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Taylorology Issue 32
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* T A Y L O R O L O G Y *
* A Continuing Exploration of the Life and Death of William Desmond Taylor *
* *
* Issue 32 -- August 1995 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu *
* TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed *
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
Interviews with Mary Miles Minter: The Taylor Years
Wallace Smith: February 28, 1922
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What is TAYLOROLOGY?
TAYLOROLOGY is a newsletter focusing on the life and death of William Desmond
Taylor, a top Paramount film director in early Hollywood who was shot to
death on February 1, 1922. His unsolved murder was one of Hollywood's major
scandals. This newsletter will deal with: (a) The facts of Taylor's life;
(b) The facts and rumors of Taylor's murder; (c) The impact of the Taylor
murder on Hollywood and the nation; (d) Taylor's associates and the Hollywood
silent film industry in which Taylor worked. Primary emphasis will be given
toward reprinting, referencing and analyzing source material, and sifting it
for accuracy.
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Mini-Review: THE CHRONICLE OF THE CINEMA is a mammoth volume which obviously
took a great deal of effort to prepare, but its paragraph on the Taylor case
is laughably error-filled. If all other articles in the book were as shabbily
researched, the volume would be worthless. It's too bad that the book will
probably be used as a major reference work, and thus will do a great deal to
perpetuate some foolish old myths of the Taylor case.
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Interviews with Mary Miles Minter: The Taylor Years
From the time he first directed her in 1919 until his murder in 1922,
William Desmond Taylor was the primary object of Mary Miles Minter's romantic
affection, although she never discussed her love for him in the many
interviews she gave prior to his death. The following interviews provide
interesting glimpses of Mary Miles Minter, her relationship with her family,
her caged-bird existence, and her thoughts on various subjects. Her love for
Taylor is an unspoken undercurrent running throughout.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
October 14, 1919
LOS ANGELES EXPRESS
Mary Miles Minter Must Not Think of Sweethearts, New Pact Reads
Mary Miles Minter must not think of sweethearts and marriage during the
next few years. She has signed a contract to that effect. She must think
only of her art, must not make public appearances and must not entertain
extensively in her home.
These are the announcements made by the little star upon her arrival in
Los Angeles to begin production on her new pictures for the Realart Pictures
corporation, of which Adolph Zukor, well known film magnate, is the
president.
"But there is little danger that I will think seriously of sweethearts
and marriage," Miss Minter said today as she began preparations to start
"shooting" at the Morosco studios. "I am not yet 18 years old--so why worry
about sweethearts? As to marriage--well, for the time being I am wedded to
my art."
Miss Minter was accompanied to Los Angeles by her mother, Mrs. Shelby,
and her director, William Desmond Taylor.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
October 22, 1919
Henry Dougherty
LOS ANGELES EXPRESS
[from an interview with Mary Miles Minter]...I went over to the
Alexandria hotel yesterday afternoon and talked with Miss Minter, and here's
how she feels about it:
"To me it all seems just like a beautiful dream come true.
"For more than five years I have worked and played and planned--and
sometimes cried--for the day when I could put my ideals on the screen.
"My contract with Realart makes this possible. I am to make 20
pictures. I want to remain in the background, but from the shadows I will
tell Mary Miles Minter what to do. I do not want to be known as a fluffy-
ruffles girl, or a doll face or anything of that kind. I want to work and
to study and read life and know life, and to mirror that life on the screen
so that it will not only entertain, but will suggest a lesson, or cause some
one else to think of things that are wholesome and human and worth-while."
Miss Minter is a girl of moods. She admits it. She also believes in
the all-absorbing topic of love, but declares that the deepest affection
that has ever entered her heart is for her mother and her art. She likes
flowers--and certainly many of her friends know it--for her suite at the
Alexandria is a bower of roses.
"I do not like to be pointed out on the street," she said. "I prefer
to go my way, unmolested, like other American girls. There is nothing I
like better in life than to sit in a big, cosy room with a glowing fire and
a wonderful book to read and to listen to the victrola. Funny sort of life,
isn't it? Well, I like it, anyhow."
Miss Minter today started production at the Morosco studios on "Judy of
Rogue's Harbor."...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
November 9, 1919
Grace Kingsley
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Just offhand, I should describe Mary as a sort of super-subdeb, if you
know what I mean; a wonderfully interesting young lady who shows a curious
combination on the one hand of quick wit, good sense, brilliant powers of
observation, an impressive and really keen interest in all deep questions of
the day, a faculty of going right to the heart of a subject, and on the
other hand, a love of life and humanity and a girlish naivete that are
thoroughly delightful and disarming.
I got my first really illuminating glimpse of Mary in her dressing room
at the Morosco studio the other day, with her flaxen hair and her deep blue
eyes that sparkle and dance at some bit of humor of her own or yours, making
a ravishingly lovely picture against the white-and-blue taffeta draperies.
Most pretty girls of Mary's age and profession cultivate a sort of
suave and hypnotic charm. Mary doesn't. She's as direct and sincere and
straight-from-the-shoulder as a geometrical proposition. And so lovely, let
me add, that she can get away with it.
Lunch was about to be sent in.
"You are now going to see," laughed Mary, "one whom you may have heard
spoken of as alabaster and soft-scented snow fallen to the level of eating
wieners! I always have miles of them when mother isn't around! Now that
sounds like something I ought to say, doesn't it? But, oh, if I told you a
lot of things I think about, the world simply wouldn't believe me! So
what's the use?" she exclaimed, with the air of a misunderstood princess.
"As what?" I asked.
"Well, things about the economic unrest and subjects like that." She
was very serious. And I'm not going to tell you her views, because maybe
you wouldn't agree with her, and next time you saw her on the screen, you'd
say, "Oh, that girl believes so and so!"
There's another subject she's much interested in and that's the wave of
spiritualism which is sweeping over the country.
"But spiritualism is for the chosen few," remarked Mary sagely. Then
she smiled that roguish smile of hers, "but we all think we're the chosen
few, don't we?"
"Are you Irish?" I asked suddenly.
"Just enough Irish to make me love 'em and want to spank 'em good!"
retorted Mary. "Seems to me people like to dig up every drop of every other
kind of blood except American that they have. Of course 'digging up drops
of blood' is a mixed metaphor, isn't it. Really I'm American through and
through. But I remember dimly my father, who was part Irish. He had big
blue eyes and black wavy hair and I always remember him smiling at me."
All her short life of seventeen years, Mary has been a sort of
hermitress and she is more so now than ever.
"I'd give anything to know a lot of girls of my own age and do the
things they do," she said. "Do you know I never learned to play hop-scotch
until I was twelve years old? When I had a little vacation from my work in
New York, and the children taught me out on the sidewalk. I never really
did learn how to play. I was always working," Mary sighed.
"I'm just caught in the golden web of fate," she went on pensively.
Now doesn't that sound subdebby?
I asked her if she minded if I asked her something and she said no. So
I asked her if she had had any love affairs.
"Oh," she said quite frankly, "a lot of childish affairs, nothing
deep--yet. But she said it in a tone of conviction, as if she felt a really
deep case setting in with unusual severity.
"But if ever I have a big love affair ending unhappily, of course, I
shall feel awful if I don't die of a broken heart. It would seem indelicate
not to, now wouldn't it?"
Speaking of love one goes naturally onto the subject of homes. Miss
Minter and her mother have taken the Helen Matthewson residence in Fremont
Place, and are to move into it before Thanksgiving.
