Bill Boyd — As He Is (1930) 🇺🇸
The strong, silent man of the West, my leetle cheeldren, is no legend, no saga of the sagebrush. Nor, my dear sophisticates, is he a humorous figure, an object for your derisive amusement. He does exist, and he's a damn nice guy. The prototype of Zane Grey heroes, made credible by a head on his shoulders and a sense of humor, lives in Beverly Hills by accident. There are counterparts, no doubt, but the one referred to is William Boyd.
by Margaret Reid
No one calls him William, and I doubt it even his nearest and dearest ever call him Will or Willie. Bill is his name and his character as well. He is a movie actor, but without trimmings, his present profession the outcome of a career that began among the cattle of Oklahoma.
Cattle is perhaps too pretentious a term for the lone cow which furnished Bill's first job. The death of his father, a civil engineer, left the family in modest circumstances, and when Bill was five he could wait no longer to make a fortune for his mother. He got a job driving a neighbor's cow to and from pasture, deriving therefrom ten cents a week.
A couple of years later, sensing that there would be little chance for advancement in such work, he resigned. He was engaged to sweep out the local grocery store before school hours, repeating the process at noon, and after school to serve as clerk and delivery boy. A disciple of progression, he demanded and received twenty-five cents per week.
Midway through high school, he became discontented with the opportunities Oklahoma had to offer, and left home in an optimistic search for wealth. Followed a period of "Seeing America First," in many and varied capacities, clerking, selling automobiles and drilling for oil being a few of the Boyd experiments. In the army during the World War, his chagrin was intense when the armistice was signed before he got across.
Hearing of the financial opportunities in San Diego, Bill took a westbound train from New York. On the train a man engaged him in conversation. He introduced himself as Bryant Washburn and suggested that Bill had the appearance of movie material. Bill replied politely to the gentleman, whose name he had not previously heard and which he promptly forgot. At Orange, a town a hundred miles from San Diego, his ticket ran out, and with thirty-five cents in his pocket, he was invited to leave the train. Finding that the only opportunity Orange offered was the fruit of that name, Bill got work picking oranges.
In this nomadic calling he traversed Southern California. Wherever there were orange groves, there Bill eventually turned up. During a sojourn in Riverside, he formed an acquaintance with the manager of the famous Mission Inn. This man was personally acquainted with Cecil DeMille, and believed that Bill might interest the director. Boyd sheepishly accepted a letter of introduction.
His wanderings led him to Los Angeles on speculation. But the jobs that he had been assured lay around in the streets did not materialize. He was broke. And his healthy appetite was a nuisance. In his pocket he came across the letter to DeMille, crumpled and dirty. He had looked everywhere else for a job. He might as well try this.
At the old Paramount studio on Vine Street, Bill talked his way past Alan Hale's father, who guarded the entrance desk. Finding DeMille's office, fortune attended him in the momentary absence of secretaries. Knocking on the door of the inner sanctum, he entered briskly and presented his letter before DeMille could deny him entrance.
Slightly annoyed, DeMille glanced at the letter, told Bill there was no opening and bade him good day. Bill settled himself comfortably in a chair and wanted to know why there were no openings. Asked if he had had any experience, he replied in the negative. DeMille ventured a doubt that Bill could act. Bill was privately convinced he couldn't, but thought it politic to take offense at this. He rose and started out, haughtily remarking that if DeMille didn't want to hire him, he'd find some one who would. DeMille, amused by his cheek, relented and sent him to the casting office.
A few days later Bill was given a call and decorated the distant background in "Love Insurance," a Bryant Washburn picture. His next work was in one of the DeMille "Why Change Your —?" series.
The set was a big one, DeMille's nerves on edge and Bill ignorant of the craft to an astonishing degree. Some blunder which distinguished him from the three or four hundred other extras called down upon him the director's wrath. The DeMille wrath was heated, but while the rest of the company quailed under the storm, Bill was indignant. Who did DeMille think he was talking to, anyway, he demanded of the director, who then recognized him as the cheeky youth of the previous interview, and curtailed his wrath for other matters.
That evening twenty people were selected from the extras on the set. They were to be a sort of experimental stock group, to be trained and groomed for featured roles. There were ten girls and ten men. Among the latter was a bewildered ex-orange picker.
