Myrtle Stedman — Myrtle of the Mountains (1920) 🇺🇸
So she went back to the place she was born and studied for the stage, which, according to the laws of Romance, was the proper thing for a girl brought up in the mountains of Colorado to do. At any rate, Myrtle Stedman not only studied for the stage, but she went on the stage, becoming a prima donna in a very short time.
But the most impressionable period of her life had been spent in a mining camp about forty miles from Denver. There she had learnt horseback riding and, being at an altitude of 10,000 feet, she had naturally become proficient in the most difficult of mountain sports. She was a child of the snows, blonde and hardy as a Dane.
It was while she was appearing in comic opera in Chicago that she met Colonel Selig and he, needing a leading lady and hearing that she could ride horseback, immediately approached her with an offer.
"But," she protested, "I don’t know anything about moving pictures."
"You can learn," he answered. "Why don’t you come and visit us?"
"So," she said, in telling me about it, "I went to visit the studio. I saw the making of several scenes, but wasn't greatly tempted... I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to do the work. Then Colonel Selig showed me a beautiful thoro-bred horse. 'This horse' he said, 'will be yours if you join us. You can ride him all the time.'
"So it was that that decided me to leave comic opera for moving pictures."
You might call it persuaded by a horse...
"My first picture was called 'The Range-Riders'," she went on, "and I was not the only member of the company making my debut. A young man who had come the same morning was as strange to the screen as myself. I was introduced to Tom Mix and after that we made a number of pictures together."
Miss Stedman started her screen career at about the same time that Mary Pickford, Blanche Sweet, Bobbie Harron, Kathlyn Williams and other famous "pioneers" started theirs. Her work in the popular "westerns" was unrivaled.
We were lunching together in a pretty little flat she recently rented in Hollywood. It is on top of a gently sloping hill and commands a lovely view of the surrounding country. For lunch, there was chicken, jellied, with mayonnaise, whole tomatoes icy cold, Saratoga chips, hot rolls, iced tea and sliced peaches, the whole especially designed to tempt appetites made indifferent by the heat outside.
We (Miss Stedman had thoughtfully called at my office to get me) had arrived to find the doorbell in the process of being repaired, not by the to-be-expected workmen, but by two portly, well-dressed ladies, the owners of the house.
"They own several houses," Miss Stedman whispered, "and whenever anything goes wrong, they insist on making the repairs themselves."
During luncheon, we could see them thru the slightly parted portieres that divided the dining from the sitting-room. One of the ladies stood on a stepladder, placed just inside the front door, and hammered from time to time, while the other held a kit of tools handy and tried the doorbell occasionally to see if it would work. At last it rang, and after making a few little repairs in the kitchen... it seemed that the ice-box drain needed attention... they left, shown out by Lucille, Miss Stedman's irrepressibly good-natured little negro maid, who rang the bell herself for good measure and then ran thru the room giggling.
"Funny little thing!" said Miss Stedman, laughing in sympathy.
And then, just as we left the table and started for the living-room, the doorbell began to ring.
"What on earth!" she exclaimed... there was no one in sight. Still the bell rang, loudly, continuously, as tho making up for lost time. After a protracted search it was discovered that the amateur electricians had in some way connected the thing with a clothes closet door. When the door was left open the bell wouldn't ring at all, but with the door closed it rang all the time. The door was propped open, to keep out the noise, and we returned to the living-room and seated ourselves comfortably on a big davenport. We had been laughing so heartily that, for a minute, conversation was impossible.
"Let's see; where were we?" said Miss Stedman, and then answering herself, "Oh, yes; at the Westerns. Of course, we worked under difficulties that producers don’t have now. There was, for instance, the matter of the trademark. It was, you remember, a big diamond 'S' and it had to appear in every scene. Sometimes we would get miles out on location and find that it had been forgotten. When this happened, production was held up until the property man could get it from the studio; we never dared make anything without it."
There was, of course, the ever present possibility that someone would try and steal some of their stuff.
It was about five years ago that Myrtle Stedman left Chicago and Westerns for drama and California. She appeared as Saxon in Jack London's "Valley of the Moon." and was also in the first production of "Burning Daylight." It will be remembered that she was at Lasky's for a time playing with Hayakawa, Wallie Reid and many others.
"I suppose you've had a trying week," I remarked, referring to some re-takes for "Sowing the Wind," in which she had been working at the Mayer studio.
"Yes, I've been weeping steadily all the way thru this picture. It's an old 'Romance' play, you know — of course, they've brought it up-to-date.
"I did hope that I was going to do a Western next, but it seems that the picture won’t he a Western after all. It's a mill story. However, it will be with Bill Hart and I'm delighted about that anyway!"
Myrtle Stedman has a frank, straightforward way of looking at you from clear blue eyes, a frank straight-forward hand shake.
She has never lost her capacity for enthusiasms. She loves the theater and she can still watch a play or a picture uncritically, laughing at the right moments and crying at the right moments. too. With all this, her work shows her to be a remarkably finished artist.
It is not to be wondered at, that Rex Beach, seeing her in New York, engaged her for the part of Cherry Melotte in The Silver Horde. She was an ideal choice for the part.
Myrtle Stedman started her screen career at about the same time that Mary Pickford, Blanche Sweet, Bobbie Harron and other famous "pioneers" started theirs. Her work in the popular "westerns" was unrivaled
Photo by: Albert Witzel (1879–1929)
Miss Stedman studied for the stage and became a prima donna. It was while she was appearing in Chicago that she met Colonel Selig who, needing a leading lady and hearing she could ride horseback, approached her with an offer. She has a propensity for Western pictures and has appeared in many screen versions of the works of Rex Beach, Jack London and other well-known writers.
Photo by: Albert Witzel (1879–1929)
Collection: Motion Picture Classic Magazine, November 1920