An Impromptu Interview with Florence La Badie
Born on this day was Canadian film star Florence La Badie in 1888. You can read about her in my separate article singled out just for her here. Since she was among the few stars who gave lots of interviews, here is a pleasant one with her from December 1916 that appeared in Photoplay.
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An Impromptu Interview with Florence La Badie, by George Vaux Bacon:
"When Miss LaBadie dropped into my humble office at four o'clock in the afternoon, she left her limousine downstairs, doubtless to keep from vulgarly displaying her wealth. She's a nice girl. I always loved blue eyes and pale gold hair... I wonder why all the girls I know are brunettes? Let's see. Where are my notes...? Miss Cohen! Bring me my notebook, please... Thank you: -- Ah, here we are! -- Residence, 200 Claremont Avenue, New York City. Father and Mother born somewhere in France - Paris, she thinks.
She first went into the studios five years ago with the Biograph. I asked her age. She replied: 'What is the usual age for interviews?'
'Nineteen is quite popular this season,' I answered. She agreed to that, so I put her down as nineteen. In reality, she looks about 24. While I was noting the latest in fall street gowns, she opened wide her eyes of corn-flower blue, and said sweetly, 'My favorite flower is the geranium.' I realized at once that she was an experienced interviewee. My own incompetence dawned upon me. No interview is complete without that time-honored and classic bit of knowledge. I hastened to apologize for my oversight. She forgave me graciously.
'What is your favorite sport?' I asked. 'Gold mining,' she replied. 'And your favorite country?'
'Iceland. I think the volcanoes and glaciers and sagas and things in Iceland are perfectly sweet!' Her enthusiasm was contagious. I was thrilled. 'Your favorite author?'
'St. Augustine.'
'Your favorite actors - stage and screen?'
'Al Jolson and Raymond Hitchcock.'
'Raymond Hitchcock?'
'Yes. I think he is perfectly wonderful on the screen, don't you.'
'Extraordinary!' I agreed, with feeling.
'What is your favorite book?'
'The Bible,' she replied. It's a wonderful lineup of stuff. We both agreed that it was about an original a bunch of information as was ever gathered together in one notebook. She's a pretty nice sort of a girl, Florence is, and after we got the notes down, we had quite a chat. I find out that she's a corking good skater and a true Frenchwoman. She told me that her favorite author was Lewis Carroll, and that next to Memoirs of the French Court she preferred Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
'So your favorite flower is the geranium,' I said, harking back to the notes I had taken for the formal interview which was to result from our earlier conversation. 'Geraniums? Heavens, no! I adore American beauties - the most expensive money can buy. You know, most people will insist that one should have simple tastes, so I told you that my favorite flower was the geranium in order that I might not appear to be trying to be out of the ordinary. I wonder why it is always considered a crime to like beautiful, expensive things?'
'Miss LaBadie,' said I, 'It is sweet to hear you. Mine ear is accustomed to much hullabaloo and piffle of the variety generally handed out to a sweetly unsuspecting public by the interviewer and the unimaginative press agent, as to the tender simplicity of the average actress' life, when I know there is not one who does not prefer champagne to beer and beer to water. I know not one that does not adore delicate salads, expensive viands and luncheon at the Claridge. The theatrical person is a lover of the luxurious things of the world. I wish that I could write an interview some day and tell the exact truth about people as they are.'
'You may about me,' she replied brightly running a spatulate hand through the strands of her pale gold hair that the wind had loosened so that they fell over her collar in a wonderful loop of scintillant golden threads. 'I am an Indifferentist. I don't care what happens.'
'I should say you don't!' I expostulated warmly. 'Why, the trouble is, if I were to tell the truth, no one would believe me, and do you suppose for one moment that I, a writer of interviews of some standing in several communities for his truth-telling proclivities, wishes to be branded far and wide, from sea to sea and from pole to pole, wherever Photoplay Magazine is read, as a graceless, brazen liar, imposing on innocent editors in order that I might shout my hoarse falsehoods to all the tribes of men? Never. I shall die before I tell the truth! Woman, think of my reputation!'
'Yes,' she murmured, rising and bestowing an azure glance from her eyes and a pearl and scarlet smile, 'I suppose, poor man, you must consider your reputation. It is too bad. The thought of reputation keeps so many from having so many good times!'
'The woman has a diabolical faculty for speaking the truth. The thought of her is a poem; the sight of her is the 'Vissi d'arte' aria in the second act of Tosca, and all ye who have seen Geraldine Farrar on the screen, and then imagine her voice as a thousand times more marvelous than her acting in the last scene of the Lasky Carmen, will realize that Florence LaBadie, in whose veins flows the blood of that France whose saints, sinners and heroes are immortal, and the beauty of whose face is as the beauty of all women, as the Gaels say, is worthy of a poem by Swinburne carved into marble by Rodin. After I bade her goodbye, and she had vanished through my portals enroute to her waiting limousine below, I sighed. The delightful part of my meeting with the delightful lady was over. There was nothing to do but make up an interview and write it....
'Oh,' said Miss Cohen, 'wasn't that the interview? I've taken it all down!'
'Great Scott! Have I been talking aloud?' I demanded.
'Yes.'
'Very well then. Write it down and mail it. We will send this account of a real conversation with the real Florence LaBadie as a shining mark which all interviewers forever hereafter may look back upon as a precedent granting them forever hereafter the right to tell the truth!' No man is a hero to his stenographer. Miss Cohen went to her typewriter with a sardonic smile, while I retired to my sanctum with Miss LaBadie's copy of Memoirs of the French Court. She had forgotten to take it with her.'"