The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-02-11
SOCIETY TAKING UP WITH SCREEN COLONY, Two Recent Weddings at Hollywood Draw Attention to New Situation Growing Up Among Screen Stars. Moral Code of Moviedom Has Become Much More Strict Than Most Communities

was the only screen star of prom thence to belong to one of the really exclusive country clubs.
 Began Entertaining
 Some of the customers then be- gan entertaining and being enter
 tained by the well established stars, such as Mary Picllford and Douglas
 Fairbanks. MT. and Mrs. Charles Ray and others. The stars were not treated in the manner that lion hunt
 CTS treat the people whom they en-
 certain merely as attractive freaks,
 but as charming people enjoyed on
 basis of equality of manners and tastes. Then, last fall Prince Louis
 of Battenburg and his bride occupied the Pictford Fairbanks villa during
 their stay here and Charlie Chaplin
 was their chosen friend and compan-
 ion. Next came rumors that Mrs. Danziger, socially a local dictator,
 divorced wife of one of the asso
 ciates of E. L. Doheny, the Mexi-
 can oil king, would marry Moreno
 when her decree became final. Those who had shown signs of hanging
 back made haste to become cordial
 with the international screen ce-
 1ebrities And now the bars are
 down, the gates swinging wide. Now
 it is the stars who pick and choose
 ana discriminate.
 This is, of course, the fast set"
 in the film colony and always will be. But the members of that set
 will have only transitory fame. Some
 of them are already passing even
 locally into the oblivion which over
 takes those who have to be ignored. "Fatty" Arbuckle's abandonment
 of his attempt to "come back" as an actor is a case in point. The so- called Christmas pardon" which Will Fl. Hays granted to Arbuckle was of no avail, and the once popu- lar comedian will henceforth work in pictures only as a director. He signed a contract with a new com
 pany, the Reel Comedies Inc, a New Jersey concern, backed by Edgar Manning and J. Thomas Corners. Popular though he was as a star, Arbuckle's ability as director ex- ceeds his gifts as an actor and many of the fine touches of humor In his old Lasky pictures were due to the stars sense of humor rather than to his scenarists or continuity writers. "CIeaning Up" Under Way
 The "clean up of the movies" in personal sense is we'll under way
 and MT. Hays has had nothing to do with it. The social metomorphosis of the film people has been an inter- esting and an amusing thing to
 watch. It has followed the laws of social evolution that have worked everywhere and always. Filmdom was in it's early days like the bo- l nanza gold camps of the west in the sixties. It attracted first the hardy and reckless gold seekers. And it | was lawless, vulgar, garish. Grad ually the more decent people began to get the upper hand-the wasters went the way that wasters always go. But today in manners and nor als filmdom is further advanced in it's evolution than any bonanza camp ever proceeded in an equal length of time-for filmdom is only 21 years of age.
 The earnest and conscientious &C., tors and directors had to learn. Pro ducers wearied of losing money on high life" films which were made l ridiculous because they were acted and directed by people who did not 1 know the usages of decent society. An instance of how rapidly the film people have learned caused l much suppressed merriment here last fall. About a dozen women stars came back from Europe with