El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1916-05-20

No. 13~-The Value of a Background.
By Grace Darling,
Who has won fame by her talent rs !,
movie star and her charm
as woman.


mHE third great lesson the stage
teaches is the value of a back
Il ground.
You know that moving picture pro-
ducers spend thousands upon thou
| sands Of dollars to take companies OF
actors to some particular place where
they may have the tropical scene, OF
the mountain trail. or the crowded
city street, to give the proper back
ground to some drama they are film
ing.
The background puts IN the punch
gets the atmosphere OF the story
over 10 the audience. When you want
to make people cry over a starving
; family, you muCt give them a back
ground of a bare attic. with a pallet
on the floor, and the snow drifting in
through the roof You could never
touch anyone with the story of their
wees il you first pictured them sitting
w surrounded by empire furniture
ard a grand piano.
Three -fourths OF the success of
every play depends upon the skill with
which its background is wrought out
and the background is just as impOr-
tant in real life as il is on the stage,
because the things that make the
deepest impression upon US are the
things that we visualize.
This is particularly true as regards
the attitude of men towards women.
Very few men ever take the trouble to
study a woman, or try to understand
her. They Just take her as they see
her. and rate her is good or bad, at
tractive or unattractive. according to
the picture that she makes to them.
And this depends largely upon her
background
The background of Home.
It is because their backgrounds mean
7. "a
girls TO stay at home If they possibly
can. The background Of home gives
girl n responsibility in the eyes Of men
that nothing else can.
OF course. many girls have very dis
agreeable homes They have tyran-
rical and nagging fathers and mothers
and hateful brothers and sisters, and
the idea of getting away from 1t all
and setting up little flat OF their
own with a congeniaI girl chum is
very alluring.
But lust as the background of the
home gives a girl a certain standing
OF responsibility, so the background Of
n girl bachelor flat throws about her
an atmosphere Of free and easy Bo-
hcmianism that VIII make every one
look at her a trifle more critically.
and cause men to treat her with less
It is a pity that mothers do not bet
ter understand the value Of the right
sort Of background to a girl II they
a.
give their daughters a pleasant place
i'm which to receive their company
When a man visualizes a girl as part
Of a noisy, wrangling family group,
in an untidy and cluttered up room,
there is nothing in the picture to make
him want to marry her.
But many a youth has been lured
into matrimony by the vision he had
IN his minds eye OF a maiden who
was the central figure of a happy,
cheerful, comfortable home
Girls. the domestic background has
got the artistic, and the literary, and
the sirenic and all of the other back
grounds discounted a million times
when IL comes TO matrimony
That's why widows who are fat and
forty can marry all around the pref
test young girls They always loom
up against a background of cOmforta-
BILE chairs, and pink shaded lamps. and
chatting dishes, and surrounded by an
Of comfort and good cook
ing, and men succumb every time.