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Show I Spent $435,000 for a Doll House! . . .1 1 - - - -v w '''p. f-V s:-. I "v ' t- ' 3 I . r s t $ 1 i I . r vf ! v? ; In II 4 Hf nwA J r j j 4 p c'iHi Vs ''t f& n -. 1 f ' Colleen Moore herself, seated In the great hall, largest room of her $435,000 doll house, gives you an Idea of Its size. At the left are the miniature pipe organ.which plays real music, and the fairy princess' jade and silver bath. By WILLIAM C. UTLEY FOUR hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars for a doll house! Think of It! No Santa Claus could ever have Imagined It. No child ever could have dreamed of such a toy. But Colleen Moore did ! Colleen, she of the banged hair rff, and the saucy little nose, who became be-came the highest paid moving picture pic-ture star In Hollywood, dreamed of having the most glorious doll house in the world when she was only two years old and her father made her first doll house of an old cigar box. She never lost sight of that dream. Rather, It grew up with her, became part of .her, and today that dream Is a beautiful, perfect realization. For Colleen Moore's doll house Is a castle fit to be the dwelling place of any fairy prince and princess who ever were born In the fancies of a Grimm or an Andersen. That Is not just a pretty phrase. It Is a fact. Her doll house IS fit to be the dwelling place of ANY fairy "prince and princess. Better than that, It Is a toy whose charm and romance are being shared by Its owner with boys and girls (little or grown-up) everywhere, for Miss Moore has It on a permanent tour of exhibition. And still better, It Is the means for bringing into countless young lives a happiness that no ordinary toy could create the happiness that goes with good health and a strong body. Wherever It Is shown there Is a Email charge for seeing it. The revenue rev-enue Is turned over to hospitals for crippled children and to similar charitable Institutions In the communities com-munities where It goes. Special provisions pro-visions are made so that underpriv-Iliged underpriv-Iliged youngsters may enjoy It, too, without cost. So far It has earned nn average of $5,000 a week for these charities. And there are four years of solid bookings ahead of It, taking It even to Smith America. Despite Its tremendous cost, the fairy castle is only nine feet long, nine feet wide and fourteen feet tall. It can be "knocked down" Into about 200.000 pieces, not counting count-ing the rivets which fabricate It. Everything In It Is made perfectly to scale, one Inch to the foot. In fact, It Is the diminutive size of many parts of It which have made It so expensive. Imagine producing produc-ing electric lamps no bigger than a grain of wheat which will work! $100,000 for Labor. More than 700 workmen, artists and master craftsmen of every character have at some time during dur-ing the last ten years contributed to the work of carrying out the screen star's Ideas, under the supervision su-pervision of her father, Charles Morrison, who Is nn engineer of wide reputation. More than $100,000 has been spent In labor alone. The list of persons who have lent a helping hand reads like a Who's Who of the nrt world. Conventional architecture never ' knew a house like this, and for that give credit to Horace Jackson, stu-. stu-. dlo architect at First National. where Miss Moore began the doll house between pictures, and where every one on her sets was soon anxiously anx-iously aiding. From the outside It Is a mass of turrets and angles, fantastic fan-tastic and lovely, seeming to be made of dream stuff rather than of prosaic aluminum and copper. There are eleven magnificent rooms, a great hall that fairly takes your breath away, and a garden so enchanting en-chanting you'll say It Isn't so. Every bit of the castle Is a practical working model and absolutely true jw to scale. On a tour of her doll house. Miss Moore likes you to Imagine that you are about six Inches high fairlv tall for this house. You would ei'in In the groat hall. You walk vn a floor of black onyx carved with II 1 1 la ruse vines, and are awed to see the motif carried to the vast vaulted ceiling far overhead by tall golden pillars. Painted In the domes are the figures of your most beloved be-loved fairy tales, and on the walls are more characters out of fable and story. There are exquisite Ivory tables and chairs with filigree too delicate for the naked eye to see, In some cases. The most amazing thing In this hall Is Its hanging stairway, full of billowy curves, and without railing (because fairies have wings to balance themselves, says Colleen). Two amber vases that once belonged be-longed to the dowager empress of China mark the doorway to the living liv-ing room. The floor of this room Is of rose quartz with an Ivory border, bor-der, carved by Bayard de Volo, and inlaid with silver and gold. A diamond and crystal chandelier hangs from a ceiling of misty clouds In a sea-blue sky. All the furniture is silver except the grand piano, which Is rosewood, with legs of Ivory. Murals, perfect In the most minute detail, tell the story of Cinderella. Seen through an arch Is a room even more stirring, the prince's lf-brary. lf-brary. In the ceiling-dome' of copper, cop-per, colored blue and white, are the constellations. Nets of east copper drape comfortably above the fireplace. The andirons are bronze anchors, and capstans support the firebox. Incorporated In the decorations deco-rations are Captain Kidd, Aladdin, Gulliver, Robinson Crusoe and Friday, Fri-day, and Father Neptune. First and Only Editions. On shelves approached