Betty Gray (1915) 🇺🇸

Beata (Betty) Lily Gray, one of the stock members of the Vitagraph Company, began her artistic career during her school days, when as a young lady in her early teens she was noted as a beauty.

It was Miss Gray’s fortune to be selected as the model for Harrison Grey Fischer’s famous Western Girl creation and later to grace Charles Dana Gibson’s Debutante series, besides posing for Clarence Underwood for a year.

Miss Gray, or Betty as she is familiarly called, was born in Passaic, N. J., February 27, 1894, and is of Danish-Swedish parentage. Her father, Nelson Gray, having been born in Copenhagen, Denmark, and her mother, whose maiden name was Amalia Hansen, in Sweden. Miss Gray received her education in the public schools of Passaic. Graduating from the high school, she studied art in the New York School of Applied Art and was making exceptional progress when the lure of vaudeville attracted her. Securing booking for an eight months’ tour, she presented a single act in which she made four changes of costume, appearing as flower dancer in an Italian number, and finished with a recitation. Vaudeville did not appease her craving for artistic triumphs and she sought other fields in which to display her ability, finally deciding to try posing for pictures. Strange as it may seem, her magnificent head of hair, Miss Gray’s crowning glory, was responsible for her first engagement as a screen artist, her ability as an actress being in the nature of a surprise to her first director. It is a noteworthy fact, that although she has posed for several motion picture companies, her first picture has always been the means of her making stock, and it was so when she joined the Vitagraph Company.

Miss Gray enjoys the distinction of having played opposite a number of leading artists, some of whom came from the legitimate stage to pose for a single picture and her work in every case has been received with critical commendation. Although having been with the Vitagraph Company but a short while, she has appeared in a number of successful pictures, the most important being The Smoking Out of Bella Butts, The Hand of God and The Girl That Might Have Been.

During the hours when she is away from the studio, Miss Gray finds time to write stories, scenarios and poems and to illustrate and make head-covers for magazines. She believes in “living up to what light you have and in being true to yourself.”

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The Secret Room

Two-Reel Kalem Picture of Horror — Owns Spectator Till Happy Ending Begins.

Reviewed by Hanford C. Judson

Never was a happy ending more welcome than in this picture by the Kalem Company, The Secret Room. It is one that demanded some relief at the close; for it builds up a veritable nightmare and would have been almost insufferable if one couldn’t wake up from it — insufferable from sheer horror. “The hardened reviewer” has no shield to protect his nerves from such a theme as is pictured here. He is only hardened to often repeated themes, like the public to a new song growing old; a new theme such as this will get as effectively under his skin as any normal man’s. People have thought up situations of terror before this and even put them into pictures — psychological, devilish situations that were born on some blasted heath where the soul loses its grip and becomes the naked prey of dominions — but in this picture the showing is made real. We have seen only three or four other film offerings portraying horror that were as effective. When the spectator sees it he will know whether he has strong nerves or not. If some spectator happens to be blue and dyspeptic it may be to him like some “hysterico passio,” some King Lear’s “climbing sorrow” for a while. No one will call it dead or flat or sloppy or any other of the names disgruntled spectators have abundant store of to give the worried exhibitor. As a nerve-thriller, it wins with both feet.

The author of the script new or classic is not given; but Tom Moore produced it and plays the Mephistopheles role as a doctor learned in Eastern lore. The honors for acting go to Ethel Clifton as his wife, although every one of the entire cast plays ably and in first-class professional style. Robert Ellis plays a derelict whom the doctor buys. The man was about to commit suicide on account of a girl and the doctor wants to use his life and promises to give him a good time for a few weeks. The doctor’s house is fitted up in Oriental style; he has a Hindoo servant (Paton Gibbs) and his wife has a great unexplained sorrow. There is a mysterious room in the house. The wife’s niece, Marguerite Courtot, comes on a visit and wonders what is in the closed room. The “time” of the bought derelict is now up and he comes to the house. We soon see that the girl was once his sweetheart and that it was for her that he was about to commit self-destruction. But they now make up; the man for the moment forgetting that he is sold. Now we find that the doctor has an idiot son and that his purpose is to take the mind and intellect he has bought and give them to his son. If some unforeseen thing had not happened just at the right time he would have done it too. Betty Peterson plays the mad boy.

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W. S. Hart in Mr. Silent Haskins

Cast again in his favorite role — that which has made him nationally famous as a character actor — William S. Hart promises to create another stir in motion picture circles soon in Mr. Silent Haskins, an interesting western story to be released by the Kay Bee Co. Feb. 19.

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Edison Story on Historical Incident — A Quadruple Exposure Feature

An unusual photographic feat — a quadruple exposure — was successfully executed by Edison Director Eugene Nowland in The Boston Tea Party, a forthcoming release, in which the effect is tellingly used in a patriotic speech during a stirring moment of the play. A dramatic heart-interest story is woven in and around that famous historical incident, where the early settlers rise against the government and, disguised as Indians, dump the cargo of tea into the harbor. The play bristles with action. Every historical feature is preserved, down to the smallest detail. Miss Maxime Brown, a pretty, young Edison actress, does some excellent riding in the play.

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Temple Theater Changes Hands

The Temple of Ocala, Florida, erected some few years ago by the Marion-Dunn Lodge No. 19 of Ocala, was recently sold to E. C. Bennett and Charles H. Lloyd, both residents of that place. The consideration named in the transfer was $23,560. Mr. Bennett, who has had the management of the Temple since it was opened, will continue in that capacity.

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“Betty” Gray

Scene from The Secret Room (Kalem)

Collection: Moving Picture World, February 1915