Playbills to Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies

By New England Vintage Film Society Inc.

"They were pioneers in the most glamorous business in the world, and you only know half of their story. Playbills To Photoplays reveals colorful episodes in the lives of the stars before they became stars. Everyone saw them, but few knew where they came from. This collection of essays follows some of the most famous names in show business from Vaudeville and Broadway to Hollywood, revealing a part of their lives that movie historians have neglected -- until now. I think this book is terrific. It's a must read for any fan of the silver screen, and the days when movie stars were real stars."
- Morgan Loew, great-grandson of Adolph Zukor, founder, Paramount Pictures,
and Marcus Loew, founder, Loews Theaters and MGM.

"Ms. Loew's choice of performers to write about is amazingly diverse and fascinating, from character actors like Conrad Veidt to major stars like Katharine Hepburn. She has written a most compelling book about their transitions from stage to film... many of the stories new to me. Wonderful!"
- Joan Benny, daughter of comedian, Jack Benny, one of America's greatest entertainment icons
of the 20th century, whose career included vaudeville, radio, movies and television.

"A nice compilation of essays on film stars who made the transition from the stage to early talkies with essays on Al Jolson, Mae West, Eddie Cantor, Harpo Marx, Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Charley Grapewin, Ed Wynn, and the Morgans (Frank and Ralph). Some essays were much better than others - I loved the one on the Morgans, Burns and Allen, Harpo Marx, and Katharine Hepburn... I would highly recommend the book as it gives you a good idea what vaudeville and the Broadway stage was like in the early 20's and what it was about these stars that allowed them to make the transition."
-Librarything.com

"....big stars as well as a raft of character actors, and decorated with dozens of striking photos...perceptive close-ups
that make for vibrant film criticism...engaging profiles of Old Hollywood icons..."
- Kirkus

"Performers attempting to breakthrough will find this book inspirational!"
- An Aspiring Actor

Motion pictures with recorded sound --known as "talking pictures", or "talkies"--signaled the end of silent films and created some of the greatest entertainment icons of the twentieth century. Playbills To Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies introduces a new generation to the real life struggles and careers of talented, hard working, early twentieth century vaudeville and stage entertainers who migrated to sound film. Twenty-eight essays and over one hundred photographs examine the actors before, during, and after the revolutionary new sound film technology catapulted many of them to superstardom during Hollywood's Golden Age. Playbills To Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies explains the social, political, economic, historical, and cultural issues that shaped each performer's body of work, acting technique, persona, and public following over time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453587751

New England Vintage Film Society Inc.

Brenda Loew, a former tenured public school speech therapist, is President, New England Vintage Film Society, Inc. (www.nevintagefilm.org). Brenda carries on an historical connection to show business as the great-niece of the late entertainment mogul E. M. Loew. Brenda’s recently endorsed books are Spencer Tracy, Fox Film Actor: the Pre-Code Legacy of a Hollywood Legend; Playbills to Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies; and Spencer Tracy, A Life in Pictures: Rare, Candid and Original Photos of the Hollywood Legend, His Family, and Career. Brenda is also the author of Sophia’s Ghost Alarm!, a children’s picture book for ages 2 - 4+ that tells a bedtime story to help very young children feel safe in their new, “grown-up” beds; Spaulding Sparrow’s Extraordinary Adventure, written for children ages 3 - 6, about a fledgling male sparrow who unexpectedly falls out of the nest and survives to eventually return home and tell his mother and baby sister all about his extraordinary adventure and Nana, Bananas, and Max, for ages 3-5, about fussy eater Max who won’t eat at his grandparents’ house. His nana and papa take Max to the market where he makes a nutritious food choice and can’t wait to eat! Brenda Loew’s books are sold on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Xlibris.com.

Book preview

Copyright © 2010 by New England Vintage Film Society, Inc.

First Edition 2010

Library of Congress Control Number:       2010914614

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4535-8774-4

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4535-8773-7

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4535-8775-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

This book is published in accordance with the stated mission of New England Vintage Film Society Incorporated. Every effort has been made to make the contents of this book as accurate as possible. It is sold with the understanding that it is not the purpose of this book to include all the information that is available on the subject matter or lives and careers of the individuals named.

New England Vintage Film Society Incorporated has neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage alleged to have been caused, directly or indirectly, by the information contained in this book.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

70647

Contents

Illustrations

About New England Vintage Film Society Inc.

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

A NEW PROFESSION: THE MOVIE STAR!

Don B. Wilmeth

Journeyman Gable

Erik Christian Hanson

Red Skelton: A Personal Remembrance

Zanne Hall

Reinventing the Public Self: Four Vaudevillians Who Got a Hollywood Makeover

Trav S. D.

The Silence Is Over: Stars Tackle the Talkies

Elizabeth Engel

The Importance of Being Harpo: Why Marx Matters

Abigail Adams

Mae West: A Woman of Experience

Cinzi Lavin

More than Major Strasser: Conrad Veidt

Jan Merlin and William Russo

He’s just like any other man, only more so: On Humphrey Bogart’s Journey from Broadway Stage Journeyman to Hollywood Screen Immortality

Ben Bergin

Carry On, Sherlock Holmes: Stage to Screen and Back Again

William Russo and Jan Merlin

Harold Lloyd: Horatio Alger in Straw Hat and Horn-Rims

Maurizio Giammarco

Anything But Silent: The Film Legacies of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton

Matthew Bowerman

The Jean Arthur Discovery Plan

Erik Christian Hanson

Charles Wagenheim: He Never Met a Character He Couldn’t Play!

Kal Wagenheim

Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl: Marie Dressler

Jon Steinhagen

Talkers, Fast and Smooth: Lee Tracy and Warren William

Jon Steinhagen

Eddie Quillan: A Study in Versatility

Susanne Robertson

Fred Astaire: The Perfect Leap from Stage to Screen

Howard Oboler

Eddie Cantor: From Rags to Riches

Helaine Feldman

Starring as the Cadet: Frankie Thomas on Broadway and in Hollywood

William Russo

Katharine Hepburn On Stage

Judy Samelson

Billie Burke: A Blithe Spirit Forever

Val Sherman

Double Act: George Burns and Gracie Allen

Lauren Milberger

The Perfect Fool: Ed Wynn the American Clown

Michael D. Jackson

A Cinemactor’s Forgotten Theatrical Resume: Spencer Tracy On Stage

James Fisher

Go Into Your Dance: Al Jolson, Ruby Keeler, and the Evolution of the Early Hollywood Musical

James Fisher

Acting Naturally On Stage and Screen: Spencer Tracy’s Enduring Legacy

Brenda Loew

The Morgan Brothers— Ralph, Frank . . . and Carlyle

Valerie A. Yaros

Contributors

Dedicated to Marcus Loew

"One of the first film industry pioneers

to recognize the power of movie stars

and promote them heavily."

