Billie Reeves — One of the Three “Original Chaplins” (1916) 🇺🇸
It is not always the easiest thing in the world to interview a noted “funny man.” So many of them are, in real life (if you parody and say “reel” life, madam, you will be shot at sunrise), smug, sanctimonious individuals, who look like nothing so much as a country minister who is in a state of perpetual shock over the sins of humanity.
by Roberta Courtlandt
And so, when I sallied forth to interview Billie Reeves, comedian, I determined to be pessimistic. There is nothing, quoth I, like pleasing your victims — a grouch to a grouch — and whoever heard, read or dreamed of a comedian being anything but a grouch? — let us be contrary, or die.
A sad and sallow youth vouchsafed to unearth Mr. Reeves for me when I presented my request at the studio.
“Ah, ha!” jeered I, “even unto the third and fourth dependent.”
A minute later, a pleasant-faced gentleman appeared upon the threshold — so pleasant of face, with such a wide humorous smile, such friendly laughing eyes and such an air of wholesome geniality that I stared past him nonchalantly. Even when he announced himself as Billie Reeves I felt inclined to argue. One hates to have one’s pet theories thus rudely upset. I felt like denying him the right to be himself. But he seemed so very much himself and so very sure of his own identity that I accepted him willy-nilly.
“And what is it you want to know?” he smiled, as he dropped into a chair opposite me. “Please” (his eyes — well, you know his eyes, Screenites — laughed) “dont expect me to say the Motion Picture industry is in its infancy,” he pleaded. “The infant has long been weaned.”
I laughed and voted him a humorist, despite. “You’re English, aren’t you?” I asked, with hidden irony.
“Born in London, eighteen-sixty-five,” he admitted, “and after a childhood which was doubtless a period of dark despair for my parents, I made my first appearance upon the stage at the ripe age of fifteen. I was with divers English circuses, pantomimes, etc. I’ve been with Lubin for forty-four weeks, but” — he raised his palms in an exaggerated protest — “dont ask me what I like best. Pin not sure myself; have not had time to decide. Caution is my slogan. But I believe” — this with ministerial solemnity — “that I like pictures best.”
I felt that I had heard some edict issued by the Pope, or other weighty matter, and sighed gustily.
“About how many plays have you played in since you came into pictures?” I pursued.
“About one reel a week — so, forty-four,” he answered.
“And which of them have you liked best?”
“All of them” — impartially.
“And what is your highest ambition?”
“To play a part sans any bruise at all” — laconically.
“Are you fond of reading?”
“Not very. I’m fond of Laura Jean Libby’s novels, tho,” he appended, with a wistful gravity in his big eyes, “and I consider Walt Mason the international laureate. My favorite novel? The Alphabet of Love, lady, and Daisey Gordon’s Folly — also The Squire’s Darling.”
I’ll never know whether he meant it or not, but there wasn’t a twinkle in his eye, and his mouth was guiltless of mirth. So you’ll have to decide for yourselves, O ye who watch!
“And do you write?” I ventured, hoping for loftier heights.
He slung one acrobatic limb across the other and smiled at me, as who would say:
“Dear lady, if I could” — but, “Letters and contracts,” he admitted guiltily, “and not many of the former.”
“Do you consider the moral influences of the Motion Picture studios better than those of the stage?” I asked next, determining to strike deep waters.
“Assuredly,” he affirmed, and his eyes widened surprisedly at the question. “Why, the very fact that the working time of the studio is daytime goes far toward creating a moral atmosphere. The players can live naturally. The unnatural is always immoral. It is so ordained. On the stage you begin work at seven-thirty p. m., say, and you are thru at eleven-thirty p. m. You eat, and by the time you reach home it is a. m. again. You sleep the morning thru — the best working hours of the day — and start the whole thing over again. I’ve had an awful time getting accustomed to sleeping by night and working by day — I’ve done the other way round so much.”
