Picture Play Magazine (Jul - Dec 1929)

15 Calm As the Night Though Marguerite Churchill, heroine of "The Valiant," is one of the few stage players to make a sympathetic impression on the screen, she is neither excited nor influenced by Hollywood. B$ William H. McKegg STXCE the talkies swept over Hollywood, every one has been sunk in a whirlpool of contemplation, discussion, comparison, and distraction. One of the chief factors causing this upheaval has been the arrival of a number of players from the stage. Many have come — in fact, so eager were producers to engage trained voices, that some players were almost kidnaped and dragged westward, like recalcitrant victims for sacrifice to a new cult, Of the scores of stage actors who came, scarce a handful remain. In many cases, one screen performance was given and the players returned to Broadway, probably quite willing to stick to their old jobs, and not enter new fields. The few that remain and are likely to become well known, almost assume the likeness of extraordinary individuals. It is a little too late for me to state that Marguerite Churchill is likely to become one of the exceptions. She has proved herself to be one already, so I am done out of appearing as a prophet. Under contract to Fox, Miss Churchill played in a couple of short talkies. Probably her willingness to be told things earned her the lead opposite Paul Muni, in "The Valiant." Most stage players, who have played leads on Broadway, would have turned up artistic noses at the suggestion that they act in anything like Clark and McCullough's "The Diplomats" and Robert Benchley's "Furnace Trouble." Not so Marguerite. She knew nothing about pictures and didn't pretend to. She realized that she had come upon something entirely foreign to anything she bad ever done before; she was not adverse to being guided while she studied the new medium. I could name one or two stage players who came to Hollywood and regarded the talkies with condescending mien, posing amid theatrical grandeur. Where arc they now? But to return to "The Valiant," to prove that some stage recruits face happier endings. If you saw this picture, you must have noticed Marguerite Churchill's poignant acting — and her exquisite hands. She can do more with her hands than other players can do with their entire bodies. I shall return to her hands later on. Keep them in mind. In the meantime, before it is too late, you must hear what she has done from her earliest years to the present time. Kansas City claims her, because she was born there on a Christmas Day — which makes her no ordinary person to begin with. Though brought up in the atmosphere of the theater, Miss Churchill wears none of its tinsel. New. York has been chiefly her abiding place, though she lived more than a year in Buenos Aire-. 1 ler father bought a chain of theaters in South America, and took Marguerite and her mother with him to the Argentine. Marguerite returned eventually to the I "nitcd State-, crossing the Andes up to Lima, and taking a ship from there, through Panama, and back to New York. Then she entered the Theater Guild School of Acting. I ler first professional role was the ingenue in "Why Not?" She must have been good, for she became the youngest leading lady on Broadway, playing in "The House of Shadows," "The Small Timer," "The Alimoniacs," "Skidding." and "Night Hostess." Her most prominent success was in "The Wild Man of Borneo." It was while playing in the last that Winfield Sheehan, vice president of Fox, saw her. Right away he sought her out and signed her, and thus Marguerite came to Hollywood with her mother and grandmother, to learn what it was all about. I found her in a Beverly Hills abode of Spanish architecture. A large bell clanged when I pushed open the iron gate and entered a patio. I expected to see Raiuomi run out and greet me. but Mi- Churchill appeared instead, not running, but gliding gracefully like a sylph. She stood in the open doorway wearing a dr< some veily stuff — you know the kind I mean. In the dusk it gave her the appearance of being enveloped in