Arthur Edmund Carew — Released from Villainy (1927) 🇺🇸
There is nothing in life or drama more intriguing than mystery. So why break the spell of its charm by seeking to unveil it?
by Glenn Chaffin
I speak, of course, generally. There are mysteries in crime which have to be unraveled for the good of the world. But this is not a crime story. This is the story of a movie actor — a movie actor whose personality presents a wall of reserve, whose past is couched in mystery. It is a glimpse — a mere glimpse — into the life and character of the mysterious Arthur Edmund Carew.
You cannot meet Carew, or even see him, without wondering about him. Several years ago, I saw his remarkable portrayal of Svengali in Richard Walton Tully’s Trilby. Later I saw him in Daddy; then with Norma Talmadge in The Song of Love, and in other pictures of less importance. Always his performances were deft, his characterizations true and fine. What manner of man was he, I used to wonder. A great artist, surely, and an actor of infinite ability and experience. Why didn’t one hear more about him?
A year ago, I met him. During this year he has become my warm friend. An amazing man, tall, dark, compelling, with the carriage of a soldier. Perhaps he has known war — I don’t know. A moody man, silent, sad.
Occasionally, he smiles. Then one sees the warmth and kindness behind the wall of his reticence. Not long ago, I was lunching with him in the cafe at Universal City. A pretty little girl about six years old [Transcriber's Note: Probably Virginia Grey] stopped at our table to speak to him. Instantly, his sternness slipped from him. Gentleness and affection seemed to envelop him as he stroked the child’s hair, trying to straighten a tangled curl.
“Little Eva,” he explained to me when she had gone. “We worked together in some of the scenes of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. A wonderful child. What a pity that she has to grow up — and become a flapper.” He slipped back again into his shell of seriousness.
Though the earlier years of Carew’s life are veiled in mystery, his professional career is an open chapter in the annals of the theater. For several years he has been in pictures. Previously, he was on the legitimate stage. Seldom has his work met with unfavorable criticism.
But those earlier years? They are drowned in the well of his silence. He has told me almost nothing of them. I have gathered that he was not born in America, though he must have lived most of his life here.
You have a feeling when with him that he has known suffering. Not his own individual suffering, necessarily, but a suffering that has come down to him through previous generations.
Carew’s philosophy is simple and clear — “Be true to yourself.”
“Each man,” he says, “in his own way seeks material security and mental rest. But of what profit is success in the eyes of the world if its attainment means a compromise with our principles? Does not that in itself kill the thing that each of us is striving for?”
The air of mystery surrounding Carew, both on the screen and off, is enhanced by a definite barrier of reticence that no length of acquaintance with him can break down. Never does his personality reflect the obvious man, always it hints at mystery.
As I’ve grown to know him — his kindness and generosity, the sanity of his judgment and the brilliance of his mind — my first impulse of curiosity regarding his past has slowly faded. I don’t care whether he is a prince or a peasant, a poet or a clown — he is one of the most interesting men I have ever known, and whether his ancestors were kings or serfs makes no difference at all.
He lives with his mother in Hollywood, and his chief recreation is found in books and music. He is a student of philosophy and a sculptor of remarkable ability.
Carew’s screen popularity has taken a decided rise during the past year. The unfortunate habit that motion-picture producers have of cataloguing players cramped his style somewhat following his Svengali and other villainous characterizations. Universal, however, has at last given him a chance to break away from villainy.
Because of his own deep-rooted understanding of mankind, Carew abhors villainy in its conventional screen aspect.
“I dislike it,” he says, “because most film villains are not true to life. I never want to play another villain unless the character is human and the impulse which prompts his villainy is logical.
“If the motive behind the action of a screen character is logical, it may be either good or bad without affecting the standing of the player in the eyes of the public, but the usual movie villain is an absurdly unreal character.”
Carew shifted from villainy to a sympathetic characterization in Universal’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In that film he has the tragic role of the mulatto slave, George Harris, husband of Eliza. Harry Pollard, director of the film, says that the part should establish Carew as a romantic hero — Carew, who some years ago gave the movie world the weird, bewhiskered Svengali.
He has also recently played a straight dramatic role in The Cat and the Canary and a distinctly sympathetic part in The Claw, both filmed by Universal.
He is very much pleased over his release from villainy. Here is a man whose reticence makes him a person of mystery, but whose human side is as fine as the workings of a jeweled watch. And at last he is being allowed to reflect in his work that side of his nature which is hidden from the casual world by an instinctive armor of reserve.
A very silent man, Carew has about him an air of mystery which not even his closest friends can penetrate.
Photo by: Herman Mishkin (1870–1948)
As The Persian in The Phantom of the Opera.
Left, as the mulatto slave, George Harris, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Carew at last has a really sympathetic role, and one that is also touched with romance.
His remarkable portrayal of Svengali in Trilby started him on his course of screen villainy. He is shown above with Andrée Lafayette in a scene from that film.
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, August 1927