Bessie Barriscale’s Nemesis (1918) 🇺🇸

The Hickmans — Howard, Bessie Barriscale, and their little boy — live in a six-room bungalow in Hollywood that Bessie Barriscale calls the doll’s house.

by Elizabeth Peltret

Being great believers in the power of mind over matter, they have a number of Maxfield Parrish landscapes around to give the suggestion of great distances, and the ceiling of her bedroom is sky blue, possibly for the same reason, but “Bess” — (everyone calls her Bess — is too restless to be satisfied with suggestions.

“We’re going to move into a house that has ten great, big rooms,” she said, “so that we can have space enough to really turn around and breathe in.”

Perhaps that is the most noticeable characteristic Bessie Barriscale has — restlessness. She must be doing something all the time. Keeping still is, she says, for her almost an impossibility. Her hobby is her automobile; her favorite pastime, speeding down a long, smooth road when the weather is fine and she doesn’t particularly care where she is going. She is five feet, two inches tall, has very fair skin and — one notices with a little sense, of surprise — brown eyes. Mr. Hickman’s eyes are also brown, while their boy has eyes of blue.

“Really our baby doesn’t look much like either of us,” she said, “though if you look closely, you can see that he has eyes shaped like mine, and my fair skin, and that the back of his head is like his father’s and he has his father’s funny legs.”

Friend husband was not in the room at the time she made this remark which was, perhaps, just as well. Later, however, he came in dressed up as a pirate — well, anyway, “do you want your boy to be an actor?” she was asked.

“Why certainly,” she answered promptly, “if he should want to be. I’ve been on the stage since I was five years old and I know that stage children are given more care — more gentle consideration — than any other children in the world.”

Miss Barriscale’s first appearance was with James H. Hearne in Shore Acres. “I never think of him without at the same time thinking of peanut brittle,” she said. “He must have kept me constantly fed up on peanut brittle. I have the same vagueness of impression about Margaret Anglin, with whom I worked the following season. All I remember about her is her way of saying, ‘Oh, don’t do that, Little Girl!’”

Bess has played everything from Little Eva, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin to the children of Shakespeare with Louis James.

“The last time I played Little Eva,” she said, “I was a great deal too old for the part. The company had taken me with them on tour in case the little girl playing Eva should be removed by the Gerry society. One night, the performance commenced and was going along as usual, when someone spied the Gerry man out front. It was just before the moment when Little Eva fans into the river and the manager dared not await any longer than was absolutely necessary to substitute me. I’ve often wondered what the audience thought when Eva came out of the river a head taller and several years older than she was when she went into it.”

Bessie Barriscale met Howard Hickman when they were playing in stock at the Bush Temple theater in Chicago. He was the villain of the company and perhaps this lent him an added fascination, for she fell in love with him almost at first sight. Her mother, however, disapproved, not of Mr. Hickman, but of Bess getting married at all just at that period.

“She thought I was too young; that it would ruin my career — oh, dozens of things. She was utterly heartbroken over the whole affair. There being nothing else to do, we eloped. Poor Mother! For her, it was like the end of the world!

“We are very happy together,” she went on, “and I think much of this is due to the sacrifices we have made in order not to be separated. Frequently, we have accepted engagements where we could be together when we could have made twice as much money and had very much better parts, if we had been willing to work separately.”

This was the chief reason that they “went over” to the pictures. At present, both are at the Paralta studio, but even were they at different studios, they could still have their evenings together. Then, too, they are free from the necessity of long separations from their boy. “We have a real home,” said Miss Barriscale.

Her first picture play was “The Rose of the Rancho,” made at the Lasky studio by Cecil de Mille [Cecil B. deMille] and it was one of Lasky’s first offerings.

“I wasn’t a bit nervous,” she said. “Perhaps because I had played the part so many times — 18 weeks — in stock at the Belasco theater (Los Angeles).

“The first day at the studio is rather hazy — dreamlike — in my memory. The things that impressed me most about the studio were the click of the camera — which bothered me a great deal for awhile — and the men in evening dress for a scene, wearing yellow shirts. Later I put on a white dress for one of my scenes, and the director made me change it, explaining that white wouldn’t photograph white as well as yellow would. It was a long time before I got used to that. Whenever we used yellow linen in the place of white, I went through the scene with a strong feeling that something was wrong. It made me feel very awkward.”

From Lasky’s Miss Barriscale went to Culver City where she stayed for two years. Some of her most successful Ince pictures were “The Reward,” “The Cup of Life,” “A Corner in Colleens,” “Bullets and Brown Eyes,” “The Payment,” and “The Golden Claw.” For Paralta she has made “Rose of Paradise,” “Madam Who?” and “Within the Cup.” In this last picture, she had a part which required her to do some “vamping.”