20th Century American Leaders Database

Harvard Business School

www.hbs.edu/leadership/database/leaders/marcus_loew.html

(accessed 7.8.10)

#1.tif

Epigraph

Excerpt from

Sunset Boulevard (1950) movie script

by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, D. M. Marshman, Jr.

March 21,1949

GILLIS

I know your face. You’re Norma

Desmond. You used to be in

pictures. You used to be big.

NORMA

I am big. It’s the pictures

that got small.

GILLIS

I knew there was something

wrong with them.

NORMA

They’re dead. They’re finished.

There was a time when this busi-

ness had the eyes of the whole

wide world. But that wasn’t good

enough. Oh, no! They wanted the

ears of the world, too. So they

opened their big mouths, and out

came talk, talk, talk...

GILLIS

That’s where the popcorn business

comes in. You buy yourself a bag

and plug up your ears.

NORMA

Look at them in the front offices --

the master minds! They took the

idols and smashed them. The

Fairbankses and the Chaplins and

the Gilberts and the Valentinos.

And who have they got now? Some

nobodies -- a lot of pale little

frogs croaking pish-posh!

Illustrations

Epigraph

You see, this is my life. It always will be. There’s nothing else—just us and the camera and all those wonderful people out there in the dark. All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close up, says Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond in her final staircase descent in Sunset Boulevard (1950). © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Private collection. 10

Introduction—A New Profession: The Movie Star!

Walter Houston and Pauline Armitage in the Broadway production of The Easy Mark (1924). Private collection. 33

Amelia Earhart with actress Helen Hayes on a Hollywood set circa 1930s. © George Palmer Putnam Collection of Amelia Earhart Papers. Purdue University, Library Archives and Special Collections. 39

Ruth Gordon in her Academy Award—nominated role as The Dealer, in a publicity still from Inside Daisy Clover (1965). Gordon, age sixty-nine, played Natalie Wood’s mother. Also in the cast: Robert Redford, Christopher Plummer, and Roddy McDowell. © Warner Bros. Private collection. 40

Paul Muni makes his escape from prison in I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang (1932). © Warner Bros. & Vitaphone Pictures. Private collection. 42

Edward G. Robinson as Little Caesar/Rico. © First National Pictures. Private collection. 43

Charley Grapewin as the amiable ne’er-do-well Jeeter Lester in John Ford’s Tobacco Road (1941). © Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp. Don B. Wilmeth Collection. 46

Charley Grapewin as Wang’s father (opposite Paul Muni) in The Good Earth (1937). ©Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Don B. Wilmeth Collection. 51

Journeyman Gable

Clark Gable in an undated publicity photo, circa 1930. © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Private collection 56

Clark Gable and Zita Johann in the original Broadway play Machinal (1928). Gable received good reviews. He’s young, vigorous, and brutally masculine, reported the Morning Telegraph, in Harris, Warner G., Clark Gable: A Biography. New York: Harmony (2002). Private collection. 60

Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in the pre-code classic Red Dust (1932). © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Private collection. 62

Red Skelton: A Personal Remembrance

Red Skelton and Lucille Ball in an undated publicity photo. Private collection. 63

Main Entrance. Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus. Marion, IN. 1913. Born in Vincennes, Indiana, Richard (Red) Skelton was the son of a Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus clown named Joseph who died in 1913 shortly before the birth of his son. Red Skelton himself got one of his earliest tastes of show business with the same circus as a teenager. By age 15, Red Skelton had hit the road full-time as an entertainer, working everywhere from medicine shows and vaudeville to burlesque, showboats, minstrel shows, and circuses. To learn more about Red Skelton, visit www.redskelton.com, the official Red Skelton website. Private collection. 65

Red Skelton and Lucille Ball in an undated television sketch. Private collection. 67

Reinventing the Public Self: Four Vaudevillians Who Got a Hollywood Makeover

Mae West as Tira, a circus performer who becomes a socialite, and Cary Grant, who falls in love with her, in the uncensored I’m No Angel ©Paramount (1933). Private collection. 70

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in the talking short film Below Zero (1930), photographed by future filmmaker George Stevens. Produced by Hal Roach Studios. Private collection. 72

James Cagney in the patriotic 1942 movie hit Yankee Doodle Dandy evoked patriotism in Americans as World War II raged overseas. © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Private collection. 74

Burt Lancaster and Gina Lollobrigida in Trapeze (1956). © MGM. Private collection. 76

Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy in a scene from Cheaper By The Dozen (1950). © 20th Century-Fox Films. Private collection. 77

The Silence Is Over: Stars Tackle the Talkies

Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer. 1927 publicity photo © Warner Bros. Private collection. 79

Norma Shearer. 1902-1983. Private collection. 81

Greta Garbo and John Gilbert in the pre-code historical drama Queen Christina (1933). © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Private collection. 83

Greta Garbo as Countess Felicitas von Rhaden and John Gilbert as Leo von Harden in Clarence Brown’s 1926 silent romantic drama Flesh and the Devil (1926). © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Private collection. 85

The Importance of Being Harpo: Why Marx Matters

The Marx Brothers. Gummo, Groucho (top, l-r); Chico, Harpo (bottom, l-r). Undated. Private collection. 88

Harpo Marx in an undated publicity photo. Private collection. 90

Marx Brothers and Dad on the set of Paramount Pictures Monkey Business (1931). (l-r: Frenchy, Harpo, Groucho, Chico, Zeppo). Said to be the last photo of the brothers taken with their father who died two years later. Private collection. 93

Mae West: A Woman of Experience

Mae West and W. C. Fields in Universal’s comedy-western My Little Chickadee (1940). © Universal. Private collection. 97

Rare photo of Mae West (as Leticia Van Allen) and John Huston on the set of the Robert Fryer-Gore Vidal production of Myra Breckinridge (1970). Raquel Welch, Rex Reed, Farah Fawcett and Tom Selleck also had roles in the film. Mae West was seventy-seven years old when she made this film, returning to the screen after a twenty-six-year absence. © Twentieth Century Fox. Private collection. 99

