“Andy” Clarke — The Screen Children’s Gallery (1914) 🇺🇸
“Andy”, who made the “Andy” series famous, was called to his first interview straight from the camera and in full costume, the latter consisting of a grandfather’s high hat, a pair of long pants and a black mustache.
by W. Stephen Bush
“Andy,” known in the Bureau of Vital Statistics as Andrew Clark, is about eleven years old. His entrance into the silent drama was as abrupt as it was sensational. Encouraged by Frank Bannon, who acted as the Mentor of the interviewed artists, he freely recited the story of his debut in screen life.
“I was playing ball,” he began ingenuously, “in the lot right next to this place when a fellow comes out and says to me: ‘Say, do you want to play in the Edison pictures?’ I said: ‘Sure thing,’ and went right in. The name of the play was: ‘How the Boys Fought the Indians,’ and I tell you it was a corker. I guess I didn’t do so badly because they sent for me again, and now I am here for good.”
“Andy” is a baseball fanatic, and while the season is on all other topics of conversation seem stale and unprofitable. Nothing could have called an American youth from a hotly contested baseball game but the summons of the motion picture. The beckoning hand of fate took a big chance when it seized upon the rumpled locks of “Andy” just as he was in the supremest joy of pitching for the home team. Needless to say, “Andy” is the beau ideal of all the verdant youth in the regions of the Bronx. He could mobilize a volunteer army of many thousands and lead them anywhere. For this hero-worship “Andy” has no use whatever.
“You ought to hear the fool questions the fellows ask me at the school,” he said, his winning, freckled face lit up by the humor of the situation. “They all want me to get them jobs here and I just tell them it’s all right and then let it go at that.” Asked what he would rather do, attend a lecture on chemistry or go to the circus, “Andy” viewed his questioner with undisguised suspicion. After a visible effort to suppress unparliamentary language, he voiced his preference for the circus.
When “Andy” grows up to be a man he will be either a baseball player or a doctor or both. He thinks there ought to be more kind doctors in the world. He was sick himself recently, he said, and, therefore, in a position to know the necessity of having kind doctors about.
I asked “Andy” whether his doctor had been lacking in kindness. For a moment “Andy” knitted his brow, and there was a slight tightening of the jaw. Then he said, with a most pugnacious emphasis: “He had to be nice, that’s all.”
He took a convulsive hold of his ancient hat, as he uttered the words, and I was just diplomat enough to pursue the subject no further. He, however, without any urging, added these cryptic remarks:
“I will take a chance at anything once, and if it don’t work, why it is ‘Never Again.’”
“Andy” scouted the idea that he was in the pictures merely for the money there was in it. He said he liked the fun. When Mentor Banon sniffed audibly at this statement, “Andy” instinctively assumed a fighting pose and I thought it wise, and in the interest of peace, to step between them and change the subject. There is just enough of the ancient Milesian blood in “Andy’s” veins to precipitate a physical combat with a giant if he thinks he is being wronged.
Everybody in the Edison studio loves “Andy” and the vast army of fans loves him no less. The fairies having blessed him with the power of making others laugh, mortals can do no more than congratulate.
—
Collection: Moving Picture World, March 1914