Screenland (Sept 1922–Feb 1923)

[6 aajywooA SCREENLAND C*iifi«i» A NYBODY who has heard Douglas Fairbanks spout Shakespeare /-m is perfectly willing to admit that the resilent young man must have been a great help to Frederick Warde and Louis James when he supported them in classic repertoire. But anybody who has heard him sing will not so easily believe that he once earned his living by singing. Yet he did. Douglas, as his wife calls him, Doug, as he is called by plenty of people who don't know him so well as she does, went to the mat with music in Fantana, a musical comedy, and part of one of the lyrics he gargled ran something like this: "You ask me ivhy I love you "And 1 say I do not know; "Ask the tiuinkling stars above you "White they smile upon you so." TT'S a pretty thing, but no prettier than the dance steps that went x with it, steps which Doug's pal, Charlie Chaplin, who danced on the stage in England before he came to this country as one of the members of a vaudeville act, might have envied. As for the singing, the management of Fantana let Doug do it all by himself; while the management of the musical comedies in which Eugene O'Brien used to appear never let him sing unless the rest of the chorus sang with him. Lon Chaney's managers were not so particular. They permitted him to dance alone as a dancing comedian, although when he was a stage hand he was surrounded by a strong supporting company. Too bad lie didn't have Francis X. Bushman or Bull Montana in it. They were wrestlers who could have subdued any scenery. One of them was also an artist's model. T)ILL HART first tasted grease paint and scenery when he was *-* nineteen. This daddy of all western stars was born in the frontier town of Newburgh, N. Y. His early years were almost as wild and wooly as were those of Harry Carey, who was born in New York City and who was a practicing lawyer before he became a western star. Tom Mix comes from Driftwood, Pa., which metropolis probably numbers among its citizens no more two-gun men than does Jacksonville, III., where Charley Ray was a clerk in his papa's drug store. Lew Cody also had a pharmaceutical sire, but Douglas MacLean's father was a clergyman and young Doug sold automobiles. Wally Reid studied medicine and then was a reporter for an automobile magazine. Later he took up the saxophone and is the undisputed moving picture champion of that instrument of torture. If he wanted to, he could play well enough to accompany Rudy Valentino's dancing. If he wanted to. XT ALENTINO is not, and never has been, the lounge lizard the y envious have called him. His is an excellent Italian family and he came to this country to study agriculture. His English was not as good as his intentions and he had tough going in New York. Lefty Flynn, once a Yale football star and now a moving picture star, was one of his first friends. Rudy danced in vaudeville theatres and then at Rector's. He was an extra at Universal where his salary rose to seventy-five dollars a week. Rose and stuck. He got it for playing the lead in a Carmel Myers picture and he did not get any more until The Four Horsemen made him. Before von Stroheim became an assistant director for Griffith he was broke in New York. But he always had a fairly good place to eat. His best friend, a man with whom he had served in the Austrian army, managed Delmonico's and there was always a place at the table for Erich. TT OUSE PETERS cooked his own food when he was a prospector in South Africa, where J. P. McGowan was almost killed in the Boer war. At that, neither Peters nor McGowan took any more chances than did Roy Stewart's father, who in the early days maintained what law and order was maintained in Hangtown when that lively settlement was the toughest town in California. It was a town in which Stuart Holmes and Monroe Salisbury would have found it hard to make a living. They were artists. Larry Semon wasn't exactly an artist. He was a cartoonist in New York. Robert Ellis, May Allison's husband, was a reporter in the same city and Ward Crane worked there as secretary to a politician. A/f ILTON SILLS, whose early ambition was to be a writer, was ~ ■* graduated from the University of Chicago and became a teacher instead. What a nice, quiet time he would have had if Will Rogers, Buck Jones and Hoot Gibson had been in his school! Will Rogers, whose friends call him Bill, and who is the owner of the only bowlegs that were ever seen in the Follies, got little "schooling" as they call it in that part of the Indian Territory where he was born. Hoot Gibson, who was born in Nebraska, and whose first traveling was done with a circus that went to Australia, got less, and Buck Jones, a western star who was raised among the hostile Indians of Indianapolis, did not get much more. Monte Blue is another curly wolf from Indiana, that rough and rugged country where a man can be a man. So also is John Bowers, whose pride and joy