Bill is perhaps Hollywood's champion extra. The fact that he was in stock did not indicate immediate advancement. Far, indeed, from it. Stalking along the background, he carried everything from spears to teacups in more pictures than any one remembers.
His persistence stretched over several years of nondescript bits and small roles. On one occasion he was signed for the lead in a picture at a hundred dollars a week. It was the luck of a lifetime. He was jubilant. That night he was run over by a car and his leg was smashed in several places. The subsequent six months were spent in his little furnished room, the leg in a plaster cast.
All things seldom come to those who wait, but to Bill they really did. He began to get breaks other than the ones in his leg. Roles of more importance came his way, leading gradually to The Volga Boatman, from which picture he stepped to stardom.
Not a brilliant Thespian, he frankly avoids roles that are foreign to his own nature. His personality being the basis of his success with the public, he is wise enough not to shed it for alien characterizations. He has no illusions about his ability.
He is the victim qf an inferiority complex that renders him inarticulate in moments when he is the cynosure of attention. Considering the demands which any one in the public eye must meet, he is almost painfully shy. His sense of inadequacy in the face of what people expect of an actor causes him acute embarrassment. He feels he should scintillate and, knowing he can't, he becomes silent and ill at ease.
His paramount love is his home in Beverly, a fairly large, not particularly distinguished Spanish house set in trim gardens. Inside, the decor is heterogeneous — but invitingly comfortable, the major-domo a skillful, quiet negro. It is Bill's first home and he adores it. The day's work through, he can scarcely wait to get home, shut his door on the world and be at peace. Most of his evenings are spent in front of the fire reading. His literary taste is indiscriminate, his special favorites Harold Bell Wright and Peter B. Kyne.
He has a few friends whom he likes to entertain, most of whom are intimates of his extra days. His closest friend is Howard Higgin, his director in several pictures. Men like Bill. They understand him rather better than do women, to whom his diffidence and lack of sparkle is puzzling after the practiced gallantry of the Boulevard. His small talk consists mainly of "Yes, ma'am," and "No, ma'am," and he never brings up the subject of his pictures, which makes him a rather inadequate filler at a Hollywood dinner table, even if he did accept invitations.
It is two years since Bill has attended an opening, or gone to a restaurant or hotel. He goes occasionally to movies and thinks talkies are swell. The microphone has been kind to him, his low-pitched drawl accentuating rather than detracting from his personality.
He loves to gamble and has never won in his life. He likes poker, which he plays badly but enthusiastically, and frequent card parties at his house enrich his cronies. No amount of discouragement can dampen his ardor for the tables at Agua Caliente, and he claims to own all the chandeliers and most of the elevators through his losses.
Since he first began making decent money, he has had a manager who puts him on an allowance and from whom he can wheedle no extras. Consequently, his money is invested and steadily increasing.
He likes good clothes and, so far from blasé is he that the first wearing of a new suit makes him feel that people are turning around, lost in admiration of the quality.
His separation from Elinor Fair marked the end of his third disastrous marriage. It would not be surprising to find him embittered, yet he is not. There is, however, a wistfulness about him, for he is the type of man to whom the quiet joys of home are essential to happiness.
Of an even temperament, he is not given to moods. Which makes him the delight of studio confreres. He never gives difficulty on the set, and to all and sundry he is Bill, never Mr. Boyd. Howard Higgin, the other half of a mutual admiration team, finds in him a spring of instinctive emotion — untutored, innocent of technique, a flair for understanding and accurately projecting a thought. Higgin also thinks that Bill, with his years of unobtrusively absorbing the workings of pictures, will some day make a fine director.
Bill, abashed at the suggestion, dismisses it. You can tell Bill your golf score or your troubles. You can tell him where he's wrong. But you can't tell him he's good. Unless, that is, you enjoy the spectacle of six feet two of brawny manhood in a state of embarrassment.
Mr. Boyd doesn't have to say "Call me Bill," for people beat him to it.
This unusually striking photograph of William Boyd matches perfectly the story opposite, in which Margaret Reid describes, with fine discrimination, the forces that have made Bill one of the best-liked stars as well as one about whom the least is written.
Photo by: Russell Ball (1891–1942)
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, April 1930