"What are you looking forward to most in your new home?" I asked.
"Well," said Miss Minter, "Of course I'm looking forward to the big
library and to trying to make up my mind about some deep questions, but next
to that I'm looking forward to my big four-post bedstead, with the blue
canopy over the top and steps leading up to it, into which I shall sink
every night about 9:30 o'clock after a hard day's work."
"Are you going to have any pets?"
"Well, dogs always get killed, and I don't care for monkeys or lizards
or toads, so I think I'll have birds. No, not an aviary. I'll just let 'em
sit around wherever they want to."
"Do you like talking birds?"
"Well, it depends on what they talk about!"
Asked concerning her future and success, Miss Minter answered, making a
very neat little epigram, I thought: "Well, nobody ought to think of
himself as reaching the pinnacle of success alone, because if he does that,
he'll meet himself coming back.
"It just can't be done," she went on: "you've got to think of your
success as carrying people along with you, helping wherever you can, and
always trying to inspire."
Miss Minter is thoroughly democratic and loves studying people. That
she comes into contact with few makes her interest all the keener. "And I
just love people," she said, "especially"--and this is very sub-debby,
indeed, isn't it?--"the people who are doing the great work of the world in
the background."
The other day there was a little Mexican youngster, the child of one of
the studio workers, on the set where Miss Minter was working. The child had
been placed for safekeeping in an old wheelbarrow. He simply wouldn't
smile, because his dad couldn't leave his work to move him about, so Miss
Minter picked up the wheelbarrow and pushed it, with the result the baby
soon was crowing delightfully.
"And I read somewhere you have found a home for stray dogs and cats?"
I asked. Miss Minter talked reluctantly about that, but finally admitted
she had endowed one in the East and that she was going to establish such a
home out here as soon as she is settled. Right now she's nursing a wounded
wildcat that was used in "Judy of Rogue's Harbor."
But she loves helping people, and here's one I heard from somebody
else, which she will be surprised to read about here. There was a returned
soldier whom she knew, who is now suffering from tuberculosis. He asked her
help, with the result she has found a comfortable home for him, and he is on
the way to recovery.
"I love revealing people to themselves," said the star, her blue eyes
sparking with enthusiasm, "and showing them how to help themselves. I had a
maid once who was very stupid, but I saw it was just because she had never
had sufficient responsibility thrust upon her. So I made her attend to all
my small business affairs and look after the children about the studio.
Also I got her to reading. She was soon studying at night, and now she's in
college. Oh, it was a pleasure to do that."
Miss Minter expresses herself as very happy in her new surroundings,
with William D. Taylor, her director, just the most wonderful director in
the world.
"Do you know what he did when he came back from war, which service, by
the way, her performed entirely voluntarily.? Well, though he had no
contract with Lasky, and though he was offered by another company just three
times what he had been getting with Lasky, he returned to the firm because
he had said he would! That's what I call being a fine gentleman."
Miss Minter is always very enthusiastic and warm in her friendships.
For instance, Mrs. Charlotte Whitney, her secretary, is expecting the
arrival of the stork almost any day now, and Miss Minter has been preparing
all sorts of wonderful things for the new baby.
"We'll have a perfectly wonderful Christmas in the new house," said
Miss Minter, "for my grandmother, Charlotte Shelby, you know, is coming out
from New York, and then there will Charlotte Whitney and her baby, and oh,
how wonderful it is to welcome a little soul into this world of life, of
sorrow and joy, of weeping over algebra lessons and laughing over having a
new automobile or other bauble!"
Which last does sound delightfully sub-debby, now, doesn't it?
You fall to speculating, naturally, talking to Mary Miles Minter, of
what Miss Mary would be in other walks of life; and you decide she's the
sort of person, who, if she were a society girl, would lead all the charity
activities, have all the beaus, be the best dancer, and yet would also read
Browning, the Literary Digest and the front page of the internal news.
In short, Mary Miles Minter is a wonderful little all-'round girl.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
November 11, 1919
Ray Frohman
LOS ANGELES HERALD
...Millions of picturegoers know, like and admire the Mary Miles Minter
of the screen as a sweet, pretty little girl with an abundance of blonde
curls, a picture actress slightly bigger than a faint recollection, a little
queen with delicate features and "endearing young charms."
Few know the intense, level-headed, appreciative, ambitious REAL-reel-
star-to-be it was my privilege to question as to her past, present and
future.
Not even other picture stars know her, for she has been dubbed, she
tells me, "the hermit girl of the screen," and says she "doesn't know them."
It was in Mary's own limousine, with her chauffeur-with-a-life-job,
Jack Filtzer, on the bridge, that I was whirled to meet the young Realart
star "on location."
En route I enjoyed the delightful company of her young mother, Mrs.
Charlotte Shelby, who has hair like Mary's, only a trifling shade darker.
I was also in the clutches of Harry L. ("Buck") Massie, her special
publicity director, a reformed circus advance agent, as earnest as Mary.
J'approche.
'Tis on the Lasky ranch, the "old Universal ranch," amid woodsy
country, with muddy roads, saplings, a young brook, Los Angeles sunshine,
faery hills in the background, "'n' ev'rything."
We pass a big circle of men, looking like a bunch of gypsies gathered
about their campfire. They are "the Bosheviki" in Mary's current picture.
With the bright sunshine playing in its rival, her hair, Mary Miles
Minter is in action in "exteriors," under the artistic direction of a keen-
looking gentleman of distinguished appearance, William Desmond Taylor. And
that stringy-haired girl with watery blue eyes whom Mary is clutching is
breezy Fritzie Ridgeway, playing "a character without a character."
In a lull between "close-ups," Mary Miles Minter greets me with a shy
little smile.
A pretty maid with blue eyes, features of static beauty, and a quiet
composure of countenance betokening that she has lived much during her
seventeen and a half years--that's Mary. A refined looking little LADY,
whose subdued tone of voice, reserve, and cultured manner makes it no news
at all when she tells me she was born in the South.
She looks like your--anybody's--"best girl."
She is wearing a little old fashioned frock of violet that, with fluffy
lace at the collar and sleeves, above the elbow, and fluffy ruffles at the
southern exposure.
I note that she is kind and democratic toward her servants--a sign of
true gentility.
And she talks quietly, with restraint.
In a detached way she bestows blame and praise, where either seems due,
upon her spoken stage achievements.
Depreciatingly she mentions her past screen accomplishments.
Ecstatically she gushes about the "nest of darlings" she is now in,
"from Adolph Zukor," who thought of Mary and then conceived Realart, "down
to 'Daddy' Byce," pooh-bah of the studio.
And oh-so-seriously, she discourses upon the big things of life which
she holds dear: Domestic ideals which are real to her, freedom from
commercialism and her dawning future--what "Buck" Massie would call "the
ripening of her matured artistry," but what Mary calls "giving the public my
best, now that I have served my apprenticeship; for the public has given me
its best."
Her name in private life is Juliet Shelby, but she said;
"All my family believe that I AM Mary Mary Miles Minter. It was the
real name of my first cousin, who died as a child. We were about the same
age, and I looked, acted and talked the way she did, and had the same likes
and dislikes.
"When did I get my first 'job' on the stage? It wasn't a 'job.' It
was an accident. It was when I was not quite five, with the late Nat
Goodwin on the original production of 'Cameo Kirby.' It was a dismal
failure, which Dustin Farnum later played with great success. Maude Fealy
was in the company.
"I was a tiny little girl, 'Toinette, I remember my first line."
