Edward Everett Horton — Not the Perfect Male, But — (1924) 🇺🇸
With his first pay envelope came the discovery that it was merely hard work. It's been hard work ever since and the only ones who get any fun out of his acting are the audiences. Which is as it should be.
In addition to giving us a well-nigh perfect Ruggles, Horton has brought to the screen a new personality. And personalities, Heaven knows, are far more sadly needed than new faces. Horton's face is nothing to write home about. It's a perfectly good face, of course, with the proper number of eyes and noses and ears, but Elinor Glyn would never pick it for her Perfect Male.
But when it comes to personality, the man simply oozes it!
It was his popularity at the Majestic Theater in Los Angeles, where he has been the mainstay of a stock company for three years, that brought him his chance to play Ruggles in James Cruze's picture, Ruggles of Red Gap. And the perfection of that characterization gave him the lead in Cruze's last picture, "To The Ladies." In it, Horton plays the part of a male Dulcy, good-hearted, arrogant, provincial and dumb.
Edward Everett's parents had their boy all cut out to be a teacher. He seemed to "take to" languages and English composition and history, so why not? The boy himself didn't have any other great ambition, and it wasn't until his junior year at Columbia University that he acquired one. The university dramatic club put on their annual play, and Horton had a part. The thrill he felt then definitely lost to the teaching profession a most potent educator.
He toured with Louis Mann for two years, and then passed into that finest training school for actors, stock. Horton has played in stock in almost every big city in the country. At present he is doing a ten weeks' engagement at the Fulton Theater in Oakland, California, at the expiration of which he is to do another picture.
He's a bonny actor! He can express more by a quirk of an eyebrow than most screen actors can with Expressions 1, 2, 3 and 4.
He has an excellent sense of humor — and good taste in ties.
And his photograph adorns the dresser of one who has been exposed to all the male charmers of filmdom, including Valentino, with no lasting effects.
Collection: Screenland Magazine, March 1924