Boyd Marshall — Sans Grease Paint and Wig (1914) 🇺🇸
For weeks Boyd Marshall had been in proverbial “hot water” and all because he was made the victim of a perfectly good press story.
by Mabel Condon
At least the man who “pressed” the story said it was a perfectly good one and the picture magazines that published it thought it perfectly good. The only one who disagreed with this general verdict was Mr. Marshall. Rather selfish, of course, but then —!
The story had to do with a mothers’ Club meeting and Boyd Marshall himself.
As far as Boyd was concerned, there was no such club, no such meeting and he has proof that on the day in question he was working in a sweater and five-degrees-below-zero weather in a Princess picture. As far as Boyd’s reputation was concerned, however, he was there. And both Boyd and his reputation have been feeling the effects of his imaginary presence ever since.
For Boyd made an address, so the press story goes, and he did not choose the topic of “Mother-Love as Applied to a Child,” “The Value of Mothers Versus Fathers,” or any such prosaic subject. Nor did he tell “How Motion Pictures Are Made” nor relate “The Narrow Escapes I Have Had Before the Camera.” No indeed, Boyd would be original or nothing. The press agent chose the former path of duty and valiantly Boyd trod it (in print).
Boldly he announced to the listening club that “The picture houses of New Rochelle should be closed on Sunday!” The club gasped. So did Boyd (when he read it). But, in print, he hesitated not. He took advantage of the gasp and forced the statement home. Then he shook hands with all the mothers, declined the tea and the all but invisible sugar wafer that is the inevitable finish of a mother’s club meeting, and went victoriously on his way. Then came the reckoning. The Boyd Marshall who had worked all day in the Princess picture found that evening that somehow his presence at New Rochelle’s best photo-play house did not seem as complimentary to the management as it had formerly been. At the theater in the next block the manager forgot to wish him “good evening,” and his visit to the third house brought no smile of welcome even from the man who sold him a ticket.
It was not until the press agent triumphantly showed him the account of his day-before’s speech that light dawned upon the bewildered Mr. Marshall. It not only dawned, it grew; so also did his indignation and when it reached its greatest height it did so to the accompaniment of a promise that the speech, which he had unconsciously made, should be modified; that his boldly proclaimed statement should retreat before the one of less violence— “Sunday programs, educational in nature, are desirable, also procurable.”
“And now,” concluded Mr. Marshall from the shade of a sheltering oak — or maybe it was a maple — anyway it’s the tree that stands at the entrance to the private road that runs past the Thanhouser-Princess studio and that overlooks Thanhouser park, Thanhouser road and the street car tracks. It’s a little tree, but it throws a big shade, and that’s where Mr. Marshall was waiting for the auto he expected would “whizz ‘long” any minute and pick him up to later deposit him at a stone quarry where the Princess players were to “put on” one of Phil Lonergan’s scripts.
“And now,” Mr. Marshall began for the second time, then stopped and concentrated his attention upon a black speck far down the street. The speck developed into an auto truck and he of the Princess leads faced the opposite direction and resumed, “peace is the quality that prevails and I, for one, am enjoying the calm.” That last is a word that especially fits Boyd Marshall for nobody could ever possibly accuse him of being un-calm. He takes himself and his work seriously, but he does not always give them out to you, on the screen seriously.
But he was characteristically serious that day under the shade of the sheltering oak-maple tree. Maybe it was the view of Thanhouser park with the trees and grass and things that go to make a park a park that brought him memories of home, which he said was Port Clinton, Ohio.
“There,” he stated with no sign of apprehension as to the non-appearance of the players’ auto, “there are lots of good times and homey folks, but not much opportunity; in this line, anyway,” he added, removing his hat to let the New Rochelle breezes play with his smooth, dark pompadour.
“At that, though,” he continued as the breeze and the pompadour made friends, “the stage was not my aim when I left Port Clinton.”
“No?” I asked, noting a street car stop for a prospective passenger.
“No,” Mr. Marshall answered, “my ambition was to be a professor of Latin and Greek. I probably would have become one eventually if, in my second year at Ann Arbor, they hadn’t elected me a member of the Glee Club.”
“Latin and Greek and the Glee Club,” I marveled.
“Yes,” went on Mr. Marshall, “they didn’t agree so I gave up the Latin and Greek and the folks at home very nearly gave me up. It took some time before they would consent to my attending the Michigan Conservatory of Music; their consent was quite necessary as it meant their assuming the expense.”
“Well, I vocalized through a course that seemed to satisfy everybody and then I decided to try for the stage. I did and attained it through a Lasky act. Then there were others of Lasky’s vaudeville engagements and then I obtained a singing and dancing partner and toured in an act of my own entitled The Wall Between. Then I went to the Coast and played in stock. My next ventures were with Delia Fox in Delightful Dolly, and with Fritzi Scheff in Mlle. Modiste. After that I played musical stock in Elmira.
