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PHANTOM DADDIES
The wistful little chap above is Kenyon Clarence Sills, who some day may see his famous father in the last role Milton Sills played — the ferocious Wolf Larson in "The Sea Wolf"
KENYON CLARENCE SILLS, bow and arrows in hand, played in the beautiful gardens which his father, Milton Sills, had planted. Kenyon is six years old. Like the sons of other movie stars who are deceased, his is a strange predicament. If he attends a picture show, he faces the possibility of suddenly being confronted with a re-issue of some old film in which his father played. There, daddy would be seen very much alive, portraying human emotions. And yet a phantom that at the end of the play would disappear into nowhere. The apparition would, of course, give no heed to the fact that out in the audience was a little chap who used to climb on his knee to "ride a horse to Banbury Cross"; to pillow a tousled head on his broad shoulder while the sandman was coming; or to hear a fairy story. No, the figure on the screen would take no notice and the little fellow out front would have driven deep into his heart the feeling that he was seeing his father and not being recognized. Not a nod, not a smile, not a sign of recognition, whatsoever. And that would hurt.
It is a situation which has caused hours of anxiety and dread to the widows of deceased stars in Hollywood.
"Up to the present time," Doris Kenyon told me, "our boy has seen but two pictures — Mickey Mouse and one of my own. I fear to have him attend the theaters, for there is no telling what he may see."
Securely locked in a storage vault, Doris has a print of "The Sea Wolf," the last picture Milton Sills was to make. The film was given to her by the Fox Company shortly after the great actor's death in September, 1930. Kenyon, the son, was then just three years old.
In "The Sea Wolf," Milton played the role of Wolf Larson, the most famous fictional character created by Jack London — a ruthless, hard-boiled, twofisted sea captain who enforces his power with brute strength. He beats down his ship's officers, quells uprisings with a club, throws his cook to the sharks. He is seen in the dives of Singapore and the hell-holes East of Suez, drinking rum, associating with women of the waterfront and bullying the beachcombers. In the end, his crew mutinies, his eyes are seared with a hot poker, and his ship, "The Ghost," becomes his funeral pyre.