Now “Bess” is a good actress but she has never been very strong for the rag-and-the-bone and the-hank-of-hair stuff. However, on this occasion, she was vamping all over the set, and enjoying herself very much, when she heard Robert Brunton, the general manager, remark to his wife, who was visiting on the lot:

“As a vampire, Bess looks like a naughty child that ought to be spanked.”

“You have nothing on me,” said Bess. “I can’t imagine myself as a vampire either.”

To look at her, no one would suspect Bessie Barriscale of having a trouble in the world — and she hasn’t. But she has something just as bad. She is afraid that she will have a trouble in the world, and the trouble in question is adipose tissue, as the experts call it. As a matter of fact, she doesn’t seem to be in any particular danger. She not only doesn’t have to lace, but she doesn’t even wear a corset — only a little elastic girdle. (Such a thing may be said, may it not? in an “intimate” interview?) Any way, she isn’t taking any chances. She has a regular beauty parlor arranged in her own home, including electric bath, electric massage, physician’s chair, and everything that a beauty parlor naturally would contain Also, she never eats anything she really likes on the theory that it will be likely to add a pound or two of the aforementioned adipose tissue. There is only one exception to this rule.

Occasionally she must have a potato. “I can go about three weeks without a potato,” she said, and then I absolutely must have one if it adds three pounds. Not that I ever noticed it adding three pounds, but it might. However, I must take the chance. The other day my husband thought that he’d be good to me —”

“For a change?” suggested Howard Hickman, poking his head in at the door.

“For a change,” his wife went on, quite as if he hadn’t interrupted her, “so he brought me a big box of chocolate creams. I keep them on the sideboard so I can sit here and look at them!

“This is all because I remember myself as I saw me first on the screen,” she went on. “It was three years ago, and I haven’t gotten over the shock yet. To this day, I can’t bear to look at one of my own pictures! I had been very excited over the idea of seeing myself — I expected to have a sort of curious yet pleasant sensation. I did have a curious sensation, but as for pleasant — I was a little late reaching the projection room and it happened that I walked right in on a close-up of myself. I didn’t wait for any more. Instead, I made the finest emotional exit of my entire career! Once outside, I leaned against the side of the building and had a good cry. As I cried. I repeated over and over to myself, ‘I’m not that fat!’”

Bessie Barriscale was the original Luana in The Bird of Paradise. The play was written especially for her and was first put on at the Belasco theater in Los Angeles.

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“Sato, why do you tempt me? You know I can’t eat that pastry.”

—

Like so many others, Bessie Barriscale and her husband “went over” to the movies so they could be together.

The Howard Hickmans have signed the Food Pledge. Here it is in the window.

—

We’ve been told so many times that these screen stars are the hardest working girls of all. And yet, every day we receive pictures like this one of Bessie Barriscale at home.

‘‘We have a real home,” said Miss Barriscale. And Mr. and Mrs. Howard Hickman evidently think there’s no place like it.

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Left: Miss Barriscale as “Bawbs o’ the Blue Ridge.’’

Oval: a scene from “The Devil.”

Right: as the kitchen wench in “Borrowed Plumage.”

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The Fan’s Prayer

From Billy West’s imitations; from Wm. Brady’s idea of Russia; from Theda Bara in “Cleopatra” gowns; from News Weeklies of Shriners’ Parades; from Fox’s Made-in-America Russian Vamps; from movie ball-rooms; from actress managers; from “Chats”; from Violet Mersereau’s joy-plays; from anybody’s joy-plays; from picture posters; from the sorrows of Alice Joyce; from Dustin Farnum in “The Spy”; from missing a Bill Farnum [William Farnum] picture; from silent prima-donnas; from screen coincidence; from George Walsh’s smile; from “The Last Raid of the Zeppelins”; from Actionized photoplays; from antiquated ingenues; from “The Master of Screen-Craft”; from decorated captions; from Winifred Kingston’s kisses; from Sm. Goldfish’s reforms of the industry; from Kathleen Clifford in anything but boys’ clothes; from Clara Young’s [Clara Kimball Young] light comedies; from sweet villains; from sweet leading men; from the continued absence of Blanche Sweet; from advice to the screenlorn; from most war-plays; from believing that “Sirens of the Sea” is an uplift effort; from uplift efforts; from News-weekly inserts in “super-films”; from “super-features,” “super-films,” and other soup; from fifth-reel grabs; from Broadway, Santa Barbara, and from Africa, Fort Lee; from Eileen Percy’s tears; from Vivian Martin’s poor girls; from ticket-tax dodgers; from film-racing operators; from photoplays with a mission; from Julia Sanderson as a country-girl; from Marguerite Clark with her hair straight back; from missing “Mickey” — when it comes; from more Selznick [Lewis J. Selznick] corporations; from sprocket-scarred films; from morality camouflage — from all these evils, kind Providence, deliver us!

Collection: Photoplay Magazine, March 1918