, the poetry and the beautiful women, but I miss the energy of this country, the wideawake spirit and the effort every one makes to accomplish their purposes, be it an artistic ambition or a commercial goal." And Tony is not conceited. While we were having luncheon two girls discovered him and at once went into raptures. They left their table, came in and stood in front of him and pointed him out as if he had been Exhibit B in a freak museum or in the Bronx Zoo. He talked fast and tried not to notice the two fair ones. They left the dining room but kept parading up and down Peacock Alley at the Astor craning their necks and looking in at him as much as to say peek a boo, here we are. The whole thing became so obvious and so amusing I finally said to him: They have followed your adventures on the screen and are glad you are saved to be able to eat your luncheon. "Perhaps it might have been better if I had not been saved," he said. "I almost wish I hadn't." He was blushing, and it was the real thing, not a put-on-for-effect affair. Having seen screen actors who would have reveled in this recognition, I must admit Mr. Moreno's stock went up 100 points then and there. There is an element of sincerity about the young man and straight forward manner which is singularly pleasing. In fact, Antonio Garitarrido Monteaugudo Moreno is, name and all, a most likable chap. It is a good thing we can write and we don't have to pronounce all the Spanish in his name, for it sound when I say it like a Chinese Summer resort, but, dear reader, you should hear Tony say it--ah, that's another matter. Those female lounge lizards who wasted 50 cents worth of powder dolling up to look pretty for Mr. Moreno would never have torn their sentimental young selves away if they had heard him roll out his soft Spanish enunciation. But seriously there should be a law against such females. They are dangerous, and make the old familiar verse the female of the species is more dangerous than the male come true with a vengeance. Mr. Moreno is, in the language of his press agent, heart whole and fancy free and one of the few eligible bachelors on the screen. We tell that not to encourage these girls, but to say press agents are not always truthful and Mr. Moreno does not look entirely fancy free. Our luncheon was over, however, before I had time to ask him if his p. a. told the truth. Next time I will do better, I promise, and find out about his matrimonial intentions and aspirations--but, alas! he thinks Spanish women the most beautiful in the world. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * December 1919 Gladys Hall MOTION PICTURE From Sanctimony to Serials The other day something vivid happened, here in my office. The "something vivid" was Tony Moreno, newly arrived from the coast and here for the purpose, he said, of acquiring a new derby and such like essentials. The derby had been achieved and was handled with great reverence and considerable admiration by its owner. One appreciates that for which one makes a transcontinental trip. "They don't grow them like this in California," he said, referring to the derby, and then he tried it on and demonstrated its exceeding originality and chic. There was about him, wholly, the air of the proud small boy who exhibits to an admiring crony a shiny new bat or a "bike" just acquired. He is distinctly, refreshingly ingenuous. He is friendly and without affectation. He is truthful and eager and like a child who stands before a shop window filled with goodies, knows they are obtainable, yet does not know just which one to choose, just how to go about it. He is rather self-depreciatory than the reverse. For all the feminine adulation he receives, he has a healthy viewpoint. He is quite amazingly unspoiled. He has an equally healthy distaste for New York or any other sort of night life, cabaret life, etc. "I duck whenever I can," he said. "I don't know why, but it all just bores me. Bores me horribly. I never have a good time." It is easy to picture the small Tony running with bare feet and swift, brown legs through his childhood in Spain. "There is nothing at all extraordinary about me," he said, "unless it is my Spanish birth certificate. My father was just a--well, what you would call here an ordinary soldier, sergeant, perhaps, or something of the kind. He died when I was about ten or eleven and my mother and I moved away from the town, far out into the country, and lived there alone. She used to pray that I would be a priest. That was her great ambition for me. In the evenings we would sit together and she would picture me as a very *great* priest and picture, too, her own pride in me. I don't think *I* ever took to it very kindly. I don't think I would have been a very good priest." Rather a breathtaking thought, it occurred to the appreciative interviewer--the vivid Tony in the sacerdotal garments doling out penances-- penitence were paradise, enow-- "Were you ever sanctimonious?" I asked. "Oh, at intervals. I stall am. But mostly, mostly now, I am *serial". From sanctimony to serials--that's a far hail, isn't it?" "How