More Than Major Strasser: Conrad Veidt

Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine in The Man Who Laughs (1928), a silent film based on a Victor Hugo tale. Veidt played an iconic victim of disfigurement, with a carved smile on his face. The actor wore an enormous and uncomfortable denture to force the smile. His performance was said to inspire the Joker villain of Batman comics and may have been used, in variation, as a publicity image for Steeplechase Park at Coney Island. © Universal Pictures. Private collection. 107

Rare candid photo of Conrad Veidt relaxing on the set issued by United Artists as publicity for the 1940 film The Thief of Bagdad. Private collection. 113

Humphrey Bogart’s Journey

Humphrey Bogart, as the leader of a gang of thieves, in Warner Bros.’s 1938 crime film The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse. © Warner Bros. First National Pictures. The film also starred Edward G. Robinson and Claire Trevor. Directed by Anatole Litvak and written by John Wexley and John Huston, the film was based on the play that ran for three months on Broadway with Cedric Hardwicke in the lead role, after playing in London. Private collection. 116

Humphrey Bogart as Frank McCloud and Edward G. Robinson as Johnny Rocco in Key Largo (1948). © Warner Bros. Private collection. 122

Carry On, Sherlock Holmes: Stage to Screen and Back Again

Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes. Private collection. 126

William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes. Postcard mailed 1902. Private collection. 128

William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes. 1899 Broadway theatre poster. Private collection. 129

John Barrymore as Sherlock Holmes in the 1922 silent film Sherlock Holmes. © Goldwyn Pictures Company. Cast also included William Powell, Hedda Hopper, and Reginald Denny. (Private collection.) 131

Harold Lloyd: Horatio Alger in Straw Hat and Horn-Rims

Harold Lloyd hangs from clock high above traffic in the 1923 silent film Safety Last, one of the most famous screen images from the silent film era. ©Hal Roach Studios. Private collection. 137

Daredevil Harold Lloyd perched on a flagpole outside a skyscraper. Lloyd performed his own stunts without safety nets. © Hal Roach Studios. Private collection. 139

Harold Lloyd in Movie Crazy (1932), his popular third sound film. Lloyd, as Harold Hall, leaves Kansas for Hollywood thinking he’s been selected for a screen test. © Harold Lloyd Productions. Private collection. 141

Harold Lloyd in The Milky Way. With Adolph Menjou, Verree Teasdale, Helen Mack (1935). © Paramount Productions Inc. Private collection. 142

Harold Lloyd in Paramount’s Professor, Beware! With Raymond Walburn, William Frawley, Sterling Holloway (1938). In this comedy, Harold Lloyd relaxes after his arduous professorial duties on a couch of dictionaries and reads a current magazine. Lloyd plays a young archeology professor who sets out on a cross country tour of the United States. © Paramount Productions Inc. Private collection. 145

Harold Lloyd in the 1947 film The Sin of Harold Diddlebock directed by Preston Sturges and financed by Howard Hughes. Their production company was known as California Pictures Corporation. Lloyd made his stage debut at age twelve as Little Abe in Tess of the d’Urbervilles with the Burwood Stock Company of Omaha and studied acting at School of Dramatic Art, San Diego. Private collection. 147

Anything But Silent: The Film Legacies of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton

Charlie Chaplin (top, right), Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks toured the United States promoting bond buying for World War I, raising millions. In 1919, the trio formed their own production company, United Artists. Private collection. 150

Charlie Chaplin as The Tramp. Private collection. 152

Charlie Chaplin carves up a boot in the 1925 silent film Gold Rush, written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin in his Little Tramp role. Original copyright was held by Charles Chaplin Productions. Private collection. 153

Close-up of Charlie Chaplin circa 1924-1926. Private collection. 154

Buster Keaton in the 1924 silent film The Navigator. © Buster Keaton Productions. Private collection. 155

Buster Keaton and Frank Hagney in the 1927 civil war silent comedy film The General. © United Artists. Private collection. 156

Buster Keaton and Charlotte Greenwood in the 1931 comedy talkie Parlor, Bedroom and Bath. © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Private collection. 158

The Jean Arthur Discovery Plan

Jean Arthur. Private collection. 164

Jean Arthur and Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1934). Directed by Frank Capra. © Columbia Pictures Corp. Private collection. 167

Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, and Chester Morris in Public Hero #1 (1935). © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Private collection. 169

Jean Arthur and Alan Ladd, stars of Shane (1953), pose with Ladd’s horse, Lightning. Directed by George Stevens. © Paramount Pictures Corp. Private collection. 174

Charles Wagenheim: He Never Met a Character He Couldn’t Play

Charles Wagenheim, 1895-1979. Private collection. 176

Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl: Marie Dressler

Marie Dressler in 1909. Dressler later became the first woman to appear on the cover of Time magazine, August 7, 1933. Private collection. 192

Oscar winner Marie Dressler stars with Wallace Beery in Min and Bill (1930). Original wire photo © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Private collection. 197

Marie Dressler and Lionel Barrymore in Dinner at Eight (1933), MGM’s pre-code drama about the Great Depression. Directed by George Cukor, the cast also included John Barrymore, Billie Burke, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery, Edmund Lowe, and Lee Tracy. 200

Talkers Fast and Smooth: Lee Tracy and Warren William

Lee Tracy in I’ll Tell The World (1945). © Universal. Private collection. 205

Warren William. Private collection. 207

Warren William and Bette Davis in a scene from Satan Met a Lady (1936). © Warner Bros. Private collection. 211

Warren William, Melvyn Douglas, and Virginia Bruce co-star in Arsene Lupin Returns (1938), the sequel to Arsene Lupin (1932), which originally starred John Barrymore in the title role and his brother, Lionel. Warren William’s style reminds one of John Barrymore. © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Private collection. 212

Lee Tracy with Sterling Holloway in Advice To The Lovelorn (1933). © Twentieth Century Pictures. Private collection. 215

Eddie Quillan: A Study in Versatility

Publicity photo of Eddie Quillan as Bud Doyle, the original Whoop-Te-Doo Kid in Sweepstakes (1931), RKO Pathe’s ever-smilin’comedy star. Eddie plays the part of a juvenile jockey who rides his mount to victory by chanting the staccato rhythm in the horse’s ears instead of using a whip. Several world-famous jockeys have been known to use this system of regulating the pace of their horses. Private collection. 220

Eddie Quillan and Lina Basquette in one of Cecil B. DeMille’s first part-sound pictures, The Godless Girl (1928, 1929). Originally released in 1928 as a silent film. Popular in Germany and the USSR, the movie flopped in the United States of America. In this shot, Rita Carey meets her former dance partner, Eddie Kehoe, on the street and tells him of her marvelous piece of good fortune in securing the leading part in George Owen’s Review. © Pathe’ Exchange. Private collection. 225

