University of Virginia Library

Her Big Top Day

“But how did you get into the movies?”

“Ach! I will tell you,” said Camilla, who prefaces most remarks with these words. “One day Mr. Murnau[2] sees me on street. He stop and look hard. He say: 'You are Marguerite for my Faust.' I laugh and say: 'Is silly. I am not lovely like Marguerite.' He replies that I come to his studio next day. Still I think it a joke and I do not tell my mother, but I go. That day he signs me up on contract. Is for beeg money. Seem oh, so big to me then. I cannot breathe for t'rill. I t'ink I will buy a chateau for my family. Ach! I am so happy. Never, never will I be so happy as on that day. It is the big top day on my life.” A tear came to her eyes and unashamedly she wiped them. She was homesick.

“But it's fine here, isn't it; and you're doing splendid work.”

“Not so good sometimes. I cry when I see preview of 'The Tempest.' Every good acting I do is cut out. Only leave me for be pretty girl. Das is all. But in new picture I am just finish with Barrymore—ach! Is different! Mr. Lubitsch[3] makes me every chance, and I am very wonderful. You shall see and say so, too.”

“You like working for Barrymore?”

“We-ll ye-es. I t'ink so. He is very fine to me when we come alone, but on the set—cannot get near him. He sits and smokes cigarettes and one hundred people come around him. He is king and I am nothing.”

[[3]]

F.W. Murnau (1888-1931), German director best known for his 1922 masterpiece, Nosferatu. Although Horn claims to have gotten her break in the 1926 Murnau production of Faust, she apparently appeared in an earlier film, Kean (1921), directed by Rudolf Biebrach.

[[4]]

Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947), German-born director. Horn appeared in his 1929 film, Eternal Love, opposite John Barrymore. She also appeared with John Barrymore in The Tempest (1928).