about the serials? Like 'em?" Tony looked rarely grave. "I should like to do Spanish things," he said. "I feel sort of lost in serials. I have the atmosphere of Spain, her traditions, her mannerisms and language and romance soaked into my blood and bones. I could give it again on the screen. And then I am the type--I could make the real spirit of Spain live here, in America. It seems to be the thing for me to do--I know Marseilles--Barcelona--Castile--Yes, I know my country." Another breath-taking thought--Tony, Spanish Tony--strumming away at an old guitar under some latticed jalousie, where a face, framed in a dark mantilla, shone with the glow of a pale young moon--and a rose dropped down-- There is something paradoxical about Tony. He has the dark face of some dream of old romance--one would expect of him soft whisperings in some bewitched retreat--one would picture him as dreaming of some remote "Elaine," lily-white and crowned with distant stars. And one finds the friendly heart of a singularly truthful child, direct and rather unvarnished utterances--the same camaraderie of some lovable, usual brother and very succinct opinions on the sort of a woman he would marry-- "I'd want some one who *knows* something, first of all," he told me, "because I don't. I don't know a thing. I'm just a mutt. I'd want a woman who could teach me a thing or two, who had brains and a little experience. None of the ingenue variety. Gosh, how I hate 'em in real life. I'd like to do this to 'em." And he extended a powerful and no doubt bronzed right arm and made a thoroughly eliminating gesture. "I don't care how old she is. I don't care how she *looks*. Looks matter very little to me. The main qualification would be--brains. Some one who would talk to me, who would read to me and tell me what to read. Some one who would educate me, as it were. That's the kind of a woman *I* want. That's the only kind I could love--the kind I could look up to. I'd be bored to death with the clinging vine before she'd have half a chance to cling. I'd hate to think I could say to a woman, 'Come here!' and have her toddle over, lisping, 'Yes, dearie!' I like superiority in a woman. I like to feel it." After he had gone, rather forcibly escorted by his P. A., who informed me, not without misgivings, that he knew Tony was easy to interview because he always told the truth, the sense of something vivid having happened persisted. There was a jolly, healthy sort of a glow, a sense of color, of uplift. More than the Vitagraph screen hero I seemed to see the soldier's son running about the streets of Barcelona (I *think* he said Barcelona) with his bronzed legs and his night-shade hair--or the widow's small son listening, wide-eyed, to the pious dreams of himself as a godly priest--the man who, almost universally pursued, speaking feministically, says that he is "a mutt" and that he wants some one he can "look up to." One might say many things of Tony--of how he was "discovered" in Spain--and brought over here--and educated at Northampton--of his being a protege of Mrs. Carter--of his various successes--and still one would not be saying so complete a thing as simply to say that he has the face of a thousand dreams and the heart of a little boy. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * July 31, 1923 LOS ANGELES EXAMINER Moreno Gets $22,500 Cash Antonio Moreno, film star, figures that $22,500 in the hand is worth more than $129,000 in the courts. So he has dropped his long-pending suit against the Vitagraph film corporation and accepted a cash settlement of $22,500, it was learned yesterday. Moreno, resplendent in a scarlet velvet costume of ancient Spanish vintage, and nonchalantly smoking an extremely modern cigar, verified the rumor when reporters found him on a stage at the Lasky studio. He said he had instructed his attorney, Neil McCarthy, to drop the action against the Vitagraph corporation. The suit was filed in January, 1922, after Moreno had been summarily "fired" by the Vitagraph corporation. For months prior to that, it was known in film circles, he had not worked, although he had reported daily at the studio and drawn his check every pay day. In those months a long-drawn and heated controversy was in progress between the star and the corporation. They wanted him to play "heavy" roles and he refused. He wanted youthful, dramatic and heroic parts. The day after he was discharged he filed suit for $129,000, which he alleged was due him for the unfulfilled portion of his Vitagraph contract. Later, after a long period of comparative idleness, he signed a long- term contract wit the Famous Players-Lasky corporation. Early this hear he and Mrs. Daisy Canfield Danziger, millionaire widow, were married. But Moreno, explaining his reasons for accepting a cash settlement in his suit, mentioned: "I have no doubt that, had the case gone to trial, I would have received a much larger judgment. But I am married now, and need the money." * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * February 5, 1922 LOS ANGELES EXAMINER Victim Happy Before Death Antonio Moreno Tells