There was joy in Mary's voice as she chanted this:
"'Sister Adele, Sister Adele, catch me--I'm tuming!'
"I rushed gleefully downstairs crying that, and they caught me, and I
enjoyed it.
"I was born in Shreveport, La. My mother was a southern girl, tied
down by the bonds of the South: 'You can't do this' and 'You can't do
that.' She longed with all her soul to go on the stage, but she had two
babies, Margaret and me.
"Mother really did understudy Billie Burke in 'Love Watches' in New
York at the Lyceum theater in 1906, and played the part of the sister in it.
She looked like Billie. While mother was on the stage I sat on the table
one night in that wonderful green room.
"Charles Frohman walked in.
"'Hello child,' he said. 'Whose child are you?'
"'My mothers,' I replied, faintly annoyed at being called 'child.' No
one had ever called me that, and I was four and a half.
"'Who is your mother?'
"'Tarlotte."
"My mother, Charlotte Shelby--he thought she was 18, and didn't know
she had any children--walked in from the stage.
"'When are you going to put these children on the stage?' he asked.
"'Stage? My children on the stage? Heaven forbid!' mother replied.
'My children must be educated and reared as I was.'
"Children were being engaged then at Wallack's theater for 'Cameo
Kirby.' Not announcing it to mother, my grandmother determined to take
Margaret, all dressed up in a big blue serge, all fluffy ruffles, down
there. But when she came out of the house I was playing in the street.
I was 'filthy dirty!' Yet I insisted and so there was nothing to do but
take me along.
"There were millions, simply millions of kids in a great room--with
toes out, sashes, bows and things, their mammas poking them to sit up
straight.
"Grandmother found a chair in a corner, took Margaret on her lap and
told me to crouch down in the corner and not show myself. I was a
'disgrace,' 'a pig.'
"My dress was filthy, and I still had my ball. All the kids had
'snipped' at me when I came in.
"There was a beautiful little girl there who looked like a French doll.
I thought she WAS a French doll. I begged grandmother to let me go kiss
her.
"Her mother looked at me and said:
"'Oh, those little waifs--how do they let them in? AND IT WANTS TO
TOUCH MY DAUGHTER!"
"Arnold Daly, who was playing there in 'The Irishman,' came in, made up
as 'The Irishman'--big red nose--green eyes. I gazed at him fascinated.
All the kids curtseyed, their mammas telling them, 'Now look at the
gentleman, dearie--be nice.'
"'O-oh, Grandma, look at his funny nose!' I screamed, sitting on my
haunches hidden behind that chair in the corner.
"'Come here, little one--I'd like to talk to you,' said Mr. Daly.
"Grandmother, mortified, almost wept.
"Proudly I stepped forth, and looked him up and down, from his funny
feet to his funny head.
"'Come this way, little girl,' he said.
"Grandmother was in agony.
"'May I play with these?' I asked, looking at his make-up table from a
high chair in his dressing room. I didn't know what grease paint was, but I
was fond of color. I smeared paint over my hands and face.
"'What do you like to play?' he asked me.
"'Hide and Go Seek, Pussy in a Corner, Ring Around the Rosey.'
"'What have you DONE, played on the stage?' he asked, annoyed.
"'The child seems intelligent, but she can't bell me what she's
played,' he told Grandmother. 'She answers "Pussy in a Corner".'
"'My child on the stage?' gasped grandmother. 'Oh no--Margaret is
talented--not Juliet.'
"'Why not?' asked Mr. Daly. 'She's ENGAGED.'
"It was a pure freak. The family did not intend it. Mother didn't
know it until a week before I played. She was horrified.
"Salary? Fifty dollars a week, and in two months it was $55! I still
have the first $50 bill I earned.
"I never realized I was acting--it never occurred to me to play a part.
"From then on I was on the stage, winter and summer--except for a 'lay-
off' of one or two months at the outside.
"I have never sought a contract.
"Except for playing with Robert Hilliard in 'A Fool There Was' until my
own engagement started, I originated all the parts I played during my 10
years on the stage.
"Between the ages of 5 and 14 I played with every star of importance on
the American stage except John Drew, including Mrs. Fiske, Leo Ditrichstein,
Maude Adams, Ethel Barrymore, Bertha Kalich and Ellen Terry, who came over
one season.
"My next engagement was at $85 a week with Madame Kalich in 'What It
Means to a Woman.'
"In 1910-11 with Dustin and William Farnum, I played the title part in
'The Littlest Rebel,' first in vaudeville, then on the stage. We opened in
Chicago--when I was 8, but was supposed to be 16, according to the law. I
received $100 a week."
She played "The Littlest Rebel" for four years.
Her last stage appearance was in a child part in 1914-15, in an all-
star production, at the Forty-eighth Street theater, New York, of "The Woman
of Today," with Rita Jolivet, Frank Mills, Alice John and Joseph Kilgore--
"another triumphant failure."
Her first picture appearance, with Mary playing her last child part in
pictures came almost accidentally, despite her mother's demurring.
Gustave Frohman wanted a child to play the fairy in "The Fairy and the
Waif," the first production of the Frohman Amusement Co.--with Director
George Irving, all the ex-legitimate actors, producer, and even cameraman
absolutely green!
Daniel Frohman, friend and advisor of Mary, brought Gustave and his
wife to tea at her house.
"I wanted to get into a studio and see it," says Mary. "I thought the
actors got behind the screen to act! When Gustave Frohman took me to a
studio, I was fascinated!
"'I've got to play the picture--I want to--I love it!' I cried.
"I was THE child actress of the day, got the largest salary, played the
biggest parts, had things my own way. Percy Helton, THE boy actor of the
time, who played original parts with David Warfield and other Belasco stars,
was 'the waif.'
"How did it go? It's still going! Percy saw it in France, where he
was decorated by Gen. Pershing!
"It was a fine story, was produced beautifully and the director had a
spark of genius. I was the only bad thing--I don't see why I didn't ruin
it!"
From $150 a week, her first picture salary, Miss Minter advanced until
now, she says, she is to receive $1,300,000 and a percentage for making her
present series of 20 pictures "on her own" for Realart, in from two and a
half to three and a half years. The first is "Anne of Green Gables," the
second "Judy of Rogues' Harbor."
"I haven't made any big pictures--I don't consider that I've made ANY
pictures!" declaims Mary, earnestly. "All my long stage engagements were in
heavy dramatic plays with renowned, artistic stars. THEY have GIVEN
something, PRODUCED something! I don't consider that my playing in a few
pictures makes ME a star!"
So, public, since you should "hitch your wagon to the star," why not to
this wonderfully earnest one, who says that she regards it as her "sacred
trust to give the public my very best"?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
December 16, 1919
Henry Dougherty
LOS ANGELES EXPRESS
[from an interview with Mary Miles Minter]...She realizes the
tremendous future that is being planned for her--but she is not alarmed
about it. She knows that within the next three years more than $1,300,000
will be paid to her by the Realart corporation. But that does not keep her
from dreaming her girlish dreams, from reading her favorite books and from
curling up in a comfortable chair in front of a big log fire in her
magnificent home on Fremont place.
It is not true that her contract forbids her from becoming engaged to
be married before it expires, but she avows that her art is her only love,
and that if she should receive any love letters within the next three years
she will not read them. I considered this one of the biggest features of my
"scoop." Imagine a young girl refusing to read love letters!
"Why, I would just love for somebody to write me the loveliest love
letter--but I would not read it. So there!" she said.
