Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, April 25, 1915, Page 24

cre s rge T o n “IDi Girl Trilby Thisls LittleMar- garet Edwards in One of the Spe- cial Creeping Exercises That Gives Her Per- fect Poise and " Balance. A mother raised her pretty daughter up 'Till she’d made her a perfect girl; She took first prize at all the beauty shows, And sent each head away awhirl; The movies took her far from mother’s side, And mother took one look, and then she cried: nothing, still if she had not been 11 ft would never, never have happened. But why “Trilby"? Why, Trilby, it will be remembered, caused a lot of conserva- tive parsons much worry because she posed in what is knqwn as “the altogether.” And, yeos—little Margaret did the same thing. That is wha the trouble is about, you see. Not only that, but there were a number of conies made of ‘the allegory of which she was the most conspicuous figure, and when it got funning little Miss Mar- garet walked Innocently and naturally and in the altogether In half a hundred differ- ent cities every night—across the screen, that is, of course, for it was a moving ple- because, as she says, she was taught to be ture. natural, that nothing wholesomely natural That was fuch worse than poor Trilby, could have any harm in it, and because, Who also posed innocently, because there naturally, she always looked upon Weren't more than half a dozen plctures of s simply as things to slip on or off her that way, perhaps. Then when the al- as the case might be. This being so, she is where the to be sympethiged with when she first thing Mrs. Andrews df that there are a num- 8aw after she had recovered was her ber of people In z. world, not taught just daughter's picture ambling around just as that way, who belleve that it is possible to thoukh she were in Eden, while half the h‘wo natural, and that there is a time mfluh&“ lfohg t:: '18: ho; ::-o:;m. ':v. an for all things, even to the taking utiful, an e other half thought on m it oughtn't to be allowed. Then Los An- Nor can~ Mrs. , the devoted Eeles, feellng a more or less proprietary mother, who \uflz Miss Margaret Interest in the Perfect Girl, took up the to be lect, blamed. As she matter with just about the same division 2. was and In & hospital when the ©Of sentiment. And In the meantime the annoying mastter occurred, and while she Board of Censors ordered the pictures thinks a great fuss is being made about stopped and arrested the theatre proprie- tors who were showing them. And Little Miss Margaret in a Back Beau- it almost made Mrs. Andrews ill agaln, Little Margaret Andrews has been 4«nown to newspaper readers for a number of years. She is not so little now-—just about seventeen. From babyhood her mother trained her on @& system of her own, a system de signed to make her an absolutely Liealthy and physically perfect girl woman of great intelligence, her system 'b‘l‘ CGHORUS. “I didn’t raise my girl to be a Trilby— 1 taught her to be natural, it's true, Oy INTEARNATIONAL. NEWS SRRVICE , But there are times when covers are a comfort, movies; That airy pose looks very cool to Mme. My girl may be a queen, But not upon a screen— 1 didn’t raise my girl to be a Trilby.” A And This Is the Perfect Girl in a Leaping Exercise That Perfects the Legs and Keeps worked out and has since been copled by schools and mothers all over the country. Little Miss Ma seven, a classic model at fourteen and now in figure of being a Diana, nd a Helen of Troy all in one. The system, however, did not follow the conventional lines as to the purposes of Down Fat. "While in This She Is Maintaining the Beauty Lines of Her Torso And daughter really oug’ht to have a few, A Venus has no business in the i 1y N 1ights Reserved Distressing Experiences of Y “America’s Perfect Girl’’ and of Her Devoted Mother Who Brought Her Up to Be Natural— but Not as Innocently Natural as She Made Herself in the ‘“Movies.”’ clothes. Instead it was more Grecian and certainly hygienic. More and more people in the years Miss Margaret has been grow- ing up have come to have the same idea. Therefore it was that in her innocence, when Mamma Andrews was very, very ill and the offer came to little Miss Margaret to pose in this particular allegory, that she saw no harm in it at all. She couldn’t con- sult with mamma because she was too sick to be bothered, but it certainly never crossed her mind that there could have been any objection. Any thought of re- fusal would have seemed as absurd to her as the classic admonition of the mother to her water-loving daughter must have seemed to the maiden of whom it is writ- ten: “Mother, may I go in to swim?" “Yes, my darling daughter; \ But hang your clothes on a hickory limb, And don’t go near the water.” “Of course, the allegorical figure you will fepresent is—ah—undraped,” they told her. “Well, what of that?" quoth she. “Oh, nothing, nothing,” they said. And so the pictures were made. Little Miss Margaret went wandering through thousands of feet of the allegory just as innocently as possible. “Aren't they pretty?” went back to Los Angeles. Now, as to what happened later there are two