Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1928 - Feb 1929)

51 Pride of trie Clan Eddie Quillan's papa took exception to his son's pie-throwing roles with Mack Sennett lingerie girls, but he soon found a place that comes up to the family standard of humor. By Ann Sylvester EDDIE QUILLAN left the Sennett lot "for purity." Like Iris March, in "The Green Hat," Eddie had his ideals — or Eddie's Scottish papa did — and throwing pies at ladies in lingerie was not one of them. Fortunately for the censors, and unfortunately for Sennett, Eddie comes of a stern, Scotch-Presbyterian clan whose motto is, "Clean fun for the public, or we quit, by crackety." For years the Quillans, mere, pere, and many kids, had been touring these more or less United States as a vaudeville act of genteel saxophone tooting, refined hoofing and funny, but clean, jokes. Eddie's father was very proud of that record, and when he woke up one morning to find his next-tothe-youngest making a name for himself in Sennett pranks of the more boisterous variety, he thundered into the Sennett office and thundered right out again with Eddie — minus a contract. The leave-taking of the Quillans from the comedy lot was almost as startling as their advent had been. To get at the very beginning, it all started back on i Hollywood Street in Philadelphia, with the birth of Eddie. From the time he was old enough to realize that he had been born, into a theatrical family, he had his eye on the movies. Other actors standing in the wings, watching Eddie as a kid performer in his imitation of Harry Lauder, used to say, "That boy ought to be in the movies." Eddie felt the same way about it. Even when he was re Although Eddie had longed for years to see himself in pictures, he ran away from his first screen test, and it took a detective to find him. : moved, by compulsion, from the stage, and entered in school, he continued to nurse a yen for the movies. About eight or nine years dragged by before Eddie .was legally permitted to join his father's act again, and by that time the yen had grown into a complex. Before he started out on the road with his two brothers and a sister, he made his father promise by all the bagpipes in Scotland, that when they reached Hollywood Eddie should get a chance at the studios. Papa Quillan promised elaborately. After all, it ought to be comparatively simple to get a clever kid like Eddie in pictures. The first day the troupe landed in Los Angeles, Quillan, Sr., hied himself out to the Sennett Studio and demanded an audience with none other than Mack himself. Strange things happen in Hollywood — he was ' granted an audience. He told Sennett he had a couple of moviestruck kids who wanted to work in his comedies, and then he sat back as though willing to sign a contract any time. Sennett, was The entire Quillan family will be in the cast of "Noisy Neighbors," with not interested, ^He Jane Keckley, second from the right. said so, in np' un certain terms. But the lust\ vaudevil' liail wouldn't have it that way. He appealed to' his ancestry. As .One Scotsman to ' another, wouldn't he give the kids, particularly Eddie, a chance? More to get rid of him than, anything else, Sennett consented to test -the Quillans. Bright and early the next day, Eddie and family presented themselves. ■ "I didn't know a thing about the movies," said. Eddie, picking uphis story at this point, Continued on page 114