by tortoise-shell steps are some of the most unusual books In the world. Most of them are less than an Inch square, and nowhere In the world Is there a duplicate for one of them. Among the writers who have created cre-ated them are Conan Doyle, Edna Ferher, Ilenrik Van Loon, Joseph Ilergesheimer, Irvln Cobb, Sinclair Lewis, Booth Tarklngton and dozens doz-ens of others. There are a Bible and Koran. The miniature chapel Is off this room and Is reached through a hall decorated with Alice O'Neill murals, entitled "Love In Bloom" and depicting the animals from the Ark. Biblical allusions of more serious se-rious portent are In the altar chapel. There are stained glass windows and an embossed ceiling. The floor of Ivory, Inlaid with gold, Is symbolic of the Lamb of God, the Dove of I'eace. the Ram. the Locusts and the Year of Plenty. In the center design are the Ten Commandments. Above the Ivory altar Is a mural of the Holy Night. A massive (In comparison) cathedral cathe-dral organ, with pipes six to eleven Inches high, plays real music. It Is a shrine of breath-taking beauty and magnificent devotion, all In miniature. Fairy knights must have worshiped wor-shiped there, for In the dining room is the Round Table, with each chair marked with the shield of one of King Arthur's knights. The service serv-ice Is as complete as It Is tiny, even to golden dishes, rare marked china and the smallest of crystal glasses. Where the Stairs Lead. At the head of those floating stairs In the great hall Is the prince's bedroom, deep blue In Its color scheme, with a perforated celling In a fresco of gold. Collections Col-lections of cannon and swords In solid gold give evidence of the prince's hero worship. There Is a tiny replica of a bear rug; taxidermists tax-idermists created the head perfectly perfect-ly only after a dozen attempts. Two lions guard the prince's marble mar-ble bath. Water pours constantly from sea shells held by mermaids with golden scales. There Is a proscenium pros-cenium arch of gold and mother-of-pearL Shell-pink walls and a ceiling ot pink clouds make the princess bedroom a delicate thing by contrast. con-trast. The solid gold bed Is boat-shaped, boat-shaped, and her gofden slippers rest on a pillow of pearls at its side. This is the bed that Sleeping Sleep-ing Beauty slept In ; In a corner is the spinnet upon which Snow-White Snow-White pricked her finger. The princess furniture Is of Batter-sea Batter-sea enamel, the reward of twenty-five twenty-five years of search. The guitars and mandolins laid about are the work of a master Austrian craftsman. crafts-man. , The princess' jade bath shimmers amid walls of carved glass. Crystal pillars support the ceiling. A graceful grace-ful statue stands before a six-sided mirror in one wall. Silver cupids, standing upon the backs of seahorses, sea-horses, pour water from the sea-shells sea-shells into the bath. There Is a perfume cabinet of solid gold. A balcony on one side overlooks the precipice outside and one on the other overlooks the prince's library. Maze of Intricate Parts. There Is not a room in the entire house about which pages and pages could not be written. There Is not a tiny piece without a romantic story behind it. Everything In it "works" the lights, the plumbing, the pipe organ. It is a maze of intricate in-tricate parts miraculously kept In order. Needless to say, Miss Moore and her father little imagined the expense ex-pense to which they were eventually eventual-ly to go when they started building the castle. Or the trouble. Even now the castle Is not complete. com-plete. Miss Moore is always finding new pieces for it ; today she Is trying try-ing to decide upon a place for a pair of rare miniature Chinese fire screens. And the castle is sometime to have a stable, with stalls for Black Beauty, I'egasus and other fabled horses, and a compartment with black glasses, tin cups and pencils for the Three Blind Mice. That will make more work for the men of the railway express who have transported and guarded the precious toy so carefully, never tilting tilt-ing a package, handling everything more gently than eggs. The house has traveled 215,000 miles without a mishap In transit. An entire railroad rail-road car Is required en route, and sixteen trucks are necessary to take It from the station to the place of exhibit. Birth of an Idea. Miss Moore conceived the Idea of exhibiting her doll house several years ago when she was lying In a Los Angeles hospital after breaking her neck In an accident. She saw many crippled children there and the happy thought of how she could help them and their fellow-sufferers everywhere came to her. This Is her eighth doll house, and the only one which has come near her vision of perfection. The one peculiar thing about It Is that this gorgeous castle has no Inhabitants there Isn't a doll In It! "Oh, but there are!" says the vivacious little actress-hobbylst-phllanthropist. "There are the fairy Inhabitants put there by every one who sees it "I asked two little children of seven and eight years what they liked best In It. One said the little fairy princess sleeping In the golden gold-en bed. The other said the little elf playing In the garden. "In reality there Is no princess. There Is no elf. They were put there by pure Imagination. That Is the most charming Illusion of the castle. Every onlooker peoples it with characters of his Imagination. Most people like to Imagine themselves them-selves In It. To put dolls In It would ruin this beautiful illusion." They say there are really fairies If you believe In 'em. 1 C Western Newspaper Unlos- |