And she is very sincere in this. Discussing further she said:
"I want to make pictures that will leave wholesome memories on my
audiences. I want my plays to mirror real life and to tell little stories
that will bring happiness to all who see them.
"I want this happiness to be blended with tears, for happiness that has
a grain of sadness in it is the happiness that comes from the heart and
returns to the heart."...
Having seen Miss Minter in her home and having talked with her as the
log fire threw weird shadows about the room, her mood was reminiscent of
days gone by and a sudden realization of "dreams come true."
"I do not want to dominate my pictures," she said. "I want them to be
stories that will make people better after having seen them mirrored on the
screen, and I want my part to be only a part in those filmplays.
"Whether I ever attain that popularity which some think I will attain,
is for the future to decide. Be that as it may, I shall never lose my love
for my home and my mother--and more than that I cannot say."...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
June 1920
Frances Denton
PHOTOPLAY
The Lonely Princess
...Mary Miles Minter had been working hard. She probably works harder
than any young girl of her age in the world. She is, perhaps, one of the
most envied children in this or any other country. And she is the
loneliest.
I saw her one day--one miserable day. It was the middle of the week,
and Mary, just returned from a tedious location trip, had been working for
three nights to catch up on interiors. I had, I was told, arrived at the
wrong moment; Mary was busy on the floor, and Mary's mother and grandmother
were away. Mary was all alone. So I watched her work a while.
I think Mary is much more than the ingenue many people think she is.
Her life has always been mapped out for her; the sunny-haired child has
always taken dictation. And she has managed, somehow, to keep within
herself a separate shell, which holds her own little individuality, her
distinct personality--a personality few know about, a whimsicality few
suspect, a depth which would surprise you. Mary Miles Minter is subtle.
...She had a white house on upper Fifth Avenue while she was working in
New York. She had attendants, personal and domestic, galore. She had a
million-dollar contract, which brought her the blue car, and the jewels, and
the dresses. Yet, none of these were really hers. Her mother signed her
contract, and holds it. Her mother draws her salary. She has no car of her
own.
...If you would take an inventory, she would find how few people in the
profession,--pictures--know her. They have heard about her; she is a
subject for speculation. Prejudiced against her beforehand, the young women
of that somewhat exclusive "younger set" of the film world pass her up.
Mary is super-sensitive. She would never set out to win anyone's regard if
she thought that they mightn't like her. She does not share the activities
and the gayeties of the Hollywood colony; she keeps to herself and earns the
reputation, only half-just, of being "particular" and "a little snob." She
isn't. But she knows they say that, and the knowledge hurts her.
Within her is the spark that means success. She could be happier
perhaps in some other profession. It is quite within the realm of
possibility that she might marry before she is thirty, and settle down to
raise babies. She loves babies. She was intensely interested in making
baby-clothes for her namesake, Juliet Whitney, wee daughter of her
secretary, Mrs. Charlotte Whitney. Mary is a domestic little soul; she
actually loves to sew and does make very nice things--for other girls'
babies.
...The world in general, particularly the professional world,
unconsciously cherishes resentment against Mary Miles Minter. Her success
has seemed to come to her; she has risen so easily. She has never gone
through a period of theatrical idleness; her services, once she was
established, have always been more or less in demand. And she has always
been guarded, cherished, protected. But don't think that she has not
struggled--through her "struggles" may have been mental. It has been harder
for her, surrounded and protected always by a good and devoted mother and
family, to keep her own viewpoint, her own individuality, than it would have
been had she starved to success. She has a fine mind; she has her own ideas-
-not for the world; she has protected her personality even as her mother
protected her material being.
...She may never be great; but when I sit and talk to her I feel that
there is in her the indomitable quality which makes for greatness. Such a
tiny little girl--and such a fund of knowledge, of common-sense! Fluffy
ingenue she is not; that she acts the part now does not mean that she will
always act it...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 26, 1921, 1921
Edna Michaels
MOVIE WEEKLY
[from an interview with Mary Miles Minter] "Of course, I like New
York. I love it! It's the most thrilling place!" These words came
tumbling over each other from out the mouth of a beautiful little blonde-
haired girl, who sat primly erect on the edge of a most comfortable looking
sofa in her suite at the Biltmore Hotel. It was the first time I had seen
Mary since her arrival in New York (she had been here about a week then),
and I wanted to learn about her impressions and to pass them along to a
curious public.
"Do you know what I like best in this big city?" asked Mary in her
delightfully unusual voice (unusual because, for a girl who has been on the
stage and screen for so long a time she has not the faintest trace of an
affected English accent). "The theatres! In the short time I've been here,
I've seen almost everything worth while. During one week I went to a
matinee every blessed day and again at night. And I'm still going."
In answer to what she likes best, the young star answered: "I think I
liked Barrie's 'Mary Rose' best. It was so charming. But then, I liked
'Sally' and 'The Tavern' and 'Bab' and a number of others. I didn't like
the Follies. Everybody expected me to be wild about it, but I wasn't. The
color pictures were simply wonderful, but that's all I could see. The rest,
well, it was too much." Switching away from the subject of the theatre, she
continued:
"I love colors. I can get as much pleasure out of looking at something
with a rich blue or orange color as art. Colors give me an aesthetic
thrill. A picture, a vase, or a piece of material with its predominating
color a rich one, is to me the most beautiful thing in the world. And I
love to look at pretty girls--that's another thing!"
Mary is very fond of her books and of people. I remember her telling
me one night when she had an appointment for dinner, the theatre and supper,
that she would really much rather stay at home and read. She adores her
books--and they are good ones. Many people would be tempted to call Mary a
high-brow--she knows so much. She has read so much that she is a veritable
storehouse of information on all sorts of subjects. She has remarkable
intelligence, has Mary, but you have to know her well before you find this
out. When you first meet her, she talks very little, and acts almost self-
conscious. But she insists she's not self-conscious; she's just studying
people.
"When I was a very little girl, I had to do a great deal of traveling,"
she said. "I was then acting on the stage and I traveled from town to town.
Often I would get tired of reading, and then I would study the people in the
car. Sometimes I'd study their feet and wonder what their faces looked
like, and always I would wonder exactly what and who they were. And that
game of studying people has stuck to me. I never tire of it. I like people
and I try to make them like me."
Mary certainly leads a hectic life in New York. When not at the
theatre, she is at some tea given in her honor (there is one almost every
day), and then there are dinners and parties for her, and shopping and
photographers and interviews. With it all, Mary is as sweet as she can be.
She never is cross or disagreeable.
Mary's mother, Mrs. Shelby, who accompanies Mary wherever she goes, and
who doesn't look like her mother at all, but like a grown-up sister, said to
me one day:
"You know this is something unusual for Mary. At home she is in bed
'most every night at ten o'clock. If she stays up until midnight once in a
while, she thinks she is having an exciting time. But she has been working
so hard that I thought she ought to have a little leeway. We haven't been
to bed a single night since our arrival, before three or four or even five
o'clock in the morning. But there's only about one more week of it and then
when we get back to the coast, it means hard work and a ten o'clock bed
hour. I don't think we've seen a morning in New York. We sleep all
morning, naturally, after being out all night."
Mary has purchased a lot of new clothes while here, many of which she
will wear in her forthcoming Realart picture. Her last picture, "The Little
Clown," by Avery Hopwood is scheduled for early release, and she is very
enthusiastic about it.
Mary likes New York--she is having an awfully good time--but she'll be
glad to get back to Hollywood and work.