Eddie Quillan, Sally Starr, and Douglas Scott in Night Work (1930). © Pathe’ Exchange. Private collection. 226

Fred Astaire: The Perfect Leap from Stage to Screen

Rare photo of Fred Astaire and his sister Adele. Private collection. 243

Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire from the 1937 film Swing Time, directed by George Stevens. © RKO Radio Pictures. Private collection. 248

Cyd Charisse and Fred Astaire in a publicity shot from the 1953 musical comedy The Band Wagon. Directed by Vincente Minnelli, the cast also included actor-composer-pianist Oscar Levant whose first film appearance in Ben Bernie and All the Lads (1924) featured the Phonofilm sound-on-film process and Nanette Fabray, who began her career performing in vaudeville as a child. © MGM. Private collection. 254

Eddie Cantor: From Rags to Riches

Eddie Cantor, 1892-1964. Private collection. 259

Eddie Cantor and Ethel Merman in Kid Millions (1934), directed by Roy Del Ruth. © The Samuel Goldwyn Company. Private collection. 266

Eddie Cantor in the Samuel Goldwyn film Kid Millions (1934), directed by Roy Del Ruth. © The Samuel Goldwyn Company. Private collection. 268

Starring as the Cadet: Frankie Thomas on Broadway and in Hollywood

Frankie Thomas. Private collection. 275

Boys Town (1938) stars Martin Spellman (left) and Frankie Thomas (centre) escort new arrival Mickey Rooney in a scene by the entrance to Boys Town. © MGM. Private collection. 286

Katharine Hepburn On Stage

Katharine Hepburn (right) and Colin Keith-Johnston in The Warrior’s Husband (1932). Photograph by White Studio. Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. 290

Katharine Hepburn in the title role in Jane Eyre (1937). Photograph by Vandamm Studio. Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. 298

Katharine Hepburn and Dan Tobin on Broadway in The Philadelphia Story (1939). Photograph by Vandamm Studio. Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. 300

Katharine Hepburn as Rosalind in As You Like It (1950). Photograph by Vandamm Studio. Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. 301

Billie Burke: A Blithe Spirit Forever

Billie Burke as Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, and Judy Garland as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1939). © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Private collection. 310

Candid shot of friends Billie Burke, Will Rogers, and Fred Stone—each left Broadway for Hollywood—on the set of Fox Film Corporation’s Doubting Thomas (1935). Private collection. 327

James Gleason and Billie Burke star with Eddie Cantor in The Eddie Cantor Comedy Theatre. Season 1, Episode 3: The Big Bargain (Feb. 7, 1955). A ZIV Television Production. 329

Double Act: George Burns and Gracie Allen

George Burns and Gracie Allen in a Paramount Pictures publicity photo. Burns and Allen were associated with Paramount from 1930 to 1937. © Paramount Pictures. Private collection. 333

George Burns and Gracie Allen at home in New York City. Undated. Private collection. 341

Gracie Allen, W. C. Fields, George Burns, Charles Ruggles, and Mary Boland in Six of a Kind (1934). © Paramount Pictures. Private collection. 343

Vaudeville makes a brief comeback in this original press photo from the Detroit News archives of George Burns, Bing Crosby, and Jack Benny rehearsing a takeoff on the old-time vaudeville team of Goldie, Fields, and Glide for Jack Benny’s March 21, 1954, CBS television program. 349

The Perfect Fool: Ed Wynn the American Clown

Ed Wynn in costume as The Perfect Fool, 1932. Private collection 356

Ed Wynn. Sheet Music. 1921. Private collection 364

Ed Wynn in Follow the Leader (1930). Directed by Norman Taurog. The cast included Ginger Rogers and Ethel Merman. © Paramount Pictures. Private collection. 367

Ed Wynn, 1886-1966. Private collection 372

A Cinemactor’s Forgotten Theatrical Resume: Spencer Tracy On Stage

Spencer Tracy in his breakthrough Broadway performance as Killer Mears in The Last Mile (1930). Play by John Wexley. Directed by Chester Erskine. Private collection. 377

Go Into Your Dance: Al Jolson, Ruby Keeler, and the Evolution of the Early Hollywood Musical

Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler in a publicity still for Go Into Your Dance (1935). Author’s Collection. 404

Ruby Keeler and Al Jolson at the racetrack during the time they were filming Go Into Your Dance in late 1934. Author’s Collection. 407

In a scene from Go Into Your Dance (1935), Ruby Keeler as Dorothy Wayne attempts to convince Al Howard, played by A Jolson, that she would be an asset to his nightclub act. Author’s Collection. 409

In the fast-paced climax of Go Into Your Dance (1935), Al Howard (Al Jolson) in blackface is convinced by Dorothy Wayne (Ruby Keeler) to return to the stage even though she has been wounded by a hoodlum’s gunshot. Author’s Collection. 410

This rare newspaper photo captures Al Jolson watching his estranged wife, Ruby Keeler, dance in a scene from the Chicago out-of-town tryout of the Broadway musical Hold On To Your Hats (1940). Keeler withdrew from the cast only days later; Jolson and the show moved on to New York without her. Author’s Collection. 412

George Arliss (1868-1946) in The Man Who Played God. Arliss originally appeared with Ann Forrest in the 1922 silent film, later with Bette Davis in her first leading role in the 1932 talkie of the same name remade by Warner Bros. © Distinctive Productions. Private collection. 413

Al Jolson sings in a movie theatre in 1949 during his Iron Man tour accompanying first-run showings of Jolson Sings Again (1949). This was part of his phenomenal comeback that began in 1946 with the release of The Jolson Story (1946), a bio-pic for which Jolson provided the vocals. Author’s Collection. 417

Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell, most famous as an on-screen couple in a number of successful early musicals at Warner Bros., including Gold Diggers of 1933 and 42nd Street (1933). Private collection. 422

Acting Naturally on Stage and Screen: Spencer Tracy’s Enduring Legacy

Rare boyhood photograph of Spencer Tracy at about the age of nine. Tracy refused to keep pictures of himself. This photo was taken from a snapshot of a group of Milwaukee school children. Private collection. 440

Twelve year old Spencer Tracy in his first long pants. © United Press International. Private collection. 445

Spencer Tracy’s portrait for Ripon College’s Eastern Debating Team, 1922. © Ripon College. 446

