Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1935)

Salute May Robson! One — a beautiful ingenue, herself. One as Tilly, a slovenly servant girl. The play, "The Hoop of Gold," opened on September 17, 1883, and in her very first performance May learned the most valuable lesson of her whole career. HpHE audience took the beautiful ingenue for ■*■ granted. But they shouted with laughter at Tilly. So May decided then and there to play characters, and only characters. The satisfaction of looking beautiful couldn't compare with the laughs and the applause one rated for being funny. It was a smart decision. Her husband died, and several years later she married Dr. A. H. Brown, who was then a young Harvard medical student. This was an ideally happy association. Always devoted and considerate, Dr. Brown never wished to interfere with his wife's career on the stage; rather, he encouraged it. He became a surgeon with an extensive practice, and May became a Frohman star. Dr. Brown died in 1923, after more than thirty years of an ideally happy marriage. Long before this, May's friendship with Marie Dressier had been formed, and once they made a memorable trip to England on a stormtossed old steamer, quite positive they would never reach the shore j alive. May played " The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary" over there and then for a four-year run without a break in New York. It is one of the theatrical successes that will go down in history. She never had a failure on the stage and never closed a play with less than a season's run. In 1924, she starred in several silent pictures 'for Cecil B. DeMille. Her first starring jsound picture was" You Can't Buy Everything," but her greatest personal [success was "Lady for a Day" made at Columbia by Frank Capra. She has just made another one 'there, ''Lady By Choice," which almost jtops the first. I She recently finished ['Woman Aroused" at RKO, and she loved ■ his story of an oldnaid school-teacher vhose life is wrapped up in her boys and girls. I She will do "The Mills ')f the Gods," for Columbia. This time a . trong-willed and deternined old lady. [ CONTINUED FROM PAGE 67 ] Then she thinks it will be time to go to New York and take a long rest. May's favorite characters are the inebriated old bats, as in the two "Lady" pictures. "When I go out, I am not ashamed to ask for a glass of tomato or orange juice, when the others are drinking stronger things," she says. "I am an old lady, you see, so I have to be humored. " But I have observed many inebriates in my day, and my characterizations are taken from them. The business with the hat, in 'Lady By Choice,' was a direct study of a woman I used to know who sometimes took a drink too many. She was never concerned about anything but her hat. " 'Where's m' hat, oh dear, oh dear, what did I do with my hat?' she would moan. Nothing else ever concerned her. "You have to love your work or you can't do it well. You have to be looking for ways to improve it, and my way is by watching people." May has a poor memory for names, and she and Miss Harmer have developed a pretty Florine McKinney, feminine lead of "Night Life of the Gods," the story of a museum full of statues on the loose, has a little fun with her plaster double in the Universal production good system on this. Some one comes up to talk with them, and May can't remember his name. She squeezes Miss Harmer's arm, and Miss Harmer says, "We were so delighted, Mr. Splivvits, to read of your daughter's success," or some such statement in which she can incorporate the name. /"\NE recent evening when Miss Harmer ^wasn't near, May was certainly in a predicament. She had been to a man's house where there is a perfectly remarkable parrot. (May is very fond of birds and has hundreds of them.) The parrot had a trick of standing on one's forefinger and saying "tickle, tickle." One night at a theater, May thought she saw the owner of the parrot. In a panic, she tried to think of his name. That failing, she advanced and squeaked, "Tickle, tickle," thinking at least that would let the man know she remembered him. He looked at her with a totally blank expression. She tried again. "Tickle, tickle," said May, coyly. A look of fear, amazement — acute discomfort spread over the man's face as he backed away and quickly disappeared. Miss Harmer returned just in time to see his face, and May told her the episode. "Buthewasn' t the man," explained Miss Harmer. Well, you can't expect to keep all the people straight, May laughs. She hopes the man, whoever he was, will see this and find out that she was not loony at the time. "X A AY is, surprisingly, ■lv-Lonly five feet, two inches tall. She weighs a hundred and fifty pounds, and is always beautifully and appropriately dressed and groomed. She lives in a small, comfortable, unostentatious house, in a section of Hollywood where you seldom find picture people. The neighbors' youngsters run in to see the birds, and to hear a story as only May can tell it. She swaps recipes with the neighboring housewives. Dignity, activity, ability — the dominant factors in May Robson's life. "Salute," then, to a grand old girl! 113