is his oceangoing yacht. This, while it may not be quite so fast as Dustin Farnum's crack motorboat, is much larger. "Dusty" Farnum — strange nickname for a sailor, isn't it — and his brother Bill are New Engenders. Franklyn Farnum, who is not related to them, formerly was a singer. T^T" ALTER HIERS must have been a cute kid when he wore a » cadet's uniform at the Peekskill Military Academy. Mitchell Lewis, a graduate of Annapolis, spent six years in the United States One Hundred S ECRETS of Revealed by Navy; Lewis St^c fought in the SpanishAmerican war Herbert Gnmwood I was a captain in the British Army during the World War and Max Linder was in the trenches for France. "yiTLLY MARSHALL was born in Nevada City, Nev., and Bert * Lytell wa, born in New York City. Both were on the stage before they r.ent .nto the silent drama and each has become fn cnte. earning speech maker since. Art Acord, once of Stillwater Okla. was named in honor of Artemas Ward, who in his day was a pretty good speech maker himself. Neal Hart was a town marshal in Wyoming but this was a sedentary employment as compared to that ot fcddie Polo who was an aerial artist in a circus. Chester Conklin took fewer chances. He was a circus clown. There was not anything funny in Sam De Grasse's business. He was a dentist. /~*ULLEN LANDIS was a newsboy in Nashville, Tenn., and an° x ^.ldw>rn ,ion. Richard Dix, studied medicine in the University of Minnesota for two years before he went on the stage in the support of James Neill who is now in pictures. Dix's first part was in The College Widow. Lawrence Wheat and Tommie Meighan were in the original company that played that piece. That was seventeen years ago and Tommie Meighan does not look much older now than he did then. The fact that during all these years he has been married to Frances Ring may account for this. ILOYD HUGHES, who worked in a film laboratory before he -^became an actor, attended a polytechnic high school before he worked in a film laboratory. Mahlon Hamilton prepared for a screen cai.-er by attending the Maryland Agricultural College. Other leading men chose educational institutions in which the digging of Greek roots is the hardest form of exercise. John Davidson, Jack Mulhall and Edward Everett Horton went to Columbia; Rudolph Cameron, George Le Guere and James Spottswood to Georgetown ; Dick Barthelmess to Trinity; Edmund Lowe to Santa Clara; Clyde Fillmore to Johns Hopkins; Carlyle Blackwell to Syracuse; J. Frank Glendon to Montana Wcsleyan; George Walsh to Fordham; Earle Foxe to Ohio State; David Butler, son of an American actor, to Stanford; H. B. Warner, son of an English actor, to University College, London', and Joseph Schildkraut, son of an Austrian actor, to the Sargent Dramatic School in New York. tj ARRY VAN METER ran a school of his own in Denver where he taught physical culture, and Emorv Johnson got his physical culture at the University of California. Edward Peil and Earl Rodney and Lester Cuneo were educated at Notre Dame, although it was in France that Lester Cuneo was decorated for bravery. P*ARLE WILLIAMS was a stock actor. Thomas Jefferson comes of an old theatrical family, his father, Joseph Jefferson, the greatest of American comedians, having been the third of that name in a family of actors. Frank Mayo, whose real name is McGuire, is a grandson of the Frank Mayo who became famous for his playing of Davy Crockett. Frank Keenan is a grandfather himself, his daughter being the wife of Ed Wynn, the comedian. He has been an actor since the days of the old Boston Museum. Willard Mack, whose real name is McLaughlin, was born in Iowa, as was the sprightly Mr. Keenan, and as Raymond Hatton, the favorite son of Red Oak. Conrad Nagel is another Iowan. His mother is a Christian Science practitioner and he is an usher in a church of that denomination in Hollywood. Those deep-dyed screen villains, Noah and Wallace Beery, hail from Kansas City, and King Baggot and Edwin August are from St. Louis. They were all actors before they went into pictures. JACK HOLT comes from Winchester, Va., the scene of General Phil Sheridan's famous ride. Ben Turpin, who is not quite so handsome as Mr. Holt, was in burlesque and vaudeville before he became the first slapstick comedian in pictures. Al St. John first rode a bicycle in Santa Ana, Cal., and Buster Keaton was in vaudeville sixteen years before he entered pictures. Dan Crimmins is another vaudevillain. Tom Gallery, who in The Son of Wallingford played a boy whose father is a crook, is in real life the son of a Chicago police captain. He himself began his career as a reporter. r I "* ROY BARNES was a magician before he became an actor, • and Kenneth Harlan who followed him in the stage play See My Lawyer, came to California with Gertrude Hoffman's vaudeville act, in which he wore more clothes than did Gertrude. George Beban, who has been an actor since he was eight years old, was once