Reel Life (1916-1917)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

A Five Foot Star Beautiful and talented Margaret Gib¬ son, Popular (M u tual ) Star Margaret Gibson , despite her stature, renders telling portrayals in Mutual’s De Luxe Photddramas. HEIGHT Five feet. “Weight, 110 pounds. “Eyes, blue ; hair, golden brown. “Favorite parts : — ingenue and ‘rag’ characters. “Recreations: — expert at horseback riding and swimming, also motorist.” This is almost all, except for a few more bare, cold details of what she had done during her short life, that the little mimeographed biography had to tell of Margaret Gibson, the Horsley (Mutual) star of Mutual Masterpictures, De Luxe Edition. There is no doubt that she has just those char¬ acteristics she is credited with. But words are such clumsy tools when it comes to catching up the blue¬ ness of eyes, the golden glints in sun-shiny hair, the elusiveness and the charm of manners and of per¬ sonality. If it had been a canvas that an artist had been given, instead of a greasy sheet of copy paper on which the press agent was to jot snap judgments of her features, there would have been a glorious girl, with wind-swept hair and eyes the color of corn flowers. Those who have come to know her and to look for her on the screen do not have to be told that Margaret Gibson is beautiful. Margaret Gibson was born in Colorado Springs, Colo., twenty years ago. She began her schooling in her native city and continued it until she was twelve years old, in Denver. At twelve she went on the stage, appearing on the Pantages vaudeville circuit for over two years. In 1909 she became a member of the Theodore Torch Stock Com¬ pany, of Denver, where she was hailed as an emotional genius, and was cast in a wide variety of roles. In 1912 she had an opportunity to become a member of a film company. She took it. Perhaps her best known role, while with this company, was in “A Child of the North." Later she was with several other companies, but left to be¬ come a member of the Horsley (Mutual) contingent in Los Angeles, Cal. Her first role for the Mutual was in The Protest, with Crane Wilbur, in the role of Maggie, the poor little de¬ formed sister. Her second part was in Could a Man Do More ? It was after this that she was raised to the ranks of stardom, with the right to demand her name in bright lights over the theatre door. Margaret Gibson’s first picture as a star is The Soul’s Cycle, a Mutual Masterpicture, De Luxe Edition, in which she plays the dual role of a beautiful Roman maiden and a modern New York heiress. This new Mutual star is possessed of unusual understand¬ ing of life and of people. It is this quality which fits her peculiarly to play the “sympathy” roles for which she is so frequently cast. She is very young, but she has travelled and read and studied a great deal, and has absorbed much that many older people are very apt to overlook. Although the pretty Horsley star is very serious-minded, she usually seems care-free and joyous as a bird. She is very athletic, and as the prim little biography states, she is an expert horsewoman, a swimmer and a motorist. In fact, the pretty actress has had a special garage and stable built to accommodate her little green motor car and her silky black horse. They are her two pets, she insists, and furthermore, she does not know which she loves the most. “Don,” the horse, is splendid for a ride in the early mornings before work for the day has begun. The little green motor is at its best in the evenings, when it can travel miles and miles through the flowfer-scented air, and leave the memory of worries far behind. Miss Gibson is a cook, very much of a cook. She man¬ ages her little bungalow herself, and the servants who take care of it for her, adore her. One of them is an old colored mammy, who has been the little star’s personal maid for a number of years. “Dinah,” as her name is, wears a gaily colored turban and a big enveloping apron over her expansive person, and she trails around after her “honey,” as she calls her little mistress every minute Miss Gibson is at home. “Dinah” is very much afraid of the camera. Several times the directors of the Horsley studio have tried to persuade her to lend herself to the local color of pictures, but the old mammy has always backed off and refused. She believes that “pictures, shure am for beau’ful young ladies, but not for old colo’ed mammies.” Little Margaret Gibson’s great ambition is to do work which will make people better and happier for her having done it. She loves to play appealing “sympathy” parts. “I am glad I am a picture actress,” she says, “because pictures reach so many people that the stage does not. “I am fonder of ‘rag’ roles than any other type of screen portrayal,” says the pretty little star. “When I was on the stage, I could not really do good work unless I felt that the sympathy of the audience was with me. I did not care to play vampire roles. “Of course, in working for pictures, we do not feel the response of an audience before us, but we know, instinctive¬ ly, and from years of training, what sort of roles appeal to the public. I always want to be cast in ‘sympathy’ roles, because I can work best then.” Critics who have watched the work of this young star since becoming a member of the Horsley studios are unan¬ imous in their verdict that her career has but begun. REEL LIFE — Page Thirteen