Arthur Mackley — Real Tales About Reel Folk (1914) 🇺🇸

“Sheriff” Arthur Mackley’s picturesque costume — which is no comic opera get-up, but is authentic to the smallest detail — is as much a part of himself as his hands and feet. He says that by living — and dressing — in character he is never obliged to overcome the consciousness of being made up for the screen. It certainly is true that in the pictures Mackley is perfectly at home in his clothes. Also, he gets all the better response from the company of players whom he directs in Western films.

Perhaps the psychological effect of his badge of authority, without which he never stirs abroad, has something to do with this. The badge, incidentally, was a gift to him from a genuine Western arm of the law, a famous character in his day, who found the actor’s impersonations so true to life and so like himself, that he willed to him his battered insignia of life-long service.

In some of the delightful plays in in which Mackley has recently appeared, his wife [Julia Mackley], known as “Mrs. Sheriff,” has starred with him. They played together in the touching romance called, The Widow’s Children, which was all the more interesting to those who knew the real relation of the middle-aged lovers in the sketch. They are a famously devoted couple.

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“Sheriff” Arthur Mackley in his famous role

Collection: Reel Life Magazine, November 1914