Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1925 - Feb 1926)

67 The Rubber-ankled Comedian After some twenty years of success on the stage, Leon Errol has set out to conquer movie audiences too. By Sidney Blair LEON ERROL is the only actor who ever achieved fifteen years of continuous success on Broadway by merely walking through his parts. If you saw him in the film version of "Salh*" you know why. There is something overwhelming about that walk of his. It isn't humanly possible, but there it is before your eyes. And Leon Errol is still alive, very much alive, after twenty years of tottering, sliding, and plunging across the stage. No one has ever successfully imitated that gait of his. That is one reason why it promises to become as famous as the Chaplin footage. The other is that it is funny. There is a l lot of headwork behind his footwork. He knows that disaster isn't often funny, but that near disaster is. So he treads always just on the verge of calamity. Dozens of comedians have prospered because of their ability to take falls. But Leon Errol for years has kept audiences in gales of laughter by just managing to escape them. Out in front of the theater, among the audiences, this Leon Erroll is famous as a comedian. Back stage, and among the people who have been associated with him in the studios he is something of an idol. All Broadway knows that he and Mr. Ziegf eld have never had a written contract, that Errol has ignored all other offers and worked for him for fifteen years because it was Ziegfeld who took him out of the bondage of burlesque. He is pointed out in the profession as the man who never breaks his word and never forgets an acquaintance. He is a sort of King Solomon who smoothes out all back-stage rows. During rehearsals he seems as much concerned with the success of every obscure player in 'the cast as he is with his own. He works untiringly with any one who seems ambitious. What wonder that back "stage the name of Errol commands something akin to adoration ! The measure of the success of this comedian is in the twenty-foot electric signs outside the Cosmopolitan Theater where he is starring in "Louie the Fourteenth ;" the measure of the man is in the affection for him among his associates. You get some idea of his friendliness and popularity when you see his dressing room at the Cosmopolitan Theater. There are several big easy-chairs, and a cushioned seat that runs all around the room. Like the theater, his dressing room plays to Capacity, every night. Old friends, new friends, each bringing a few people to meet Leon Errol, drop in after the performance to chat with him. Photo by Strauss Peyton In an anteroom, just a few steps above his dressing room, a masseur rubs out the kinks and bruises in his legs after every performance. There curtained off from his guests, Errol regales them with a hilarious narrative of what he has been doing. "Got a fan letter all the way from Australia — that's where I come from. I got the thrill of a lifetime when I opened it. What do you suppose it said? 'Dear Miss Erroll, I saw you in "Sally" in moving pictures and thought you were just lovely. Won't you send me a picture ?' So I got a picture of one of the girls in the show and sent it to her." "Tell 'em the one about your first day in the studio," some one always suggests, and then he is off. Coming from the theater where beginning work at eight thirty means being there and getting to work on time, Errol expected the same to be true in the studios. Told to be in make-up and at the studio at nine o'clock, there he was. After waiting for two or three hours, while electricians rushed around importantly and he was ignored, he approached his old friend John T. Murray and asked him when the shooting was going to commence. "Don't get excited," Murray counseled him, "I've been here every day for three weeks and haven't worked yet." Errol was almost a nervous wreck before he got started. Leon Errol 's father intended that he should be a doctor, and rumor has it that in Australia they still look upon him as one who will regret the i-ash step of taking up this theater business. Tales of his tremendous success in the "Follies" and in "Louie the Fourteenth" hardly convinced them that he was a great success. Perhaps that is why he is so eager to make his pictures good. The home folks will see those with the original cast, and then they will find out that Errol is a great doctor in his own way — a sure cure for the blues.