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65
Welcoming Back
Ethel Clayton
For a long while fans have been asking from time to time, "Why doesn't Ethel Clayton act any more?" Why she has not been acting, and what she is going to do now, is recorded in this article.
By Caroline Bell
IN two films very different in theme a player who suffered the demise usual to a program star has been resurrected and presented in altogether new lights. I refer to Ethel Clayton.
"Wings of Youth," which will serve to reintroduce her, is her first mother role, and to it she contributes splendid work. The character, briefly, is a modern, spirited mother who, fearing that the jazz-mad excitement of the day will take its toll of her children's happiness, sets out to beat them at their own wild fun as the example which is so much more effective than lectures.
The story, in this skeleton form, has been done before ; but it has deft and novel touches, and it gives Ethel Clayton the dramatic opportunities denied her during the days when her prettiness and her charm were over-highlighted.
The role of the widow in "Lightnin' " offers her, almost for the first time in her long career, genuine comedy possibilities. Ethel Clayton — comedy? A thought incompatible with the Ethel of her stardom, when her main art consisted in posing effectively while the plot unwound its tiresome way. But they tell me, for I have not at this writing seen the film, that her work has delighted studio officials and may open another door for her new-born talent.
I had met her only once, three years ago, and had the vague idea current in Hollywood that a retirement, however brief, is an aging experience. I did not expect a decrepit and gray-haired Miss Clayton, but certainly I was not prepared for the girlish and lovely Miss Clayton who ran into the studio the morning of our appointment, breathlessly apologizing for her tardiness, explaining that she had been chasing a missing powder puff.
Slim and youthful, she was, in her chic white frock, a soft little hat pulled down over her bobbed hair of reddish gold, blue eyes asparkle with humor.
Her situation has been paralleled by other stars' courses. The brilliance of Pauline Frederick for years was smothered by namby-pamby stories and trite production, 'finding its full scope this past season in the drama of motherhood in which she
As she appears in her first "mother" role in "Wings of Youth."
Photo by Edwin Bower Hesser
Ethel Clayton has changed very little in apvearance during her absence from the screen.
gave her most vibrant and stirring performances.
Percy Marmont was kept in stereotyped work, supporting pretty stars in silly program piffle, until his chance to do real acting came in "If Winter Comes." And his portrayals since have been so genuine that he now is booked for a year ahead in the lucrative free-lance field. Fox, by the way, cut Marmont out of the pigeonhole into which he had been wedged, and now they have done the same for Ethel Clayton.
Miss Clayton's story differs slightly from the usual "return" tale, which takes the form of