Evening star., 1936-09-06
ny JESSIE FAINT EVANS.

A NNE CAMERON, author OF the
~ famous Mrs. O'Malley stories
~ that first appeared in the Sat-
4 a urday Evening Post and later
In national broadcasts over the radio,
wrote Home, Home on the Road"
beginning the new Burlwood trailer
series now appearing in this same
Philadelphia weekly, while here In
Washington visiting her sister, Mrs.
Pliny Evans.
Merry brown eyes and lips that
curve upward in a quick smile OF
greeting as she comes forward to give
you gracious welcome as the friend OF
her California Schoolmate, instantly
tell you that here is some one not
only with the magic gift of humor.
but an inborn interest in her fellow
humans and their affairs.
Nor have you visited with her many
minutes before you fully realize how
she happens to be the author of that
happy vagabond, Mrs. O'Malley, whose
tin-can tourist peregrinations so fascl-
mated the late Marie Dressler that
shortly before her death plans were
In progress to have this great humorist
of the silver screen impersonate Mrs.
O'Malley to her public.
Anne Camerons career is another
one of those successful literary ones
that opened out from the door of a
school room, after she had enjoyed an
amazingly successful term as the
principal of the Lowell Grammar
School in Riverside. Calf.
A graduate of the San Francisco
Teachers College and of the Uni
versity of California, her favorite
courses, as you might expect, were
English, history and psychology. In
this latter study her instructive love
of people was to have a scientific
grounding in behavior reactions, mo-
tivating causes and effects in human
relationships.
Keeps Interest in Schools.
Almost from the time she began
teaching she started writing fiction
as side line, resulting from Summer
vacations, spent seeing how the rest
Of the world was faring.
Several years ago she gave up her
teaching career entirely, to such an
extent had the side line become the
motivating one of her life. She has,
however, never lost her interest in
schools, in young people of school age,
or any other, as matter of fact, and
is well-versed in current educational
trends.
Last Winter was spent in Hollywood
putting Mrs. O'Malley on the air at
stipulated intervals over a Nation
wide hook-up. THE experiment was
both pleasant and profitable" Miss
Cameron comments. You gather, how
ever, that it was routine perform
ance. lacking in creative imagination,
which quite took the joy out of life
for Mrs. OMalley's creator, who, like
her heroine, prefers to be facing to-
ward new and hitherto untried fields
Of adventuring on life's highway.
One feels about Miss Cameron,
though, that even if she were rele-
gated to an arm chair, her inquiring
geographical mind would still be
taking little journeys through the
medium of the books that she would
glory in, and the friends that would
be sure to gather about her.
Finds Stars Real People.
Her comments upon her Hollywood
experience emphasize little touched
upon angles1the marvellous reality,
for instance, of the sets upon the
great lots where castles and far-away
villages or just the little house around
the corner from home are reproduced
with absolute pictorial accuracy and
fidelity to detail. She expatiates also
upon the realness and genuineness of
so many of Hollywood,s screen people.
For instance, almost disbelieving, you
hear her tell of Edward Robins<l,
screen villain par excellence-whose
characterizations almost CONCEAL the
fluid in your spinal column-finding
his chief outside interest in his wife,
with whom he shares a fondness for
worthwhile books and rare etchings.
When aksed that familiar Washing
ton question: Where is your home
when you are not here?," she owned