Spencer Tracy in his dressing room when he appeared in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1924). Photo courtesy Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. 456

March 3, 1986, Playbill for a one-night-only tribute to Spencer Tracy, Majestic Theatre, NYC. Participants included Katharine Hepburn, Stanley Kramer, Sidney Poitier, Jason Robards, Frank Sinatra, Susie Tracy, and host Robert Wagner. A benefit for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, it included the showing of a documentary The Spencer Tracy Legacy: A Tribute by Katharine Hepburn, a beautiful written tribute by Hepburn and a list of the sponsors. PLAYBILL® is a registered trademark of PLAYBILL Incorporated, NYC. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Private collection. 460

Spencer Tracy (far left) in the George M. Cohan Broadway play Yellow (1926). Also shown: Chester Morris (far right). Private collection. 463

Cast of The Cat and the Canary. Spencer Tracy, top, left. Grand Rapids Herald. 6.9.25. Used with permission, Grand Rapids History and Special Collections Center, Grand Rapids Public Library. Emily Deming Collection (no. 149-1-10.S). 466

The Morgan Brothers—Ralph, Frank . . . and Carlyle

Young Ralph Morgan as a stage actor with a small inset of 1933 film actor portrait of Ralph by Frank Powolny (same year Ralph became first president of Screen Actors Guild). Courtesy Screen Actors Guild. 486

Young Frank Morgan in Chicago as a stage actor with a small inset of smiling Frank in 1936 RKO film The Dancing Pirate (when he was also a Screen Actors Guild board member). Courtesy Screen Actors Guild. 492

Carlos Wuppermann/Carlyle Morgan. Courtesy Screen Actors Guild. 512

William Gillette and Frank Morgan in The Dream Maker, which opened in Nov. 1921 at the Empire Theatre. Left to right: William Gillette, Miriam Sears, Frank Morgan, Charles Laite, and Myrtle Tannehill. Courtesy Screen Actors Guild. 518

Ralph Morgan as Tony Dorning in the 1924 Broadway play Cobra. He acted the role as if it were his late brother Carlos/Carlyle Morgan, with a spiritual insight and emotional intensity that are positively beautiful, a New York Times critic enthused. Courtesy Screen Actors Guild. 522

Index

The theatre’s royal family, the three Barrymores: Lionel, Ethel, and John. All three never appeared in the same play. Here they star in the only film they made together: Rasputin and the Empress (1932). © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Private collection 569

About

New England Vintage Film Society Inc.

New England Vintage Film Society Incorporated is a non-profit 501c3 tax-exempt charitable educational organization established to advance the relevancy of classic and vintage American films from Hollywood’s Golden Age to today’s world. New England Vintage Film Society Incorporated programs include publishing; lecturing; film screenings; and exhibiting Hollywood memorabilia to educate, enlighten, enrich, and entertain.

New England Vintage Film Society Incorporated published Playbills To Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies, a compilation of twenty-eight essays and over one hundred photographs, to chronicle the lives and career paths of early twentieth-century performers who transitioned from entertaining on stage before live audiences to acting in the new technological medium of sound films, commonly known as talkies.

Playbills To Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies explains the social, political, economic, historical, and cultural issues that shaped each performer’s body of work, acting technique, persona, and public following over time.

To order Playbills To Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies or to learn more, visit www.starsofstageandscreen.com.

In 2009, New England Vintage Film Society Incorporated published Spencer Tracy, Fox Film Actor: The Pre-Code Legacy of a Hollywood Legend, endorsed by Robert Osborne, host of Turner Classic Movies (TCM). The book is a unique collection of essays and rare images celebrating legendary two-time Academy Award—winning actor Spencer Tracy’s outstanding legacy of early screen performances in Fox’s lively Depression era pre-Code films.

To learn more about Spencer Tracy, Fox Film Actor: The Pre-Code Legacy of a Hollywood Legend or to order the book, visit www.spencertracyfoxfilmactor.com.

Ms. Brenda Loew, president, New England Vintage Film Society Incorporated, served as editor for both titles, guiding all phases of the publication process.

For more information about New England Vintage Film Society, Inc. visit www.nevintagefilm.org.

Foreword

This book is very personal to me—it has its roots in my family’s history.

The inspiration for Playbills To Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies originated with a Freeport, Maine man who contacted me as the ninth owner of a 1928 Marr & Colton theatre pipe organ that once belonged to my great-uncle, E. M. Loew, the theatre chain magnate. Hearing the restored theatre pipe organ play transported me back to the era of early twentieth-century American entertainment and brought tears to my eyes. The pipe organ was originally installed in E. M. Loew’s Thompson Square Theatre, 179 Main Street, Charlestown, Massachusetts. The theatre, built circa 1915 as a neighborhood theatre, had 650 seats on the main floor and 250 in the balcony. Following the introduction of sound movies, the organ was removed from the theatre and relocated to one of the Loew houses in Milton, Massachusetts.

Hollywood royalty, heads of state, and other celebrities were often invited guests at the Loew Estate in Milton. My great-uncle was very good friends with his neighbor Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., President John F. Kennedy’s father. I was fortunate to know my great-uncle; and I learned much about Hollywood, politics, and the entertainment business from him. Just as Marcus Loew’s father had done two generations earlier, my great-uncle E. M. Loew emigrated from Vienna, Austria. Penniless, he arrived in the United States in 1911 at age thirteen, lived with relatives in New York City, and worked at various odd jobs before opening his first theatre at the age of eighteen. His life was reported on by the press like a Horatio Alger rags-to-riches story. E. M. Loew’s chain of indoor and open air drive-in movie theatres was—at one time—the largest east of the Mississippi. My great-uncle also owned Bay State Raceway in Foxboro, Massachusetts (the current site of Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots) and the famous Latin Quarter nightclubs in New York City, Boston, and Palm Island (Miami), Florida, managed by Barbara Walters’s father, Lou.

Written with passion and depth, the biographical essays in this compilation describe the lives, struggles, and careers of many legendary early twentieth-century American entertainment icons—Hollywood royalty my great-uncle would tell stories about. Before he died in 1984, E. M. Loew gave me permission to write the story of his life. Perhaps someday I will. In the meantime, Playbills To Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies remains faithful to the show business legacy I have been left.