Mary Miles Minter had changed. I noticed that. When I saw her here
last year, she was a quiet little girl--almost timid--with long, golden
curls and simple, little frocks. The girl I was now facing had her bright
golden curls piled high on her head, wore a smart, little, French frock and
as she talked, I realized that she seemed older. She had seen and gained
impressions of things about which she knew nothing last year. Besides,
there is a great deal of difference between a girl of seventeen and one of
eighteen. At seventeen one is a mere child; at eighteen she is a debutante.
Oh, there's a world of difference!
But Mary, as a debutante, still possesses a great many qualities of the
child of seventeen. She still consults her mother about everything she does
and is just as sweet and prim as she was when a year younger. There she sat
on the couch, as she must have been taught to sit when a child of five: both
feet on the floor, body erect, and her hands folded in her lap. But, after
about half an hour, she glanced about, and seeing every other female in the
room with legs crossed, she apologized--and crossed her own! The debutante
had won.
That was my first visit to Mary--but not my last, during her stay in
New York. I teaed, dined, shopped and matineed with her, and in that time I
had an opportunity of learning about the real Mary and what she thought of
New York.
Just a sweet, unaffected and unspoiled young woman is this gifted child
of the screen, Mary Miles Minter.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
May 22, 1921
Florence Lawrence
LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
Screen Beauty to Wed if She Gets Right Man
Mary Miles Minter--spinster.
That's the way the name would read in those old-fashioned legal
documents we hear about.
Mary has been one of the most courted girls in filmdom--and the least
married.
"But, just the same, I live in hopes of finding the Not Impossible He,"
laughed the star, "and when I do, nothing--career, money or anything else--
shall be allowed to put any handicaps in my bridal path.
"The idea that matrimony and a career are incompatible is all nonsense.
If I were married, I'd have my domestic affairs running on such smooth
wheels there would never be a hitch. I'd have my menus made out for a week
in advance--and I'd always know where there were good servants in reserve,
in case any one in my household got recalcitrant.
"Why should anyone think that a 'star' more than anyone else, cannot be
happily married? It's all nonsense! Why, I found out the other day what
that word 'star' means--and it's almost nothing at all. I asked Mr. Eyton,
our studio manager, just what standing I would have in a court of law--law
being the nearest thing to the truth we can find in this conventional world.
And he told me. Maybe it will be a shock to some of my fellow actors, but
it delighted me.
"'Your standing would be that of a factory employee, with me as your
superintendent,' said he.
"Isn't that wonderful," gurgled the pretty blond Mary. "You know," she
added, "I'm not very old, but I've been on the stage and screen fifteen
years, and I've played with all the big stars there are, nearly, and I've
always thought there was something mysterious about this 'star' business
that I didn't understand. Now I know with it is. So if we're just 'factory
hands,' why shouldn't we have the same normal life they live? And aren't
husbands part of the every-day existence?"
Mary made a big confession just here, when she dropped her voice and
whispered: "In all my life, though, I've only had about four proposals that
really counted. Of course," she added, "every girl gets a lot from men who
are ineligible for one reason or another, but I just couldn't make up my
mind to marry any of the four.
"My ideal husband?" she continued, in answer to the query. "Well, I
don't know the color of his eyes, or his hair. Those don't matter. I think
he must be big--he should have a good sense of humor and a love for clean,
wholesome things. I would like a man who impressed me with the comforting
quality of his love. He should like the out-of-doors and, above all, he
should agree with me in the search for whole truths--I can't stand half
truths about anything in life. He should be like trees, and water, and wind-
-like white clouds in a blue sky--like brown woodwork and crimson cushions
and fireplaces. And his very presence should be wholesome, like a draught
of cool, fresh water on a warm day."
Some ideal, isn't it?
"Most of all," added the actress, "he should be some one I could be
proud of for my children. I'd hate to give them a father that I couldn't
teach them to love and respect with an honest and conscientious belief in
his right to such consideration. I have a profound regard for children, and
'elders,' to command deference from the young, should earn it by more than a
mere accumulation of years."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
August 1921
Truth Astor
MOTION PICTURE CLASSIC
Forget-Me-Not
The three years just past have changed Mary Miles Minter. Of course,
one would have expected that. They have taken some of the childish
roundness from her cheeks and left a suggestion of the woman in her face and
figure. I noticed this as she descended the steps leading from her dressing
room. but I also noticed that her gaze was clear and candid, her handshake
firm as it used to be.
She has not grown "up-stage." I had heard several people say that of
her, and for the first few minutes I watched closely for any suggestion of
self-satisfaction. I didn't find it. What I did find was an intense spirit
of rebellion against sham and pretense, a longing for reality so great that
it has inspired her with disgust for even the ordinary, meaningless shams
that belong to the every-day life of an actress.
In other words, Mary Miles Minter is finding herself.
"I'm making pictures because, by making them, I can make money," she
said. "I ought not to say this, but it is the truth. I hate all this talk
about art! 'My art!' 'My art!' Always 'My art!'
She is at the age when a young girl is most uncertain of herself, and
so longs for sincerity in all about her. It is because her inherent
artistry is so great that she is going thru this period of restlessness and
discontent with the world.
She is not making moving pictures just for the money there is in them.
If she were, she would be perfectly happy, for she is making more money in
one day than the President of the United States makes in a week.
She came downstairs wearing an evening dress with short puff sleeves of
tulle and bouffant hips, gathered with garlands of little pink silk roses.
It was twelve (noon) and her make-up hid her natural coloring--a pink-
and-white so lovely that no picture can ever do full justice to her beauty.
Her hair is yellow and lustrous, her eyes are a deep, clear blue, the bluest
blue I have ever seen. Both color and expression of her eyes carry the
message--"forget-me-not." You would notice that her handshake gives
evidence of vitality. It is gentle and firm, but not clinging. She looks
to be about five feet tall.
Her mother, Mrs. Shelby, had joined me a moment before, and was with me
at the foot of the stairs waiting for her.
"I'm so sorry that we can't go home to lunch," said Mrs. Shelby,
herself youthful, pretty, modish, "but Mary never has time. Can't we go
home today, dear?" as Mary appeared at the top of the stairs.
"I'm afraid not," came the answer. "It wouldn't be fair. I must be on
the set by one o'clock." But it was arranged that we should go, after all.
Mrs. Shelby 'phoned ahead and luncheon was ready to be served on our
arrival.
It is a beautiful house on Fremont Place, which Mary Miles Minter is at
present making her home. It is white, palatial, approached by a broad
driveway and guarded by two stone lions.
"But I think we'll build," said Mary, "something more homelike."
Mary Pickford used to live there. On this day Mary Miles Minter wore
her hair in golden curls and I was reminded vividly of something Mary
Pickford had said two years before. We had been talking about someone said
to resemble her.
"There's only one person I know of who I think looks like me," said
Mary Pickford, "and she is Mary Miles Minter. She's younger, of course, but
I think she looks like me."
The door was opened for us by a butler and we went directly upstairs.
Her bedroom is the same Miss Pickford used--a beautiful room overlooking
Fremont Place. Rugs and draperies are a soft, dull blue. Both of her
automobiles are painted blue, and this color also predominates the house.
Only in the dining-room the furniture is dark and imposing--of
teakwood, heavily carved. But the breakfast-room, next to it, makes up in
dainty brightness for the stateliness of the other.
She loves to read. This is not "press stuff." It is absolutely
genuine. She discusses books with the loving enthusiasm one might use in
speaking of friends.
