New Britain Herald Newspaper, May 26, 1927, Page 19

Couldn't Bear To Live Af How the Film Drama Tortured the Young Dentist With Such Painful Memories of His Own ' Pretty Wife and Her Fickleness That He Fired a Bullet Into His Head Lya de Putti and Warwick Ward in one one of the film scenes = e which paralleled Dr. Leon Leslie’s own experience so closely that it drove him to an attempt at suicide By CARL DE VIDAL HUNT PARIS. PON the screen at a big Parisian l l movie theater a handsome and unscrupulous sheik was luring the prétty wife of another man into his embrace when a shot rang out. With a haunted look a young man had been watching the surrender of the woman in the film drama. He had pic- tured his own beautiful wife in the arms of that very same man, had imagined himself in the position of the betrayed husband, and then suddenly had realized the fullness of his own real-life misery— the Ibss of the woman he worshipped and whom he accused in the farewell letter he had just written of having fallen a prey to the lure of the movie actor. Just as the movie heroine grew limp in the vise-like clasp of the screen vil- lain, the pale young man in the audience stood up in his seat, drew a revolver and shot himself in the head. The motion picture being shown was a German production, with Warwick Ward, an English actor, in the role of the villain, and Emil Jannings as the be- trayed husband. Lya de Putti was playing the part of the feather-brained coquette who succumbs to the wiles of the villain. The man in the audience who shot himself was Leon Leslie, a French dental surgeon. The woman over whose al- leged indiscretions he tried to end his life was his own wife, Mrs. Renee Leslie, who had known the screen actor, War- wick Ward, for some time. A small-sized panic followed the shot and some women fainted while the un- conscious young man was carried out of the theater. He was taken to the Hos- pital de la Charite. At the home of Leon Leslie, 18 rue d’Antin, the following open letter ad- dressed to the police commissary was found: \ “It seems only a very short time since I first met Renee, the beautiful young woman I was to love more than life. I had established myself at Nice as a_ dentist and was doing very nicely, even though I was a comparatively young man, just twenty-three, to be exact. That was in 1919, I knew the world, or I thought I did, and started in my pro- fession with the idea to win out quickly. Indeed, the future was mine. “One bright afternoon I met Renee Ricei, the daughter of a well-known Ital- ian merchant. She was divinely beauti- \ ful, I thought. In her eyes I read the sorrows of a tormented soul, and when 1 asked her to confide in me she told me she was married to a man who did not understand her. “With tears in her eyes she related to me how her brute of a husband had beaten her and dragged her round the room by the hair. Renee was getting a divorce from that man. She wanted to be alone or go off somewhere to meditate in tranquil seclusion. Life had lost its charm, she said, and nothing would ever make her feel the same again. “But I laughed into her sad eyes and promised that life would hold many blissful moments for her if only she would let me take an interest in her. “Renee smiled. She was so beautiful when she smiled, with her small, white teeth gleaming like cherry blossoms be- tween the red of her cherry lips. From that day on I became Renee's steady companion, and when her divorce was granted by the courts I married her. “Immediately my wife began to see life through different eyes. She became pleasure-mad and wanted to enjoy every hour of the day or night to its fullest. She loved me, I think, and I ... well, I knew I could never live without her, no matter what she did. No man should love a woman the way I loved and still love her. “Renee was spending large sums bf money at the dressmakers, and she lost constantly at the races and at Monte Carlo, but I was making 50,000 francs a month and could well provide for her. She went to dances and teas and always came back to our little villa with a happy face and a straightforward story of everything that had happened and all about the men she had met and danced with. Who would not spend his last sou on a wife like that. “She loved to receive compliments from men who had analyzed her charms while she swam in the blue Mediterra- nean or danced at the Casino. I felt so sure she would never be false to me. So I worked, harder and harder, to satisfy all her desires. It is man’s place to provide, isn’t it? It made me happy to work for her. “One day I received a very flattering offer to go to Indo-China. It meant a great practice and much money. So after talking it over with Renee we packed and went to Saigon in Indo- China. There, after a while, I received the first great shock of my life. I found Q her in the arms of another man and learned that this guilty love affair had been going on for several weeks. The blow was terrible. 1 thought 1 was going to lose my mind. But I man- aged to hold myself in check. I chal- lenged the man and fought a duel with him, wounding him seriously but not mortally. The matter was taken into court and I was sentenced to one month in prison. After that we returncd to Europe. “I had forgiven Renee. The poor dear was only the victim of environment, I thought. She had been brought up by parents who constantly quarreled, drank and gambled. A smooth-tonguec indi- vidual had turned her head, momenta- rily, and she had been unable to resist. “The only admonitions she ever re- ceived as a child were philosophic lec- tures given to her by a father in his dinner-jacket and' a mother in evening dress at three and four o’clock in the morning, lectures which were inter- spersed with hiccoughs and only cau- tioned her against wine and cards. Was it any wonder, I thought, she behaved as Dr. Leslie in his athletic togs and (on the left) the wife whom he fears is lost to she did? I un- derstood the case fully and forgave her. “In France we did not at once find the practice I wanted, so we went to America, where I added to my knowledge in dentistry as I could in no other country. But Renee soon was bored with the life in New York. She wanted to be back in I ce. So off we went again. It was like a second honeymoon, that trip on the ocean, and homeward bound at last. “I opened an oflice in Paris and was on a fair way to success when znother fatal chance overtook my happiness. Renee met Warwick Ward, a movie ac- tor with graceful gestures and a tragic face. At once the man seemed to cast a spell on my wife. There was nothing I could do or say to stop her growing interest in him. But always she insisted that their friendship was nothing that should worry me. 2T was the unhappigst man in the world, I think, but I bcfi?