Adrienne Kroell — Sans Grease Paint and Wig (1912) 🇺🇸
“That’s the place,” I told myself as I sighted a big-lettered fence and walked fast to keep warm. But when I came within reading distance of the big letters, instead of their announcing the Selig plant, they informed that something or other was “on draught.”
by Mabel Condon
It was then, as I turned to consult a lamp post for street directions, that I saw the man with the straw hat and winter overcoat and only for him I might still have been in time for my appointment with Adrienne Kroell; though. I confess, I probably would still be wondering about the November combination of a straw hat and overcoat.
As it is, my mind is at peace as to both of them, for I stayed in the vicinity of the straw-hatted one long enough to learn that he was but awaiting a director’s signal to doff the overcoat and race his auto across the street to the curbstone, there to meet and shake hands with a grimy son of toil who at that particular moment was intent upon demolishing a substantial looking sandwich in two bites.
So when I reached the Selig studio, Miss Kroell was “working.” Would I step up? I would, and stepped three flights. Miss Kroell was sitting at a kitchen table telling the story of the three cakes and the bad dog to a curly-haired little girl on her knee who showed but one tooth at either side of her mouth in the laugh which accompanied the disappearance of each cake.
After Miss Kroell had told the story several times and had assured her ex-convict husband an equal number of times, that “it will all come out all right; we’ll manage somehow.” Mr. Hardee Kirkland told her that would be all and she took me down to her dressing-room to meet Billy.
Billy is a canary and one to be envied on the score of sharing his pretty owner’s sunny dressing-room, which, the pretty owner remarked, she had done over in red hangings because the sun had faded all the color out of the pink ones which preceded them; besides red was more practical for the winter.
When Billy had chirped his satisfaction at the amount of attention bestowed upon him and Miss Kroell remarked that Billy doesn’t sing but he is such good company, we settled down to business; Miss Kroell, in front of her dressing table, her little sister. Anna May, in a rocker in the corner and I on Miss Kroell’s shirtwaist box, facing Billy, and respective pictures of Selig stars and King Baggot, which looked down from the opposite wall.
“I played in stock with King Baggot,” said Miss Kroell in explanation of his likeness and autograph. “Neither of us thought of motion pictures then, and, isn’t it funny, that we should both be playing them now? Let me see,” and her big eyes narrowed to a reminiscent slit, “it must have been about four years ago that we played together, for it was after I had given up my position as Mort Singer’s secretary to take the part left vacant by Olive Vail in Honeymoon Trail, and I’m sure that was after I had walked the marathon from Minneapolis to St. Paul, because my experience in companies with Wilton Lackaye, Marguerite Clark and Virginia Harned came before then, for I distinctly remember I was studying with —”
“Dear me,” I gasped, “whenever did you get time to do all those things?”
“Well, I tackled a little bit of everything. To start with, I could sing. I knew that. So did my parents, but they never intended me to sing publicly; they wanted me to teach. So, to please them, I took the normal exams, though I never intended to be a teacher. While going to high school I studied music, and the vacation after I was graduated I took up stenography. Six weeks after I began the course, I had finished and obtained a position as secretary of the St. Louis Horticultural Society.
“There was a stock company in St. Louis in which I managed to obtain a part and I played in it evenings and attended to my secretary work in the day-time. It was about this time that I played with Wilton Lackaye, Marguerite Clark and with Virginia Harned in Trilby.
“Meanwhile, I had kept up my music and my teacher advised me to go to Chicago and try for a position in a musical play. So I came. I went to Mort Singer and he said to come some other time and he would hear me sing, as he was too busy just then because his secretary had quit and left him with ever so much work that just had to be done.
“That gave me an idea and I applied for the position of secretary right then. He laughed but I told him I meant it so he gave me a letter and said, ‘You’re engaged.’ I got along just fine and was heralded in the newspapers as ‘the model business woman.’”
“For goodness sake, that well? I suppose you were interviewed and everything?”
“Yes, on all kinds of subjects. If you don’t mind getting off that shirtwaist box for a minute, I’ll show you something I wrote for a paper at that time and of which I’m quite proud.”
I abdicated the chintz-covered throne and Miss Kroell scattered heaps of pretty white things on her rummage to the bottom of the box from which she emerged with what she went after.
“Model business woman gives advice to girls in offices.” was what I read and among the advisements were:
- “Cultivate good sense and humor.
- “Don’t become careless or untidy as that marks you ‘failure.’
- “Don’t go to lunch with your employer unless its an urgent case of time-saving.
- “Don’t invite the confidence of your employer’s wife if she has the office ‘bug’ and —
- “Don’t tell her the business of the office; leave that to your employer.”
“Great stuff! And what happened after that?” I asked when Miss Kroell had poked the clippings back into the box.
Well, the next thing that happened was Olive Vail’s becoming too ill to continue her role in the Honeymoon Trail road company and Mr. Singer’s suggestion that I take it. I thought it would be too big for me but tried it and continued in the part for three seasons. Then the motion-picture people saw me —”
“But what about the beauty contest you won? And you haven’t said a word, yet, about the marathon race.”
“I didn’t suppose you knew about the beauty contest,” returned Miss Kroell, modestly. “It was conducted by a newspaper in St. Louis. I don’t know who entered my name, but my dad said to leave it in; and I won. The prize was a diamond medal. The marathon was also conducted by a newspaper; one that had offices in both St. Paul and Minneapolis, and the distance walked was from one office to the other. It was twelve miles. I had played in Minneapolis the night before and was to play in St. Paul that night, so walked from one city to the other. It took me one hour and thirty-two minutes and I was just two minutes in the lead. It was awfully exciting.”
“I should think so.”
“It was out west that I first became interested in the making of motion pictures. I met Mr. G. M. Anderson [Gilbert M. “Broncho Billy” Anderson] and he asked me to work in a swimming picture but, on account of matinées, I couldn’t get time. He told me to visit the Essanay studio when I returned to Chicago and I did. By that time I was very much interested, so became engaged by the Essanay company and remained there one year. Then I came to Selig’s and have been here one and one-half years. I just love the work because there is always something new and the players have time to live like real people. My home is not far from the studio and I have four sisters all younger than I, who have all appeared in pictures.”
“I’m the youngest,” declared Anna May, breaking the long silence in the rocker corner, “and I’m hurrying through school so’s I can act all the time ‘stead of just on Saturdays. I’m ten.”
“Cheep, cheep,” piped up Billy championing his little friend.
“And how old do you think I am?” asked Anna May’s big sister. I was dying to know. “Twenty-one.” Then she listed her sister’s ages; so she’s honestly and truly only twenty-one. Not that she looks older but she has done so much more with her twenty-one years than other girls have that one would surely guess her to be more.
She’s a very, very beautiful twenty-one, too. She has wonderful skin, soft brown eyes, straight, black brows, and pictures do not at all do justice to her hair and teeth. She holds the record for being the most engaged girl in Chicago; there are countless pictures of her in the act of “getting engaged” to prove this claim.
But that’s in pictures. However, she wears the loveliest diamond, all by its lonesome, on her ring finger.
“I wonder?” I remarked to Billy as I told him good-bye; and Billy answered, “Cheep, cheep.”
—
“The Triangle,” November 28. Copyright 1912, Selig Polyscope Co.
Collection: Motography Magazine, November 1912