Anita Stewart — Blue Book of the Screen (1923) 🇺🇸

Anita Stewart is one of the few stars on the screen who have gained fame and position without drawing on the stage for assistance. Miss Stewart has never been on the stage, as most film celebrities of today have, and her rise to stardom is due entirely to her merits as a pantomimic actress.

Much against her mother’s wishes, she entered the Vitagraph studio when very young to play extra parts, working at the studio on days when she did not have to attend Erasmus High School in Brooklyn for studies. Her brother-in-law, Ralph Ince, was a director for Vitagraph at the time, and he gave her some coaching in the art of portraying emotion before a cold, unsympathetic camera. But Anita soon found that her relative would be a hindrance as well as an aid to her advancement.

He knew that she was little more than a child and kept thinking of her as being fitted only for girl parts. When the matter of casting A Million Bid came up, Anita Stewart was considered for the leading role and cut off of the list as too young to interpret the part. She argued and insisted that she could do it, and finally talked them into giving her a chance. Her tremendous success in the picture was the beginning of her steady climb to the pinnacle of fame she now occupies.

Miss Stewart left Vitagraph to accept a contract with Louis B. Mayer by the terms of which she heads her own producing company at the Mayer studios in Los Angeles. Miss Stewart has light brown hair and dark brown eyes. She is five feet five inches tall and weighs about 120 pounds.

Her home is in Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband [Rudolph Cameron], who is her professional manager and who sometimes takes the leading male role in her feature productions.

Collection: The Blue Book of the Screen (1923)