Ogden Daily Standard | 1918-03-16 | Page 18 | 'Bearded Mercury' Mabel Normand's Own Picture Idea

I BEARDED MERCURY' IfiEL BID'S OWI P1GTURE IDEA Once sho begins -work In a picture, Mabel Normand becomes her director's direc-tor's most valuablo aid. Her sugges-j sugges-j tions are many and practical and every picture in which sho appears Is apt to embody a score of original touches In business, make-up and sot-tings, sot-tings, all from the same cource Mabel Normand's remarkable sense of dramatic values and innate feeling for screen technique. This is brought out again in "The Floor Below' soon to be released by Goldwyn as a worthy successor to "Dodging a Million." Miss Normand essays a character unlike any with which she has been Identified and the story also is unrelated to her previous screen efforts. Sho is Patricia ' I O'Rourke, copy girl in a busy news-. news-. I paper office, by turns the. torment and tho heavenly pal of the men with whom sho works. They hate her and J adore her and never forget that sho is with them. In reading some of the scenes with her director, Clarenge G. Badger, Miss I Normand learned that Patricia would bo expected to shoot craps with a messenger boy tarrying in tho office, tho scene being interpolated merely to illustrate one of the reasons for tho J girl's discharge which, when brought about, results in the great adventure which leads her to the floor below. In a flash Miss Normand saw a chance to get additional value from tho 1 1 incident. Instead of having the messenger mes-senger merely a boy, why not make him a character? asked the star. Accordingly, Ac-cordingly, sho followed up tho Inquiry with a suggestion, as sho usually does, i Open the scene, sho said, with tho boy's hack toward the camera. Then let him slowly turn as they play with the dice until his face is turned full toward tho camera. And havo the "boy" a funny old man. Not only , would the character of Patricia bo es tablished, but the incident would be j h o given an added comic valuo lost if the ' messenger had been a typical boy, ! Miss Normand explained, j The idea is carred out in "The Floor Below precisely as the star suggested, the superannuated Mercury ! being Mabel Normand's own selection I for the part, his quaint acting de- veloped by her painstaking rehearsals jj and infectious merriment. '