of Phone Conversation With Him at 7 o'clock Night of Tragedy The assassination of William Desmond Taylor, Wednesday night, postponed forever an engagement which the film director had with Antonio Moreno, film star, on Thursday morning. When Moreno talked with Taylor over the telephone Wednesday night, about 7 o'clock, Taylor was in the best of spirits, according to Moreno's story told yesterday. But when the time came for the appointment to be fulfilled the following morning, between 10 and 10:30 o'clock, the film director's corpse lay in a local undertaking company's morgue, pierced by a murderer's bullet. Moreno said yesterday that he had been an intimate friend of Taylor for several years, since the time Taylor had become associated with the old Vitagraph Company at Santa Monica in 1914. "He was one of the finest men I ever met," "Tony" said. "He had the highest ideals, I believe, of any man I've ever met in the profession." Details of a dinner party which he attended with Taylor, Miss Betty Francisco and Miss Claire Windsor, at the Ambassador Hotel Thursday night, January 27, were given by Moreno, as well as an informal meeting held between Moreno, Taylor, Arthur Hoyt and a Captain Robinson [sic], January 28, at Moreno's room at the Los Angeles Athletic Club. "I left them there about 7 o'clock," Moreno said, "to go to a dinner party at the Ambassador, which I had arranged for a friend visiting here from Chicago. Later, I understand, the three went to dinner at a roadhouse between Los Angeles and Pasadena--I do not know its name--and then on to the Annandale Club after dinner, finally going to Taylor's home." Moreno declared he had spent about two hours last Monday with Taylor at the Vitagraph studio, where Moreno is working. He had an appointment with him for Tuesday, also, but the director, according to Moreno, did not fill it because of a trip to Mount Lowe on location. "Then I called him again Wednesday night," Moreno said, "about 6 o'clock. His boy, Henry, answered the phone. Mr. Taylor was not at home. However, he called me later, about 7, and we arranged that I should call for Mr. Taylor, at the Lasky studio, about 10 o'clock Thursday morning. Mr. Hoyt was with me in my room at the time. Mr. Taylor was to go with me to the Vitagraph studio, on a matter of personal business." "But--" and here Moreno gave a sorrowful shake of his head--"But you know the rest. The appointment was not fulfilled--and never will be. "I feel that in Mr. Taylor's death I've lost one of the best friends I've ever know. And I'll do everything in my power to run down the man who killed him." * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * February 5, 1922 LOS ANGELES TIMES Film Star Aids Police Search Tony Moreno With Taylor Before Shooting Director Was Healthy and Cheerful, Says Friend Check on Events of Week Taken by Officers William D. Taylor appeared to be in the best of health and spirits about one hour before he was shot down in his own apartment at 404-B South Alvarado Street. He did not appear to have any premonition of what lay in store for him, although, according to the police theory of the slaying of the film director, the murderer was then lurking in the shadows a few feet away from Mr. Taylor. This was disclosed yesterday by Tony Moreno, Vitagraph star. Mr. Moreno's story of his conversations with the slain director on the night of the murder and for a week prior to the shooting, furnish an important check on Mr. Taylor's movement for at least seven days preceding the shooting. "I played golf with Mr. Taylor exactly a week before his death. We drove to the San Gabriel Country Club and remained there from about noon till dark. While there I introduced him to Asa Keyes, the Deputy District Attorney." Mr. Moreno said yesterday at his apartment, in the Los Angeles Athletic Club. "The next day I saw him again. I met him at the Ambassador at a party. Mr. Taylor was with Miss Claire Windsor. I saw him leave the hotel with her. There were a number of picture people there that night. "Saturday night--that is, a week ago tonight--Mr. Taylor was here in the club. He was in my room and with us were Arthur Hoyt and Capt. Robertson, who is a close friend of Mr. Taylor. We sat and talked a while. Then Mr. Taylor, Mr. Hoyt and Capt. Robertson left. Later I learned they drove to Cedar Grove, near Pasadena, and had something to eat there. From there they drove to the Annandale Country Club. "I saw Mr. Taylor next at the Lasky studios, Monday morning at 10 o'clock. I had an appointment with him to go to the Vitagraph studios, on a matter of business importance to me. Chester Bennett of the Brunton studios, was with us. We were together until 12:30 p.m. that day. "We were unable to see the people we wanted that day. The appointment had to be made over again. I called Mr. Taylor again, Tuesday at the Lasky lot, but I did not get to talk to him. I was informed that he was out on location on Mt. Lowe. Tuesday, which was the day before the murder, I could not get in touch with him. "Wednesday night Mr. Taylor called me at the club. I was in Mr. Hoyt's