\'ed her. One day she went away with Warwick Ward to Berlin. She wanted to work in the films, she told me. The film in which Ward was to act was about an honest circus man who believed in love. He was a man who had confidence in his wife until the day when he saw the sad b Comyriatt, 1027, by sohnion Peaturen. 1o The heart-torn young man was true to his word. " Just as the film drama reached the point of the young wife’s er to the villain’s wiles, and the screen flashed a close-up of her folded in his arms and giving her lips to his, Dr. Leslie suddenly rose in his seat, drew a gun from his pocket and Rred a bullet into his head. “She will know I died for her,” ' he murmured just before he lost consciousness on the way to the hospital truth, the low intrigue that had been going on behind his back. So the honest circus man killed his wife's lover and then gave himself up to justice. “I don’t know what happened to Renee in i Berlin, but one morn- ing I zeceived a letter from her in which she asked me to come to her, saying that she was miserable without me and needed me by her side. Of course, I flew to her. I could not reach her fast | enough to tell her that she could count on me always and in any cir- i cumstances. I loved her’ so. “On entering her flat : in the Wuerzburger- strasse 1 heard her - voice and that of War- Wick Ward. The man was saying: “‘I'm glad Leon is coming, for I want him to realize that our friendship is merely platonic. He should get the idea out of his head that there is anything else between us, because there isn’t, and there never will be. Am I right, old girl?’ “Then, after a moment or two, I heard my wife’s voice saying: “Why, certainly.’ “I found them sitting on a divan, smoking cigarettes. Ward soon left us alone together and when I asked Renee what was troubling her, she simply laughed and said it was all over now and that I could go back to Paris whenever [ wanted to. “I said I would go at once, but I stayed two more days. Something was wrong with Renee, I could see that, and I wished I could find out what it was. “A terrible revelation came to me on the second night of my stay'in Berlin. 1 was sitting at a small corner table in the Fledermaus cabaret when the laugh- ter of several men at a table in front of me attracted my attention. One of the men had his back turned to me. I recog- nized one as a friend of Warwick Ward in the way he held his head and puffed at his pipe while telling the story that seemed to amuse his friends. “‘That French husband of hers is a camel,’ he said. ‘He didn’t see through the little comedy that was being played for his special benefit and swallowed all him forever this platonic love stuff like a veritable sucker.’ “‘What about Renee?’ asked one of his companions. ‘‘‘Oh, the poor nut, was the reply, ‘She played the game in the hope of holding onto Warwick. Byt she is wild about Tilly. She threatened to throw vitriol in her face if she found him see- ing her again.’ “That was all I cared to hesr. I did not do as the man in the film story did. I did not kill my rival. I paid my bill, automatically, and walked out into the cold night, the most wretched man in the whole wide world. I left Berlin without seeing my wife again. “In paris and Nice I tried in vain to pull myself together. My hand was too unsteady to do dental work. So I worked at one thing and another as best I could, making enough money to subsist on. In this way the months passed. “One night in Paris I passed the Im- perial Motion Picture Theater in the Boulevard des Italiens and saw the pic- ture of Warwick Ward in the display out front. I went in and watched him play the part of the villain I believed he had been to me in real life. My blood turned cold as I watched his tricks of luring his victim into his arms. I could have shot ;t the screen, if that would have stopped im. “That night 1 went home with the thought that I could not endure life any longer. I must end it all, I thought. Still I lived through the night and went back to the picture house the next afternoon and evening, to see him again and again. I saw him five times, and every time I imagined his prey to be my wife. “It agonized me to see how he waited for her in his room and how she entered, how he drew her into his arms almost by force and how he kissed her. And yetI could not keep away from that film, “So to-night I am going back to the theater for the last time. I shall shoot myself just as he clasps her in his arms. § This note will tell the police the truth about my sad life. Renee, I have loved you too well. May God forgive you as ' I do.” Leon Leslie carried out his plan to the letter. As the wife was clasped in the villain’s arms the shot rang out, and Leon Leslie collapsed in the aisle, “Thank heaven I have not missed,” he gasped as the lights were turned on. “She will know I died for her.” For two days the young man lay be- tween life and death. Then he rallied. He is now on the road to recovery. What does the future hold for him? Will he again forgive Renee? Wil she want to be forgiven?