Among the books she treasures most is one written by the young son of
Richard Mansfield and given to her by him not long before his tragic death
in France.
"He was only seventeen when he wrote that," she said--"a boy's protest
against hypocrisy."
She likes somber, serious things, like the poems of Edgar Allan Poe and
the Rubaiyat, but she also likes humor mixed with sentiment, as, for
instance, "Anne of Green Gables," which she herself suggested for the
screen.
She goes out less than the average girl of her age, and then always
attended by her mother or her grandmother. With the exception of one glass
of champagne on her eighteenth birthday, she has yet to taste her first
drink of intoxicating liquor, and she has never smoked a cigarette. She is
studying music and French. By studying between scenes and evenings at home,
she has managed to graduate from high school. She expects to gain a college
diploma in the same way.
On her dresser lay a little silver dish, a prize won in a dancing
contest.
"It is the first prize of any sort I ever won in my life!"
You would notice, perhaps, that she resembles Mary Pickford in her
earnestness and enthusiasm, as well as in her appearance. She is not
imitative, because, again like Mary Pickford, she has too much personality
of her own. And she is impatient of ingenue roles. The younger Mary is so
very young that she longs to be grown-up on the screen. She longs for an
opportunity to try the artistry she feels inwardly certain that she has
acquired. Mary Miles Minter, like Mary Pickford, has been working since she
was five years old.
"My first appearance was in 'Cameo Kirby,' with Nat Goodwin and Maude
Fealy," she said, "and I've been working steadily ever since. Except for a
few days when I was sick, I haven't had a single vacation."
She also appeared with Mrs. Fiske, Bertha Kalich, Robert Hilliard and
Emily Stevens.
But her greatest stage success was made in "The Littlest Rebel," with
William and Dustin Farnum. And as a New York paper described her as "... a
ragged, straight-haired, woman-faced little one." This was November 22,
1911! It was during the run of "The Littlest Rebel," and when she was nine
years old that she became Mary Miles Minter.
"Before that, I had been using my own name of Juliet Shelby. And then,
one day we were notified that, as I wasn't sixteen years old, I would have
to leave the show. Something had to be done, so mother thought of padding
me up and using the name and birth certificate of a cousin who died when she
was a baby. So Juliet Shelby left the show and Mary Miles Minter, her
cousin, joined it. We were scared for a while, but we got by with it all
right, and I've been Mary Miles Minter ever since."
Her own name is practically forgotten, even by members of her family.
By this time luncheon was almost over. We had enjoyed a delicious
roast, spiced sweet potatoes, peas, hot rolls and fruit, and, with her call
changed to half-past one, the little star still had plenty of time to reach
her set.
"I don't believe that people outside the profession have the least idea
how hard we have to work," she said. "This is the first luncheon I've had
at home for a long time, and I never go anywhere. I've been working without
a vacation since I was little more than a baby!"
Since joining Realart, Mary Miles Minter has made "Anne of Green
Gables," "Judy of Rogues' Harbor," "Sweet Lavender," "A Cumberland Romance,"
"All Saints' Eve" and "The Little Clown," which was being filmed at the time
I saw her. She began with the "American" in Santa Barbara.
Back at the studio, we played "Poor Pussy"--this was, of course,
between scenes, when the electricians were adjusting the lights--with Avery
Hopwood's hat playing the name role.
It's a great game! Everyone sits around in a circle, with the hat in
the center of it. The hat is supposed to be a dead cat, and the idea is
that you're holding a wake over it. No one is supposed to laugh.
The first to laugh were the only actors in the crowd--Mary Miles Minter
and Jack Mulhall, her sweetheart (in the picture). Her director, Tom
Heffron, grinned once, but there were extenuating circumstances.
She was full of life and fun all the afternoon. Alternately, a little
girl and a young woman, but always charming--that's Mary Miles Minter.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
May 25, 1921
Billie Blenton
MOVIE WEEKLY
A Regular Fellow Off For Europe
"There are two things I never am. I am never bored, and I am never
amused. I am very much interested in everything and everybody. And I do
pity people who have not a sense of humor."
Mary Miles Minter, herself, tendered this most vivid description of
herself as she sat on the lounge in the living room of her Hotel Biltmore
suite, thirty hours before she sailed for her European vacation.
The previous day, Mary had been presented to the motion picture press
via a luncheon tendered by the Realart company. I was struck at that time
by her poise and ability to play the hostess with such consummate ease.
Putting everybody at home; making herself one of us. It is not given to
every nineteen year old girl to so conduct herself. Not even one who has
been the darling of the public since she was a wee youngster.
This was my first glimpse of Mary in the flesh. Then the appointment
to see her alone...
And there Mary sat on the lounge, blue eyes every much a-sparkle, soft
silken blonde hair framing her head in a kind of light.
"I hate clothes," she almost gritted. "And I have to keep tight hold
of my temper when I am advised to wear my hair down my back in curls, and
frocks in keeping with this form of hair dressing. Of course, I will not do
any such thing. I expect to continue to wear clothes neither too old nor
too young for me. I am not a child. I don't intend dressing as one.
Furthermore, I don't intend wearing my hair down my back. It's up, and it's
going to stay."
"How come you hate clothes?" I quizzed.
"They take so much time to get. I always seem to purchase them at the
last minute, anyway. Look at me now, after a morning of it. Then, too, I
think it a needless waste of time to devote so much thought to things
physical and when you love clothes that is exactly what you do. It is
really accentuating the ego more than if you take things as they come and
don't dash into a modiste's place very free moment you have.
"What do you suppose I do usually when I have some time between
pictures?" she flashed.
I shook my head helplessly.
"I go do a dentist to see if my teeth are free from cavities. Then,
having done what I deem my duty to myself, I play. I love horseback riding.
Do you ride?"
I had unhappy visions; therefore I shook my head.
"It's great sport. It gives one a chance to get out into the open, to
see nature. I love nature. I love to get away, now and then, from people,
and just dream alone. Open country is the place to do it."
...Mary has read extensively. It does seem that the trite expression:
"The more you have to do, the more you can do," takes on a glowing
significance in this instance. You would suspect that Mary, with her
kaleidoscopic moods, was a lover of poetry. She is. You would suspect that
one who loves Shelly, Keats and Byron leans toward conventionality's enemy,
unconventionality. You are right.
Not that Mary flies in the face of public opinion. She doesn't. It's
simply calling a spade a spade and letting it go at that.
"The trouble with most people who are so frightfully stilted in their
views, is that they have no sense of humor," she remarked. "I do so pity
these people. Think of the black glasses with which they look at
everything. They don't see any redeeming features about deeds that are
beyond their ken. I've bumped into those kinds. The only redeeming
features about these people is learning their reactions. These reactions
usually border on the fanatic. Imagine such narrow-mindedness in the
twentieth century."
"As a star," I propounded, "you scintillate off the screen as well as
on."
"I am not a star," she quite calmly retorted. "I don't believe there
is any such thing. At all events, I am not in the star category."
"Then what," I considered, "just what are you?"
She gazed at me askance and rested her chin on a slim finger. "I act
in motion pictures."
"It's a good thing I have a sense of humor," warningly, "else I would
certainly feel called upon to take you to task for that reply."
"Indeed?" mischievously. "Well, now that you mention it, it's a good
thing I have a sense of humor, else I would probably feel called upon to
tamper with this beautiful cruel weapon at an unsafe distance."