room, when the call came. We discussed the business appointment I wanted Mr. Taylor to participate in. As near as I can now recall it, it was about 7 o'clock when Mr. Taylor called. He did not tell me much about his trip to Mt. Lowe. "Mr. Hoyt was present at the conversation. It lasted several minutes. Mr. Taylor then made an appointment for Thursday morning, at 10 o'clock. He appeared to be in best of spirits. He was pleasant and cheerful. "It was a few minutes after 7 that Mr. Taylor hung up. Then Mr. Hoyt and I went to the club dining-room and stayed there for dinner. "Thursday morning, Mr. Hoyt called me and told me I would not be able to keep the appointment with Mr. Taylor because he was dead. He then told me what he read in the papers." The investigators last night began to check up the facts supplied by Mr. Moreno in an effort to supply the missing links and thus account for every action and movement of the slain director. Mr. Moreno's story supplied much important data, the officers say. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Some Rumors [The following was received in several e-mail messages from Nicholas Pinhey, who may be Antonio Moreno's grandson:] "...Moreno had a lot of skeletons in his closet, and I am determined to dig them out (my duty as his rumored grandson)...As for my story, my grandmother was married and worked at the Vitagraph studios, she supposedly was put in the family way by Moreno, producing my mother (born Marguerite Mary Moore, Hollywood, 1916). My grandmother, gave up my mom for adoption (the birth caused serious repercussions for her marriage), and she was taken in by a Judge or attorney named Cornell. The Cornells are the source of the Moreno story. Antonio visited my mother in the early 1930's and gave her presents, but never contacted her again. My mother would have nothing to do with him in her later life. My oldest brother wanted to go after the estate when Moreno died. My mother forbade opening the records and forbade any action. She was not terribly fond of the topic. I never paid any attention to the story until February of this year. My son ran across a book by George Hadley-Garcia entitled "Hispanic Hollywood" with lots of info on Moreno. It suggested that the marriage to Daisy was a studio ploy to cover Moreno's homosexuality. It also states that Moreno's pal Ramon Novarro was gay and refused to marry, thus ruining his career. This piqued my interest. There is some resemblance to Moreno and my mother (long deceased), she was dark haired, dark eyed and very pretty. I started going through the records, and so far things check out. Looks like Moreno could have been a bisexual. "...Daisy was quite a party girl (according to many accounts) and the death smacks of wild Hollywood scandal. Even though I'm not related to Daisy and Tappan, the story intrigues me. Moreno supposedly pushed Daisy down a flight of stairs, injuring her arm. The auto accident (250 foot drop over Mulholland) was linked to an arm injury she had suffered. Some have hinted that she was killed and the car going over the cliff was the cover, in best movie tradition. ...The murdering the wife story follows the line that she threatened to cut Moreno off from her oil money (daughter of oil magnate Danziger) because she was tired of his boyfriends. They had a fight, he pushed her down the stairs. He moves out of the house. One week later, she is up on 'lovers leap' with a young Swiss gentleman named Rene Dussac. Dussac is a friend of both Moreno and Daisy's (Hmmm?). According to the press Dussac is driving because Daisy's arm is injured (could be the stairs?). They encounter fog, Dussac, unfamiliar with the headlights, attempts to adjust them, but accidentally turns them off. The car goes over the cliff, drops 250 feet and disintegrates. Daisy is killed, Dussac miraculously survives. He climbs up the cliff (??) with a broken back (??). Moreno is reported as distraught, especially as Daisy had indicated that a reconciliation was possible (about mid-week between the separation and the accident)...Moreno never remarries. Daisy is cremated and interred at the house (by her fish pond) and Antonio eventually sells the house to the Catholic Church (present owners), some say to atone for his sins." ***************************************************************************** A biographical article on Antonio Moreno from the magazine FILMS OF THE GOLDEN AGE can be found on the web at http://www.classicimages.com/foga/1996/winter/amoreno.html ***************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************** Back issues of Taylorology are available on the Web at http://www.angelfire.com/az/Taylorology or http://www.uno.edu/~drif/arbuckle/Taylorology/ or at the gopher server at gopher.etext.org in the directory Zines/Taylorology; Full text searches of back issues of Taylorology can be done at http://www.etext.org/Zines/ For more information about Taylor, see WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR: A DOSSIER (Scarecrow Press, 1991) *****************************************************************************