Mr. Reeves was educated at Ardingly College, Brighton, England. He’s the kind of talker one loves to listen to, and he’s immensely popular around the studios.
He isn’t in favor of censorship of films because, he says, they cut some of his best work. And he believes that Motion Pictures are destined to outshine the stage, because they reach a wider audience. And the greatest improvement he can suggest in Motion Pictures is — more salary! (All who agree with him signify their pleasure in the usual way. The “ayes” have it!)
Mr. Reeves has brown hair and eyes, and he stands about five feet five inches and weighs about one hundred and fifty-two pounds.
“And do you approve of woman suffrage?” I queried, thinking that, being English and therefore accustomed to militants, he might have an original opinion to express. I wasn’t disappointed.
“Sure; let ‘em vote if they want to,” he answered readily, with an air of “It-doesn’t-cost-me-anything-so-why-should-I-care?”
“Why do you approve?”
“Because I believe in letting the ladies have anything they want. Anything to please them, say I,” he responded, very politely.
I had a sudden suspicion.
“You are married, aren’t you?” I ventured.
“Yes,” he answered, “awf’ly — married!”
So perhaps that’s a partial excuse for his attitude toward suffrage!
“Tell me something about your stage career,” I ventured.
“Everything,” he said, “if it will interest you. I began my show-life by being bound over as an apprentice, my master being a famous English acrobat and pantomimist. For months I was a mass of bruises and sore spots” — he rubbed his back reflectively— “and then I began to get the hang of some of the acrobatic stunts.
“I made my American debut,” he went on, “as a very much inebriated gent in A Night in an English Music Hall; after that my audiences would not allow me to draw a sober breath, so to speak, and I’ve been the poor- skate, who’s too full for utterance, in a half-a-dozen vaudeville sketches and in the Follies of 1908.”
An extra bright twinkle shot into his eyes. “In the Follies,” he reminisced, “my act was laid in a subway station, and I’m trying to get home, carrying several large packages in my arms, and a large one unci e r my belt, also. Everything that can happen to a helpless, well-meaning boob, happened to me; and all I know is that the ‘house’ never could get enough of my fool adventures,” Billie Reeves ventured a prophecy. “Some day,” he said, “I’ll put this act in pictures, and you shall see what you shall see. If they dont let me, I’ll star in Hamlet, sure as you’re born.”
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The Message of the Screen
by George Wildey
O Youth, hear you the Future’s siren call?
Her voice, like tinkling silver, charms the ear;
The roseate tints of promise ‘round her fall
And draw your eager footsteps ever near.
So bright the way, the day so rosy-light,
You may not glimpse the hidden snares of night.
0 untried Youth, I would not have you rush
With blind, unseeing eyes upon your quest;
I would that sudden peril might not crush
The eager spirit glowing in your breast.
So rough the road, that all enchantment seems,
‘Twere well to rouse you from your careless dreams.
Come, then, and sit with me a while, I pray,
And learn to know the heights and depths of life;
Learn how to keep unscathed the clean-cut way
And gird your spirit for the coming strife.
Know, too, the race is but for him who dares
To pluck the golden grain from out the tares.
For I shall show you clearly, not alone
The golden heights that seem so lightly gained,
But what of bitter travail men have known.
Thru which their high achievements were attained,
The cruel stress and striving, envy’s sting,
The sharp-fanged wolves of evil crouched to spring.
But thru it all, the endless storm and strife,
As clouds are meshed with sunrays, golden-spun,
So shines for him who seeks the best in life
The joy of vict’ries fairly, nobly won.
It is for me to point the way aright;
For you, O Youth, it is to see the light.
And if among the countless throngs that stay
To read my message thru unto the end
Be some whom I shall help along the way,
With chastened soul no storm of life can bend,
If only here and there be such a one,
It may be said of me sometime, “Well done!”
Collection: Motion Picture Classic Magazine, May 1916