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Chronicles of more regent date make it clear, that Miss. Claire's personal glances into the pages of history were first made in Washington, D. C., where she grew up and went to public school. Her father was killed in an accident four months before she was born. Although her present familiarity with the great figures of the past suggests, perhaps correctly, long silent hours devoted to scholarship, friends recall that her penchant for playing hooky worried her mother a lot until Ina convinced her that, as she had already determined to become an actress, she did not need an education. What she needed, she insisted, was emotion. She made what use she could of this quality in her first vaudeville part, which she achieved in 1907, and which consisted mostly of imitations of Harry Lauder. After warming up on Orpheum and Proctor circuits she played in the cast of The Girl from Utah in England, then in another play or two, then back to vaudeville, then in the Follies of 1915 and 1916. Ziegfeld, who liked her imitations, let her do one of Marie Odile, star of a Belasco play then current. David Belasco saw her and gave her the leading role next season in Polly with a Past.
It has been often pointed out that Ina Claire is one of the few Follies girls to make and keep, a reputation in the serious theatre. Unlike the numerous slightly or violently dowdy ladies whose one claim to distinction after youth has. passed is that they, were once members of a Follies chorus', she found musical comedy more than a means for leaving the stage. Schooled by Belasco-who has so often seen talent where other producers saw nothing at all-she had a series of successes in comedy dramas of a sophistication suited to her flexible, quick voice and the knowing angle of her head in its paintbrush swirl of blonde hair (The Gold Diggers, Grounds for Divorce, Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, The Last of Mrs. Cheyney). She has managed to withstand the floodlight of attention which the press of three continents turned loose on her honeymoon abroad, still in progress. There was one crucial night at Cap D'Antibes when she and Gilbert argued about what to do after dinner-he for staying in, she for going outa night spent so distinctly to her own taste that at 5:30 a. m. Gilbert, still sitting up and still alone, got into his car and drove off at a furious pace into the Riviera dawn. Mrs. Gilbert came home, became excited, threw some things in a suitcase, went away somewhere. Reunited in Paris, they now refer to this incident as a "slight tiff." They are returning to the U. S. soon to make more pictures.
Speedway (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Automobile racing at Indianapolis is a background unfamiliar and colorful enough to make any sort of picture entertaining in spots. In this film about a whimsical mechanic's love life, the background is sketchily and conventionally treated. William Haines capitalizes his famed insouciance to the point of insufferability. Proving at the denouement that he is a good chap after all, he sacrifices the race to his pal, Ernest Torrence, best ac tor in the cast. Best shot: a car turning over on the track.