I am proud that my branch of the Loew family tree played a role in the evolution of America’s entertainment industry as vaudeville, silent films, and the legitimate stage yielded to the arrival of the talkies revolution and Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Brenda Loew

August 2010

Newton, MA

Playbills To Photoplays:

Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies

Acknowledgments

Playbills To Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies could not have been published without the cooperation of many people and institutions. On behalf of New England Vintage Film Society Incorporated, I wish to thank the following individuals for investing their time, energy, and passion towards making Playbills To Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies a reality:

Audrey Marie Johnson, for her steadfast enthusiasm and solid professional skills; Cyndi Tracy, for her early flat-out support; and writers Abigail Adams, Ben Bergin, Cinzi Lavin, Professor Don Wilmeth, Elizabeth Engel, Erik Hanson, Helaine Feldman, Howard Oboler, Dr. James Fisher, Jan Merlin, Jon Steinhagen, Judy Samelson, Kal Wagenheim, Lauren Milberger, Matthew Bowerman, Professor Maurizio Giammarco, Michael Jackson, Susanne Robertson, Travis Stewart, Val Sherman, Valerie Yaros, Dr. William Russo, and Zanne Hall, for their contributions of entertaining, well-researched essays.

I must also thank the following staff and organizations for their assistance with this book:

Dr. William D. Mett and www.redskelton.com; Ruth Van Stee, Grand Rapids (MI) Public Library; Dorinda Hartmann, Assistant Archivist, Film and Photo Archive, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theatre Research; Andrew Prellwitz, Ripon College Library; Cheryl Gratz, Xlibris; Laura Leff, President, International Jack Benny Fan Club; Screen Actors Guild; Playbill.com; University of Texas Press, Journals Division; and www.goldenageofhollywood.ning.com.

Presenting the life histories of each and every stage performer who pioneered the talkies would simply have been an impossible undertaking. We attempted to include as many personalities in this compilation as we realistically could. Thanks to all of you for playing a key role in preserving the stories of the show business performers included in this book—entertainers whose lives and careers chronicle an essential period of American entertainment history . . . such stuff that dreams were made on.[1]

Brenda Loew, President and Editor

New England Vintage Film Society Inc.

Playbills To Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies

Spencer Tracy, Fox Film Actor: The Pre-Code Legacy of a Hollywood Legend Newton, MA

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Introduction

A NEW PROFESSION:

THE MOVIE STAR!

Don B. Wilmeth

FILM VERSUS THE STAGE

Students of film and those of theatre history are becoming ever more aware of how little they know of each other’s fields. As a theatre historian, I admit that my understanding of the nuances, methods, and developments of filmmaking and its history is basic at best. There has been a long-standing bias that has tended to create a chasm between appreciation and interest in the two media. That early film owed much to the nineteenth-century stage—its techniques and production methods, its literature, its talent pool (after all, there was no other), and even its acting styles—has long been accepted. Yet much of what is still acknowledged by many as fact has been effectively challenged over the past forty years or so, especially as the result of more sophisticated and critically astute studies of nineteenth-century theatre (and vaudeville) and the serious efforts by film historians to pay careful attention to the early years of American film (as an understanding of how few examples still exists became evident) and, as importantly, to share knowledge with theatre scholars.

Some of the misunderstanding and confusion has been due to attitudinal stances; other problems of knowledge and perception have been caused by early scholarship often riddled with error and incorrect conclusions that for decades have been accepted and passed down without much question. The best example of both is likely A. Nicholas Vardac’s Stage to Screen: Theatrical Method from Garrick to Griffith. When published in 1949 Vardac was judged to be a pioneering effort that explained—in rather blatant and absolute terms—the relationship between the late Victorian stage and early motion pictures. Vardac certainly based his arguments and conclusions on the right kind of sources—photos, press clippings and reviews, promptbooks, set designs, and other similar primary sources—yet his findings are colored by an attitude common to fifty years ago. As David Mayer has recently explained this, Vardac offers a narrative of separation: of one medium, the stage, failing and being supplanted by a newer, more technically adept medium, cinema, which could achieve the effects and illusions and maintain an environmental ‘realism,’ which allegedly was believed to elude the paint-and-canvas scenery, which the theatre offered. Vardac, unfortunately, writing on a topic of fairly recent serious interest in the late 1940s, depended on too many inaccurate and rather naïve accounts of the stage, as well as a dated and skewered notion of the period under examination, which, as Mayer notes, led him to treat this period of time as a vast solidified and undifferentiated lump. The result is an extremely influential study that leads Vardac and his adherents (such as Ben Brewster and Lea Jacobs—see sources consulted) to minimize subtleties, nuances, developments, and changes in the Victorian stage over a long period, resulting in a picture of the stage of the time, says Mayer, that was all coarse, crude, pandering to low common-denominators, noisy, performed by unsubtle actors roaring their tirades and gesturing extravagantly. To Mayer this criticism is similar to the sort modern film critics level against much silent film.

Mayer and other film and theatre historians who focus on the intersections of the two media, especially during the early years of filmmaking, find that Vardac and his school largely ignore historical context (especially for the stage), except to be derogatory. Such an attitude about the stage and the screen from the last quarter of the nineteenth century to the introduction of sound movies has been largely altered, thanks to the sophisticated and critically astute studies of the stage of the last half of the nineteenth century by such scholars as Martin Meisel, Michael Booth, Peter Brooks, Stephen Johnson, and David Mayer, among others. And film historians of the formative years such as Charles Musser have been doing similar good in deepening our understanding and appreciation of early film, as Musser did in his Before the Nickelodeon and other studies. Brewster and Jacobs, similarly serious film scholars, in their recent Theatre to Cinema offer much of value in their analysis, including a useful and generally sensible critique of Vardac, yet even Brewster and Jacobs (which I nevertheless recommend) state that popular melodrama rapidly disappeared from the live stage once moving pictures took over its subject-matter and adapted its techniques. This conclusion is categorically nonsense, for melodrama to this day (not necessarily the same as seen in the nineteenth century, although revivals of those plays are often very successful and with a truthful acting style seem quite contemporary) is the American theatre’s major form of serious drama; it certainly did not disappear. It might have been well if Brewster and Jacobs had depended less on Vardac and on a dated and distorted notion of late Victorian acting as overlarge and unrealistic or specifically of melodrama acting, as Mayer explains, as a series of poses and frozen gestures. Mayer points out that even a respected film critic like Roberta Pearson labels gestural action in silent screen acting as histrionic, that is stagey. Melodrama, it might be noted, is still interpreted by far too many serious scholars in a pejorative manner, whereas it is as legitimate a genre of drama as farce or even as tragedy.

