Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Seven qualities that indicate fitness for a screen career —Why they are important—An illustration of vitality. As I Have said, I have been asked by thousands of correspondents for the formula for screen success. I have never felt able to answer. I don't believe there is any such formula. Putting the proposition another way : If I were requested to choose from among ten beginners the one who would go the farthest in motion pictures I should unhesitatingly lay my finger upon the one who possessed the following qualifications: (1) Natural talent. (2) Ambition. (3) Personality. (4) Sincerity. (5) Agreeable appearance. (6) Vitality and strength. (7) Ability to learn quickly. I am sure that I should not go far wrong if I were to place my trust in one endowed with these qualities. A natural talent for acting implies more than a mere desire to act. It is the art, usually discovered during childhood, of mimicry, and the joy in that art. How many of us have been convulsed in our earlier years at some school girl friend's takeoff of our teacher ? How many of us, indeed, have played the mimics ? I seem to remember that in my grammar school days I was called upon more or less to take-off one of our teachers. If not called upon I volunteered. None of my school chums got more enjoyment out of my "imitation of Miss Blank" than I did. I never dreamed at that time—or, if I did, they were vague dreams—that I was to become an actress. Since then I have come to the conclusion that I was actually taking my first steps toward what I chose as a career. Natural talent, as I have called it, is no more than a tendency toward, or an aptitude for, some form of endeavor. In youth my first artistic loves were for mimicry and painting— the latter of whi...