stories. One is that when Mrs. Andrews was getting better she heard about the affair, questioned Margaret, hadn’t the heart to disturb her daughter’s very natural point of view on the matter and walited anxiously for the pictures to come in range so she could see them. The other is that she was very rudely shocked by the sight of posters that car- ried to her mind familiar lines of a figure she herself had modelled, and was consid- erably more distressed when she went icto the picture show and saw the whole alle- gory. She was not distressed because she though there was anything wrong about it. Only, being a woman of experience and intelligence, she foresaw the criticism which was inevitable. However, the mis- chief, if mischief there was, was done. The Los Angeles Board of Censors took exception to the allegory and caused the arrest of the proprietors of the thea- tre where the picture was being displayed. They charged them with having “photo- graphed, delineated and produced the ple- ture of a nude woman,” adding that the picture “shows the figure in such detail as to offend public morality and decency.” This was even more distressing, and immediately almost every one took sides either for or against little Miss Margaret's achlevement. Some of the opinions are interesting. Mrs. Russell B. HaMett, a member of the Board of Censors, who voted against the picture, sald “So far as entertainment and artistic value are concerned it is all right. It is a very beautiful picture. In condemning its exhibition here I was actuated by several motives. It arouses vulgar curiosity, as will be noted by the crowds of men and boys around the display in front of the theatre. But again, Mrs. Clara Shortridge Foltz, the president of the Million Club, said: “There is nothing indecent or immoral in showing in a wholly artistic and entire- ly unsuggestive manner the beautiful form of a perfect specimen of womanhood. Only those who look for indecency in art she sald—and can find it, and then it is only in their own minds. The man or woman whose primal emotions are so gross, whose mentality is so abnormal, that they can see evil in this picture are not to be taken into con- sideration. As a mother, as a teacher in the public schools for years, as a worker for the uplifting of the human race, I say unreservedly that every man, womar and child should see this picture.” Which certainly leaves no uncertainty as to Mrs. Foltz’s feelings. This is what Mrs. Andrews herself has to say about fit: “l am so sorry Margaret has had to meet with criticism and be misunderstood. “Had I not been {ll, delirious and in the hospital, it would not have occurred. How- ever, ] am proud she is such & sweet, good child d possessed of such a true per- spective of physical and artistic expres- slon that the criticisms have not meant as much to her as they might to one older and having more understanding of the world.” Clearly she indicates that it was not for a spectacle of this sort that she had raised her daughter. And as for little Miss Margaret, this is what she had to say: “Always a beautiful body, a perfect phy sical condition, has seemed to be but the expression of spirit. To be well, to be happy, to be good—that is surely what na- ture meant for children. When we bring evil thought to the expression of nature's handiwork we are harming our own prog- ress. “The idea of the allegory may perhaps have been taken from a very beautiful painting. I wonder if the model who posed for that has been criticized as I have been. “Don't you think, after all, the pity is that there are some people so evil-minded that they find emjoyment in transposing ‘all good, all beauty, all truth into wrong? “All my life I have been part of Nature's moods. I was so ill when a baby my mother would keep me hours in the sunlight, un- clad. As I grew older and lived far up in the mountains of our Napa ranch, my great Joy was to ride or tramp or fish absolutely without clothing, the winds, the sun, the mists all bringing strength and peace. “Physical exercise, music and the study of art; these have always been the things | most loved. To salip from my room at the ranch and dance in the moonlight under the great trees, like one of the nymphs of which I had read, that was beautiful “Mother has always taught me that perfect body must be reverenced, as the temple of Nature. Whenever I have visited art galleries, or studied great statues and pictures from reproductions, ever the hu- man body has seemed to mo the beautifyl expression of all that is highest and best “So it was when, finally | was told how I was to pose I thought it not strange; all werle 80 kind, so considerate. 3 “It was not until I heard what peopl were saying, that I apprec - e might think ” Poreciated what others Soon a jury trial will decf v the theatre proprietors ner:e r:g:t(h:r wrong in disobeying the censoring bg.,dr and in going ahead showing the allegory It all shows, however, that there are certain unpleasant complications that can occur to people brought up to be natural that can't occur to others reared with an unnatural and a v Yestn rtificlal reverence fop a