My objective here is not to offer a potted summary of Mayer’s important study of the theatrical influences on the landmark films of D. W. Griffith (although I admittedly recommend the book strongly to anyone interested in the intersection of film and the stage from the 1890s to the 1930s); yet I would quote and underscore, as I attempt to provide context and historical perspective for this collection of essays, one of Mayer’s conclusions and refutations of Vardac’s overstated beliefs that as the stage ran out of steam, it surrendered to film.

Rather, concludes Mayer, what he does not recognize is the extent to which there was a long period of exchange of technology and effects between the stage and film, stage plays incorporating film sequences, film intercutting with live moments. There were no fixed boundaries but, rather, a continual series of fluid interchanges. And finally, Mayer offers in his book clear evidence of a bewildering range of histrionic diversity, which, rather than taming screen acting, allowed and encouraged oversized performance in films well past the moment when it was claimed to have disappeared. Surely this collection helps to illustrate this point and to carry a sense of acting diversity well into the twentieth century.

THE ARRIVAL OF THE SCREEN ACTOR

In an important guide to a film series organized and presented by the American Federation of Arts in 1986 (see Before Hollywood in sources consulted), film historian Charles Musser provides a succinct chronology of the actor’s status in early film and provides a useful summary for us, leading up to the 1920s and the beginning timeframe for most of the essays in this volume. Unapologetically, I will draw heavily from Musser’s essay in order to provide some perspective.

Up to 1915 the young film industry had undergone some astounding transformation; these changes had a major impact on the status of the actor. The earliest films were little more than novelties. The interest was in action, not acting. The people on screen were little more than part of the scenery. Musser notes that until at least 1904 production personnel, non-professionals, and stage actors took turns performing for the camera. All on-screen talents were equal—and largely anonymous. With the rise of story films in 1903-04 actors became more essential elements in production, though scenery often retained its dominance. Slowly actors were called upon to create a rudimentary character, and though the screen actor did not yet exist, motion picture acting began to emerge as a more unified practice. Acting in films was part-time work, and filmmakers rarely cared much about the level of talent in use; casting calls were rare. Names of casts were rarely revealed. As nickelodeons demanded more one-reel story films, permanent stock companies of actors were created, with salaries that provided steady income and prevented film actors from drifting back to vaudeville or the legit stage. Musser states that by 1908 there was a growing group of people who had become professional moving picture actors.

But cinema had a low status in its early history, and an anti-cinematic bias prevailed for decades. Entering the film industry on a permanent basis was a complicated decision. Furthermore, film acting was considered less artistically demanding than stage performance. Even vaudeville (low in the estimation of most legitimate, serious actors) required a focus, staying power, and discipline not necessary for most film performers. Cinema had little demand for well-developed character psychology or even a vivid personality, as did the stage. But film began to expand stories (drawing on other narrative forms, including the vaudeville sketch [see Who’s Charley? below]) and developed a hierarchy of characters, the basis for the subsequent Hollywood star system. Audiences began to recognize talent that appeared often in short films and gave them nicknames, not knowing their real names. And as more close-ups were used, actors’ personalities came across as well. By necessity and as a result of public pressure, actors’ names began to be used; and leading players were treated as stars, as least on a basic level. By mid-1912, notes Musser, several film companies were using head titles to credit leading actors; and by the teens the star system began to emerge, which, in turn, forced filmmakers to focus more attention on specific performers (and to pay them more), giving star film actors a status similar to that of the stage actor. Yet cinema was not yet accepted as an art form by the better classes of the community (including many legitimate stage actors).

As Musser suggests, the feature film helped to elevate film’s status (some starring major stage actors like the divine Sarah Bernhardt), as did the adaptation of successful full-length stage vehicles. Slowly actors were beginning to realize that a screen career—if material was carefully chosen—could increase their following, earn them more money, and even provide them artistic challenges. But such attitude changes came slowly for many.

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A BAKER’S DOZEN

A surprisingly large number of well-established legitimate New York stage actors eschewed offers to appear on the screen—at least on a permanent or even semi-permanent basis. Hard statistical evidence is scarce, but anecdotal reports certainly seem to support this notion, even by the early 1930s. During the heyday of the golden age of American movies, and certainly at the height of the studio system, from the 1930s to the 1950s, there seemed to have been little concern about an actor’s previous training or experience on stage. The emerging studios chose to mold their own talents. Jeanine Basinger persuasively illustrates how the studios developed a star-making machine, based on a practical business plan that literally manufactured illusions.

A December 1930 Theatre Guild Magazine poll of eight New York critics listed the thirteen outstanding stage actors in America, according to their judgment. These were (1) Alfred Lunt, (2) Lynn Fontanne, (3) Eva Le Gallienne, (4) Helen Hayes, (5) Dudley Digges, (6) Katharine Cornell, (7) Ruth Gordon, (8) Paul Muni, (9) Tom Powers, (10) Richard Bennett, (11) Walter Huston, (12) Alla Nazimova, and (13) Edward G. Robinson.

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Of these examples, the top three had few film credits. As previously noted, a sizable number of successful stage actors were surprisingly snobbish about screen acting, and this may well have been the case with a number on this list. Lunt (1892-1977) and Fontanne (1887-1983), in their heyday, were the best-known acting couple in the United States; yet between 1923 and 1943, they appeared together in only eight films, most in the 1920s and none particularly notable. Perhaps their stage styles, often considered over-deliberate and genteel, simply did not work on screen (their only modest success—and an unhappy experience for them—was The Guardsman in 1931). Certainly their attitude toward film was typical of many stage actors who considered live performance in legitimate theatre an art form, whereas acting to a camera was a craft and one that allowed the actor little control. Even today the argument is often made that film actors often require little real talent, since the director, the camera operators, editors, and numerous others create the on-screen performance as much or more than the actor. James Cameron’s recent Avatar tells his story largely without blood and flesh actors! With endless repetition and retakes, almost anything is possible—today as in the past—whereas the stage actor, through lengthy rehearsal, has one chance at each performance to get it right. The Lunts, for example, held in disdain gifted stage actors who deserted the stage for the lure of Hollywood, with its large salaries, long-term contracts, California weather, frequent change in assignment (as contrasted with the New York stage’s relatively lengthy engagements in one role), and the well-advertised social life and celebrity of the film actor. The Lunts also believed, as did other actors—and many today—that the stage was a more satisfactory and fulfilling medium not only for the actor but also for the audience than was the movies (and especially television).

