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Stedman & Son, Inc.
Both good troupers and the best of friends off the screen, Myrtle Stedman and her son Lincoln are a unique combination in the film world.
By Helen Ogden
WHY shouldn't the mother of a grown son continue her work?" Myrtle Stedman, whose characterizations of middle-aged motherhood are deftly done in the lights and shadows of realism, smiled. "Just because Linky is capable of supporting me now, why should I give up what I have fought for all my life, it seems, what I had to fight to keep?"
The Stedman mother-and-son combination is unique in that it is, I believe, the only such relationship in pictures. Mrs. Stedman was one of the first stars, if your memory goes back to the puny days of pictures. An early marriage and the arrival of a . small son — well, no, they tell me Linky, who now boasts considerable circumference, was a chubby, round baby — kept her from the screen but temporarily. For many years while Lincoln wrestled with the three r's, Myrtle maintained the little home — and her own stardom, despite the onslaughts of new faces.
But finally, something stronger than her own ironwilled determination won — the years that won't be denied. And then, when Myrtle looked in her mirror and saw the faintest tracings of crow's-feet lines about her lovely blue eyes, she sat her down and thought it all out.
"Many careers are blasted beyond recall by a too tenacious hanging on to past glory," she reminisced for me the other evening at dinner in her Wilshire apartment.
Six of us — Myrtle, serene and matronly at the head of the table, Linky, the man of the house, trying to act natural despite the obvious responsibilities of carving, Myrtle's aged father who lives with them, two other
friends and myself. Everything about the Stedman apartment moves as on oiled wheels. None of that jerkiness or friction that one encounters sometimes, no reprimanding of servants. Mrs. Stedman's home bears the imprint of her own serenity and firmness ; like her own thoughts and beliefs, everything is apparently catalogued and one is but dimly conscious of the wheels going round.
"I had to learn my lesson — the lesson that a number of actresses on the screen to-day are due to learn shortly — to step aside when the time comes. But not out ! Many actresses who have been stars won't play character roles. Why not? The screen must have mothers and fathers — and these roles offer an opportunity to act that the insipid star-parts seldom give one."
Myrtle Stedman made the transition from star to character-actress with more grace than any one I know of. In "The Famous Mrs. Fair," she virtually ran away with the show. She has tact and an iron firmness that is encased within an outward veneer of equable temperament — and a sense of humor.
We spoke of a former well-known vampire star — whose back, alas, was in the olden days given more publicity than her face. She had been selected for the role of the thoughtless mother in "Dust in the Doorway," the First National picture which Frank Borzage is now directing. But, after a few days' work, the lady was diplomatically removed and Mrs. Stedman was asked to take the role.
"The trouble was that, being away from the screen so long, she had lost touch, was unable to adapt herself
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