She gained her feet lightly, disappearing into an adjoining room, only
to make her appearance again, with a beautiful dagger which she clutched by
its stunning jade handle. Her face was grim, foreboding. I commenced to
quail.
"Now, Mary, you know," tremulously.
"What do you think of it," a flash of white teeth and a cheery smile
ran the grimness away. "See this?" she pointed to several dark, suggestive
stains. It was as though the scene changed completely, giving way to a
typical Chinese one of long, long ago, wherein there was murder on foot,
and...
"These stains," Mary was explaining, "are blood." I shivered. A thing
that is fascinating in its beautiful cruelty always makes me shiver.
"I wonder if the victims were agnostics?" Mary pondered. "I am,"
firmly.
"You're an agnostic," I rapidly returned.
"Yes."
"Well, I'm jiggered."
"You needn't be," Mary smiled. "With me, it is simply having a
breathing range for religious beliefs."
"Which reminds me, I have been reading the Bible of late. Jove,
there's a book for you."
"It certainly is." She quoted a passage from the Psalms of Solomon.
"Just imagine any young man saying such a thing today," she gurgled.
(For fear that censors read this who are not acquainted with the Bible and
thereupon would start raising the deuce, I omit the passage.)
At this inauspicious moment, several knocks were at first lightly, then
heavily, sounded on the door. Mary gave me a comical look. "I have reached
that stage where the sound of a knock, the ring of a telephone bell, or a
doorbell, makes me nervous. Since being in New York these few days, I vow I
haven't had a moment's peace with anyone without having a knock, or a
telephone or doorbell ring to interrupt, ushering in someone. It's becoming
something of a strain, when there is no cessation."
Her face was sweetly pensive in its weariness. She straightened to
smile as her mother entered the room to tell her she simply had to decide on
those last two gowns, after which there were two people waiting to see her.
"Very well," but she could not smother the sigh that trembled into
utterance.
Whether or not Mary admits it, she is a star. And a star is confronted
with problems that are foreign to those in any other profession. There is
always an endless chain of visitors, an endless chain of dressmakers, an
endless number of people who storm the door even when it has not been
opened.
After all, Mary Miles Minter is just nineteen. She is a girl who has a
mind far superior to that of the usual girl of nineteen, a student of human
nature who absorbs and uses what she has learned, but in the end, a regular
fellow who never says die. Else she probably would have passed away on this
curtailed but hectic stay in New York before sailing for the other side and
the vacation she has well earned...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
July 10, 1921
Ormsby Burton
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
Mary Miles Minter is Interviewed in London
London, June 22--Mary Miles Minter has not been idolized in London to
the extent that Mary Pickford was, but, nevertheless, the papers did not
allow one to overlook the fact that she was in this city, for interviews
with her and photographs of her have occupied much space in their pages.
Some of the things she is credited with saying are rather remarkable.
According to the Daily News she is not quite happy at not being allowed to
grow older than 16. Interviewed by a representative of that paper, she
said:
"I'm really 19, but I'm still supposed to be nothing but curls and
laughter. I'm not allowed to have an idea of my own--though I'd love to
produce films as I think they ought to be produced. I'm tired of barebacked
women and leering men, and all the exaggerations of the film. I'd like to
show the young girl as I know her; but I have to be curls and laughter all
the time. And there's so much that might be expressed on the film--if
they'd let you grow up!"
Among the remarks she made to the film correspondent of the Sunday
Express were the following:
"I do not care for any praise except that of my mother."
"Money! What is money compared to the happiness of being able to
express myself in art.
"The papers say that I am a great cinema actress. I don't believe it.
It isn't true."
The corespondent, commenting upon these views of Miss Minter says:
"Are they a bluff? Are they part of a lesson drilled into the child by
a careful mother and a skillful publicity agent, or are they simply the
outcome of a certain natural precocity? I am inclined to take the latter
view as they were delivered with an air of convincing solemnity wholly at
variance with the youthful, golden-haired speaker."
She told another reporter that she had seen only fifteen pictures in
her life, that to see herself in a film was "excruciating agony," and that
it made her cry.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
September 10, 1921
Billie Blenton
MOVIE WEEKLY
It's Good to Be Home
Of course you've heard that Mary Miles Minter is engaged. Is it to a
banker, a picture man, or a fruit dealer?
We didn't know.
So we asked Mary, when that exuberant young person returned from an
eight weeks' or so vacation in England, France and Italy.
Mary's brow ruffled and her large, expressive blue eyes took on a
woefully perplexed air.
"I don't know," seriously. "You see, I don't know either of the three
unfortunates to whom I am said to be engaged. Which makes it exceedingly
awkward for me, for them, and for everyone at large.
"Naturally, being married to a banker would have its good points. The
same is true of the picture man and the fruit dealer. Especially the fruit
dealer. That rumor is lovely.
"But the newsites are wrong again. I'm still whole hearted and fancy
free. And I am happy indeed to get back to New York, and I'll be happier
yet when I am at the studio in Los Angeles and begin work on my new
picture."
"How was the trip?" no longer able to evade the question.
"Um. All right," laconically. Mary has a way of being laconic about
matters that fail to arouse her interest. A mild form of indifference.
Emphasize indifference, please, for Mary says "I'm never bored; neither am I
ever amused. I'm too interested in everything to be either."
However, if the trip in its entirety proved just a trip, there must
have been flashes of sidelights that swayed the interest of the little
Realart star to a running speed.
"How did you like the people?" We were curious how they checked up
with those she knew over here. Furthermore, a Continental comparison should
prove enlightening and interesting. Through the pages of literature we
reach our respective conclusions as to the mode of life, the ideals, and how
the attitude toward problems of the age are considered by the European.
Through direct observation, even though it be by proxy, we can broaden this
literary aspect.
Mary tended to reticence, insofar as being quoted in print was
concerned. We couldn't possibly violate her confidence.
You have heard a great deal, in all likelihood, about the Follies
Bergere in Paris? It is the great amusement center of midnight revelers and
the belief of those who know little about it, save by hearsay, is that it is
conducted for the benefit of the hundreds of Americans who stream into Paris
to be entertained.
"That is not so," denied Mary. "The Americans, I would say, are
outnumbered four to one. The Follies Bergere is for the French. A special
section is reserved for Americans, and Americans only. The rest of the
space is occupied by Frenchmen.
"How did I enjoy the Follies Bergere?" She made a little moue and
moved her hands restlessly, irritably. "I didn't. Shortly after the review
had begun I became deathly ill. It was a combination of train nausea and
sea-sickness. The sight of those half-clad women with nothing graceful or
attractive about their voluptuous state sickened me. 'I've got to go,'
I said to the party of friends I was with. 'You've got to get me out of
here.'
"'Oh, stay for a little while,' encouraged my escort. 'You'll feel
better in a minute or two.' So I acquiesced. Instead of feeling better,
I commenced to feel worse. The entire place was spinning around. Once more
I turned to my escort. 'I've got to leave this place and I'm going now!'
We did. Never again for mine."
Mrs. Shelby, Mary's mother, told us that Mary was the interpreter for
herself and Margaret, her oldest daughter. "She spoke French fluently and
with a little semblance of an accent. I don't know what we would have done
without Mary's French. I didn't know she could speak it so well, but once
over in France and Italy she was the guardian angel of us all."
