Bess Meredyth — Niblo’s First Lieutenant (1925) 🇺🇸

“My general-utility aide,” Fred Niblo once titled Bess Meredyth. For Bess illustrates the value of a woman’s cleverness.

During the three and a half years that she has been scenarist for Niblo, she has adapted his stories, written his scripts, titled and helped edit his pictures, supervised wardrobes — dashing gayly from many a luncheon to find some prop or costume that was seemingly unprocurable. “When in doubt, ask Bess,” is the slogan on the Niblo set.

Her reward came when she was hustled to Italy to work with Niblo in salvaging Ben-Hur.

After seven months of it, she has returned to Hollywood.

Bess is a bewildering, contradictory, adorable mixture of the eternal feminine and mentality. She feels no impulse to elevate the films, she isn’t erudite, but the girl has brains. She is a human being, first, and therein lies, perhaps, the quality of reality that imbues the Niblo scripts.

Other scenarists of less value to the screen have been tooted to the skies, while Bess Meredyth worked and waited. Her day is dawning. Her worth to any director lies not so much in her ability to put words together, or even to visualize scenes in action, as in the way she injects her personality into every phase of a production.

More than a little bit of Ben-Hur owes itself to her capability. And it wouldn’t surprise a lot of folks in Hollywood to see the serene Bess driving a chariot in the big buggy race!

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Collection: Picture Play Magazine, May 1925