Screenland (May-Oct 1931)

108 SCREENLAND comedienne in vaudeville. She adores hard-boiled old lady roles and doesn't care how unlovely she looks in her make-up. She was in "The Man From Blankley's" with John Barrymore, and in "The Big Trail." Remember the dear old mother of the blind girl in "City Lights"? That is Florence Lee, who began with pictures way back in 1916 as a screen mother. So they've held her to elderly roles ever since, although she has to make-up cleverly to look as old as that. She has been grandma to half the players in Hollywood. Of course, as Charlie's picture took two years to make, "City Lights" is her only new film to date. Grayce Hampton used to be a singer. Later she played in the famous Drury Lane pantomimes in London, and was so beautiful that King Edward expressed great admiration. She was the wife of wives with Otis Skinner in "Kismet," and made a great hit. She was called to the screen for "The Bat Whispers" and is predicted as another winner. Emma Dunn is a stage actress gone over to the screen since talkies, although there were some silent pictures from stage successes as early as 1916. She is the mother in "Bad Sister" and other talkies are "The Texan," "Broken Dishes," "Manslaughter," "Side Street," "The Prodigal." Leah Winslow, who plays such very unsympathetic roles on the stage, usually unpleasant aunts, is with May Robson in "Mother's Millions" as a well-bred, patronizing person, which she does so well. Lucy Beaumont, who played for 47 weeks in "Berkeley Square" on the stage, is making no end of a hit — three talkies for Warners, including "Sonny Boy," "The Girl in the Show" with Bessie Love, "The Greyhound Limited," as the sorrowing mother, and her next is with Norma Shearer. Lucy came to Hollywood in 1923 from the stage — very English — and did 10 pictures in 18 months; but after a while Mary Carr snatched the fanciest old lady roles from her. That's when "Berkeley Square" and the stage intervened. Things are swimming along nicely now again. Maude Eburne, in "The Bat Whispers," was a stage success for twenty-three years before trying Hollywood. She just "fell" into fame originally, by clowning in the wings during rehearsal of "A Pair of Sixes," pretending she was a fainting heroine of melodrama. The boss put the stunt into the show and it wowed the audience. Her father was a Canadian gentlemanfarmer, and later she married Eugene J. Hall, manager of several stock companies. Emily Fitzroy is another famous veteran of stage and screen. After twenty years on the English stage, she tried pictures as long ago as "The Lightning Conductor" with Bill Farnum. They always give her hard old cat roles, so that it's a compliment when the audience gets mad at her. There was an interval of New York Theatre Guild and Broadway plays, during which pictures were regarded as profitable summer vacation work. Emily has hobnobbed with royalty in real life too, notably the Crown Prince of Sweden and his consort, who presented her to King Edward of Britain. It was in "Driven" for Charles Brabin that she really won her picture spurs. Talkies have found her busy right along. Lillianne Leighton, who is also chairman of the drama department of the Hollywood Woman's Club, once owned a weekly paper in Auroraville, Wisconsin, began with amateur shows, migrated to professional work, and broke into pictures with the old Selig Polyscope in Chicago in 1911, being in the first multiple-reel picture ever made, "The Two Orphans." It's been pictures ever since, with such talkies to her credit as "Abraham Lincoln," "Call of the Flesh," "Feet First," "Subway Express," etc. Mary Forbes, the mother of Ralph Forbes, and the charming mother-in-law of Ruth Chatterton, is always in demand for queenly aristocratic roles chiefly because she holds herself with such patrician rectitude, and can wear jewels as though to the manner born. She was the English aristocrat in "So This is London" with Will Rogers, and Charlie Farrell's mamma in "Sunny Side Up." She divides her time between stage and screen, wherever an aristocratic grand dame is needed. ' Evelyn Sherman was once an expert accountant for five years, but dreamt of pictures while poring over figures. So she saved up enough to stake her through a try. She trudged from casting office to office in New York, and finally got a call from Paramount, as a society-lady extra at $7.50 for one day. Smart evening gown, gloves, hat, shoes were necessary and Evelyn plunged to the tune of $300 and caught a shocking cold into the bargain. But her investment was good all the same, for soon she won a mother role and was established. By and bye it was Hollywood, beginning with "Suzanna" and Mabel Normand and the duchess in "Three Weeks." Talkie roles haven't been quite so stylish so far but Evelyn knows they will soon get better. Maude Turner Gordon comes from Indiana and the stage. Broke into pictures with Paramount in New York, and then came to Hollywood, doing many silents and talkies, including "The Last of Mrs. Cheyney." She is a marvellous needlewoman, too, and her darling Alta Loma home is rich in superior samples of her work. Dale Fuller, California born, began as a chorus girl, and finally captured a good musical comedy role. Her picture career began with Mack Sennett, as a glorified extra at $3.50 a day, some days, which led On the set of "The Mad Genius'" with John Barrymore, in high hat and fur-trimmed coat. Notice all the lights and prop men and paraphernalia because you won't see any of these when the picture is released.