What Mrs. Shelby said about Mary's french reflects light on Mary
herself. Few people, except her inmost friends, know her as she really is--
a girl tremendously interested in people and in literature, one who has read
most extensively and, furthermore, is fully capable of grasping the most
subtle and elusive of works, one who has emphatic ideas about pictures,
which tend to make her a little impatient, sometimes, to the type of story
she brings to the screen. Her personality is difficult to capture in print
without a deal of time, and unfortunately, where time is fleeting and the
magazine ready to go to press, it renders it difficult to make a delicate
etching in words.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
January 21, 1922
Henry Dougherty
LOS ANGELES EXPRESS
Mary Minter and Tommy Dixon Not Engaged to Wed
They had just pulled Mary Miles Minter out of a well, and then an hour
later Wallace Beery tried to choke her to death as Frank Urson yelled for
more realism.
When the cold, clammy hands of the villain were released from the little
star's throat Miss Minter, almost exhausted, sank into a big chair while
someone threw a warm blanket about her. [1]
And all this time Thomas Dixon, the blond young man for whom Dame Rumor
has been ringing wedding bells of late with Miss Minter's name constantly
mentioned as that of the bride, was a spectator. Mr. Dixon did not go to
her rescue--but that's another story. He was not cast in this picture, as
Frank Urson had picked some other man as the person to properly chastise the
villainous Mr. Beery.
On the draughty set a huge fire was burning in the huge fireplace, and
scattered about was the library mentioned in the story. Two or three
electric contrivances were doing their level best to heat the place, but
without marked success.
It didn't seem to be the time and place for one to discourse with Miss
Minter about wedding bells, romance, love and such things, but the presence
of Mr. Dixon "gave color to the situation," as they say in the movies, and
we mustered enough courage to proceed with the interview.
"It's the first time he has been here in two weeks," Miss Minter said.
"I would like for the world to know that Mr. Dixon is a very dear friend--
a charming fellow--a wonderful acquaintance, but he is not my affiance."
Her big blue eyes seemed to sparkle with determination as she spoke,
and then into their depths crept a tender softened expression as she
continued:
"Marriage is something sacred. Marriage should be discussed with
reverence and feeling--never flippantly.
"Love comes from God. Love is a marvelous flame--the very light of
life--and it, too, should be treated with reverence. It is the most
beautiful thing that can come into our lives.
"And when I am engaged to be married--when I love a man well enough to
go to the altar with him--I will be so proud of him that I will want to
shout my glad tidings to the world.
"It will not be necessary for anyone to come snooping around to learn
if I am engaged to be married. I will seek them out and tell them.
"I have known Mr. Dixon for five years.
"I met him in 1917, when I was touring around trying to do my little
bit in Liberty loan campaigns.
"Since that time we have been the best of friends. About one year ago
we became engaged--but it was a conditional engagement. We kept it secret
for that reason.
"When Mr. Dixon came to California during the holidays the engagement
was called off, despite rumors to the contrary. And that's all.
"I have not seen much of him recently, and it is by the merest
coincidence that he is visiting in the studio today.
"I regard him as a friend. But I do not love him. And until I love
someone, I will never marry.
"That's the true story of my romance, if romance it has been. To me,
however, it has just been a dear, sweet friendship, and my real romance is
yet to come."
Then Frank Urson came abruptly upon the scene. He said he wanted to see
Wallace Beery choke Miss Minter again, and he called Carmen Phillips, the well-
known screen vampire, into the conspiracy.
The cameras began to click, and the villainous work of eliminating the
heroine from the story proceeded until the hero rushed in there and sprawled
Mr. Beery with one well-aimed blow.
It was quite a strenuous day for the blonde little star, but she emerged
from it with a joyous smile and a feeling that it was a day's work well done.
*****************************************************************************
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Wallace Smith: February 28, 1922
The following is the last in our series of Wallace Smith's sensationalizing
dispatches on the Taylor case.
February 28, 1922
Wallace Smith
CHICAGO AMERICAN
Brawls, the petty squabbles of men burdened with temperament, today led
detectives on a new search for the slayer of William Desmond Taylor.
They were turned to the theory that Taylor was shot to death as the
result of some dispute.
The theory developed when it gradually became known that the slain
director, known to his women friends as a man of deep reading and tender
sentiments and to men as "a man's man," was not always thus regarded by those
who worked for him.
As a matter of fact, from the circles in which he moved have come tales
of many differences with men and women who were not guests at the home in
Alvarado St. where Taylor was murdered. To them Taylor was known as "hard
boiled." He was often referred to as "Simon Legree," whose one care was
making a showing before his employers and whose last thought was for the
feelings of those he found working under him.
In his position he was a man of considerable power. It was within his
grip to make or break men and women and their careers.
The first gentle eulogies of his friends have been somewhat outshadowed
lately by the word of those who jumped at Taylor's command.
The new search of the detectives covered a dishearteningly wide range.
They theorized that one of these employees who had not sufficient reputation
to command Taylor's gentle manner, had quarreled with him.
As a result, the theory continued, the employee either had been hampered
in his work or entirely banished from following his career where Taylor's
influence stretched.
Such a man or woman, they declared -- and there were many such -- might
have been driven to desperation and the resolve to kill Taylor in revenge.
At any rate, the new theory invigorated a search that seemed to be
waiting for officials to make up their minds to bring in for a new
examination the woman suspected of knowing the grim story behind the
spectacular murder. [2]
For some strange reason they continued to hold back, although the story
she told at the "polite interview" first imposed upon her has been found to
be punctured with discrepancies. It was to be remarked, too, that a witness
whose narrative was supposed to corroborate hers had been changed several
times to dovetail with her sworn statement.
It was to be remarked, as well, that it was just a month ago today that
Taylor was killed. And all officials -- except those who clung to the theory
that the woman could clear away the fog of mystery -- admitted that they were
baffled.
The search for the mysterious "Mrs. Walker," to whom the suspected woman
is said to have sent long distance telephone and telegraph messages the night
of the murder, was continued.
Not only in San Francisco was the search continued, but in Los Angeles.
It was reported that "Mrs. Walker" had left a leading hotel in San Francisco
immediately after receiving the messages, which begged for help, and has
since located herself here.
Investigators were refused access to the telegraph company files when
they attempted to secure the originals of the messages. It was explained
that a court order would be necessary before such secrets could be divulged.
And a court order, it was learned, could not be issued until some sort of
charge had been made against somebody. Such a charge, of course, has not
been made.
One of the latest of the clues to evaporate was that offered by Walter
F. Underwood, brought back to Los Angeles from Topeka, Kan., to answer an
embezzlement charge. He had told quite a yarn about meeting Edward F. Sands,
alias Edwin Fitz Strathmore, once Taylor's valet, in Los Angeles the day
after the murder. Sands, he said, had declared that he was going to flee to
Mexico.
Underwood also told of wild parties in which Sands entertained women in
Taylor's home. The authorities, however, decided that Underwood was a
fabricator of little skill and his story was tossed into the discard.
The latest rumors locating Sands, sought since the killing, was from
Flagstaff, Ariz. It, too, announced that Sands was headed for Mexico, and
it, too, was discarded by Los Angeles officials.
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NOTES:
[1] In the aftermath of Taylor's death, the reporters commented on Mary's bad
cold. It seems probable that the cold was contracted during this incident.
[2] Again Smith is referring to Mabel Normand.
*****************************************************************************
For more information about Taylor, see
WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR: A DOSSIER (Scarecrow Press, 1991)
Back issues of Taylorology are available via Gopher or FTP at
ftp.etext org
in the directory pub/Zines/Taylorology
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