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PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE FOR DECEMBER, 1935
101
A New Career at 62
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American men, Will Rogers and Fred Stone.
This is the story of a man old now, as some measure age, in years, but young, as others measure it, in spirit, who tumbled and danced and joked and sang his way from prairie tent shows, circuses and minstrels to the high priced palaces of Broadway. This is the story of a man sturdy in the timber of character, solid of the foundation of faith in the goodness of the world, rich in the drapings of humor; the story of a man who, like Mr. Britling, saw it through when the wave of a new age swept over what he had built.
This is the story of Fred Stone who now sees his reward in — of all places — Hollywood.
To this day the proudly titled town of Wellington, Kansas, holds a celebration every Fourth of July. For many years the city fathers of Wellington convened before each celebration and dispatched a telegram to Fred Stone in New York asking him to join the fun.
Business always seemed to keep Fred away, but he always answered the telegram with a check to help out the festivities, and an extra ten dollars "for the boy who climbs the greased pole."
And that was because fifty-three years ago at just such a Fourth of July celebration in Wellington, two tousled boys stood on the inner edge of the crowd and watched ten lads like themselves assault the slithering sides of a pole larded like a potato ready for baking.
THE Stones had just settled in Wellington. They had settled several places before, in little towns in Colorado, Fred's native state. They had settled in Halstead, and Burton and Nickerson, in Kansas, where Fred's father had known Jesse James.
In fact, the Stones were always "settling" somewhere in that rough and ready, politically troubled Jayhawk country of the '70s.
Fred will tell you with a grin that as soon as they settled down in some new place, the place they had just left would write and invite them to come back and settle up!
It seemed now to the Stone boys that it was time to establish themselves in the community of Wellington. So the eleventh boy who shinnied up the greased pole toward the flag at the top was Eddie Stone, and in the back pocket of his "britches" he carried a load of sand which he wisely sprayed ahead of his advance. When he slipped to earth in defeat he said to his little brother,
"I think you can make it now, Fred."
Fred made it. He brought back the flag and held out his hand for the five round dollars while his nine years reasoned that you can climb pretty high with a little sand to help.
Fred Stone has never lacked that sand. Not in all the fifty-three years of hard, active trouping that have hoisted him to a new career at sixty-two in Hollywood. Not since the day he walked the high wire in a visiting circus and dragged the impressed show boss over to his dad at the barber shop.
"You say you want to join the circus, Fred?" said his father.
"I sure do," said Fred.
"All right," said his father, "go on."
Fred Stone started his professional career bedecked in a flouncy skirt and a parasol on the high wire of that visiting circus in Wellington. He was billed as "Mile, de Octego de