The great actor, director, and translator (Ibsen, Chekhov, etc.) Eva Le Gallienne (1899-1991), number three on the Theatre Guild list, and despite enormous contributions to the American theatre, is almost forgotten in the public consciousness because of the paucity of her film roles. Her love was the stage, and film had little interest to her (her one late credit of note was in 1980’s Resurrection).

Helen Hayes (1900-93), often called The First Lady of the American Theater—as were Fontanne and number 6, Katharine Cornell—did not eschew film roles, continuing to appear in films (and television) long after her stage retirement in 1971. She did, however, cast her lot largely with the theatre during a lengthy career. Yet while she was able to appear on stage in 1971 (she was featured as Mary Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey into Night), she specialized more and more in cameo character roles in film (e.g., Airport in 1970). Her screen appearances thus assure her place as a film icon while she remained a mainstay of twentieth-century theatre history.

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Dudley Digges (1879-1947), an Irish-born and trained character actor, is the great exception among the top five, with over fifty film credits (forty between 1929 and 1946) and a reputation not only as a fixture of the Broadway stage but also as an actor often in demand in supporting film roles (yet his is not a household name, and his image would likely not be identified by most film buffs in a lineup). Number six, Katharine Cornell (1893-1974), one of three reigning actresses on the Broadway stage along with Fontanne and Hayes during the second quarter of the twentieth century (best remembered for her Elizabeth Barrett in The Barretts of Wimpole Street in 1931), had theatre credits that are lengthy and numerous, ranging from Shakespeare to Chekhov, Shaw, Christopher Fry, and Somerset Maugham. Of all the outstanding stage actors on the Theatre Guild list, Cornell was probably the most devoted to the theatre, even more so than Lunt-Fontanne and Le Gallienne. In the early thirties she turned down a number of film roles that won other actresses Oscars (O-lan in The Good Earth and Pilar in For Whom the Bell Tolls, for example). Between 1920 and 1930 legit theatres outside New York decreased in number, many converting to film palaces; the Depression reduced live theatre even more: during the 1927-8 Broadway season, the number of stage productions reached a record of 280; by 1939-40 this had been reduced to 80. The temptation to accept film roles must have been great, but Cornell simply became even more determined to stay in the theatre in order to help keep it vibrant and important. Ultimately, she appeared in only one film role, as Juliet reciting a short few lines from Romeo and Juliet in Stage Door Canteen (1943), a wartime propaganda film that starred many of Hollywood’s best actors, under the auspices of The American Theatre Wing. But her appearance was an indication of her support of the troops, not a desire to be in the movies.

Of the remaining names on the list, all had film credits, to varying degrees. Tom Powers (1890-1955) might be the most unique, in that before a lengthy stage career in Broadway musicals and dramas, he had appeared in more than seventy silent films (1911-17). In 1944 he returned to Hollywood (first as the murder victim in 1944’s Double Indemnity). Subsequently, into the 1950s, he appeared in over eighty film and television roles (most often as a middle-aged businessman or a military/police officer. Ruth Gordon’s (1896-1985) career in both film and theatre is well-known. Despite a film acting career that began with an appearance as an extra in a silent film in 1915 and ending with iconographic roles in such cult films as Rosemary’s Baby and Harold and Maude, her stage career was equally noteworthy, if less permanently memorable, as was her career as playwright and, with her second husband, Garson Kanin, screenwriter.

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Paul Muni, Richard Bennett, Walter Huston, and Edward G. Robinson are best remembered today for their film work; yet each had a notable stage career. Muni (1895-1967) appeared in only twenty-five films during a long career, including the pre-Code classics in the 1920s, Scarface, and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang; yet he learned his trade in New York’s Yiddish theatre in the teens and early twenties and returned often to the stage during his career, appearing in his last major stage role in 1955—Henry Drummond in Inherit the Wind. Bennett (1870-1944)—father of actresses Constance, Barbara, and Joan—had a long and distinguished stage career beginning in 1891 (Damaged Goods, He Who Gets Slapped, Winterset, They Knew What They Wanted, and as Robert Mayo in Beyond the Horizon). He reprised his Damaged Goods appearance in its silent movie version in 1914, his film debut. Other than the role of Major Amberson in 1942’s The Magnificent Ambersons, his twenty-seven film roles did not match the excellence of his stage parts. Huston (1884-1950) is still admired for his 1948 appearance in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor), but his reputation is also enhanced by such stage appearances as Knickerbocker Holiday in 1938 with his rendition of September Song. Robinson (1893-1973), Bucharest born, had a modest New York stage career (beginning in 1913), appearing first in film in 1916 and graduating to stardom in the 1930s (he deserted his stage career in 1930, and largely threw his lot with film thereafter). One of many actors who saw his career flourish in the new sound film era, he made only three films prior to 1930 but appeared in fourteen films in 1930-1932. Often cast as the tough guy (especially in the 1930s and 1940s), Robinson over a fifty-year career appeared in 101 films. And finally, the Russian-born Alla Nazimova (1879-1945) came to the United States in 1905 as an experienced and well-trained stage actor, acclaimed for her appearances in the plays of Ibsen (in English). Her stage fame faded by 1918 (though apparently, based on her rank in the Theatre Guild list, her transformative stage personae lingered); and for a decade she appeared in such films as Camille and Salome, returning by the early 1930s (perhaps aiding her reputation and rank) to the stage (in 1931 she appeared as Christine in O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra).

The above baker’s dozen represent fairly typical patterns of legitimate actors’ migrations from stage to film (and often back) during the American film’s golden age. Certainly the stage was the major training ground for almost all actors during the 1920s-1940s. Yet like a few of the outstanding actors in the Theatre Guild list, other superb actors avoided film almost completely, choosing to commit themselves to the stage and staunchly believing that theirs was an art form while acting to a camera was no more than a craft—or even a fluke. A great example, whose historically significant performances never received permanency (that is, in recorded form), was the actor Walter Hampden (1879-1955), known

Reviews for Playbills to Photoplays

[knahs_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A nice compilation of essays on film stars who made the transition from the stage to early talkies with essays on Al Jolson, Mae West, Eddie Cantor, Harpo Marx, Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Charley Grapewin, Ed Wynn, and the Morgans (Frank and Ralph). Some essays were much better than others - I loved the one on the Morgans, Burns and Allen, Harpo Marx, and Katharine Hepburn. One of the Jolson essays contained errors, i.e., The Jazz Singer was not written specifically for Jolson and this was mentioned in the second Jolson essay. However, I would highly recommend the book as it gives you a good idea what vaudeville and the Broadway stage was like in the early 20's and what it was about these stars that allowed them to make the transition.