“Elmira,” commented Mr. Marshall, with his gaze as far away as that town, “is a perfectly good place to rest; but I didn’t care about resting indefinitely, so I came to New York and because I had been in the habit of patronizing the picture theaters all my spare time while on tour, the thought of applying for a position in a picture company fascinated me so I came to the Thanhouser studio. The Princess company was just being formed and I seemed to fill the requirement of the youthful lead, so here I’ve been ever since.”
I remembered that Mr. Marshall with his sleek black hair, his brown eyes and well rounded frame that wears well the newest mandates of fashion, had been rushed into a “Friday the Thirteenth” film as his try-out (and the first Princess release) and that the result was a flood of inquiry as to the identity of the nice-looking young lead.
“Of course,” Mr. Marshall resumed, “my voice is getting a rest though I use it for my own amusement and whenever else I am asked to.”
Remember that program and dance last January out at the Thanhouser studio? Then you remember hearing Boyd’s singing voice, for it was a feature of the program; it’s a baritone and Boyd seemed to enjoy using it as much as his audience enjoyed hearing it.
“By the way,” began Boyd, putting on his hat and bringing his gaze back from Elmira. And when a person starts out to tell you something by beginning “By the way,” you can be sure it is going to be something interesting. But I never heard whatever the tidings was, for just then the waited-for auto came from the direction from which it was not expected and Boyd had only time to shout “Good-bye” as he jumped onto the running board of the car that merely slowed up, and as it turned the first corner, instead of being considerate enough to wait till it got to the second one, the abducted Princess lead hadn’t even a chance to call out “Tell you later!”
—
Rose Gardens Open
It was a night of roses, that of the opening on Sept. 14, of the Broadway Rose Gardens at Fifty-third street. Electric roses dropped in showers from the extended hands of the gay Pierrette topping the perpendicular sign which beckons to Broadway for blocks on either side of the theater, and when the baskets at the base of this sign are flowing over with roses— lo! the baskets empty themselves and the shower starts all over again;
The booklet issued as a souvenir of the evening of September 14, is an important one, in that it makes the initial announcement of Dr. Wilbert Shallenberger’s election to the presidency, of not only the Broadway Rose Gardens, but also to the Thanhouser Film Corporation. In both offices he succeeds the late Charles Jackson Hite [Charles J. Hite], who was known and respected throughout the motion picture industry as a man of loyalty and honor.
Others to whom the booklet gives tribute are George F. Kerr, who is general manager and vice-president of the Gardens corporation and who is favorably known to the theatrical and newspaper world, and to Mrs. A. McIver Kerr, who is the hostess of the Gardens and credited with the origin of the Gardens’ idea. As a professional hostess, she has attained a reputation that, alone, vouches for the refinement and safety which unchaperoned women will always find at the Rose Gardens. Her’s is a responsible position in the Gardens’ organization, but her ability bespeaks her certain success.
The likeable face of Dr. Addison E. Jones looks out from another of the booklet’s pages. One feels that whatever Dr. Jones would sponsor would be worthy of confidence, and as vice-president and general manager of the Thanhouser Film Corporation, he continues to lend his strong personality to the directorate of this corporation and that of the Gardens.
W. Ray Johnston has taken but a short time to come into the notice of the film public and now he qualifies for this notice as treasurer and director of the Gardens, auditor of the Thanhouser Film Corporation, treasurer of the “Beating Back Film Corporation,” assistant treasurer of the Syndicate Film Corporation and president of the North Avenue Theater Corporation of New Rochelle. His marriage to Violet Hite, sister of the late C. J. Hite, was an unpretentious event of last spring.
And of course, the Gardens has to have a mascot and the general choice was little Helen Badgley, the “Thanhouser Kidlet.” Helen is an animated copy of the Gardens’ chosen flower, the rose.
Ann Clover Morgan and Clarence Gaynor will be the court of appeals as to dancing at the Gardens and the aim will be a change of dance specialties each week.
The tiled floor of the lobby blooms roses and within the theater the repose of its gray and white fittings is fired with the rose of the stage curtain and the old rose of the decorations where the “Thirty Leagues Under the Sea” pictures make their premier New York appearance and start the Gardens on their rose-paved way.
From the theater a corridor leads into the rose ball-room. It is called the Danse De Pierrette, this ball-room of roses, and here two orchestras, one Orientally costumed, provide the music to the gay measures of which the gayer Pierrots and Pierrettes frolic for the entertainment of the Gardens’ patrons.
It is this Danse De Pierrette that particularly answers to the name “Gardens,” for its roof is one trellised with roses and roses climb over the railing of the balcony; and roses, huge bunches of them, are everywhere that, room can be spared for them.
—
Canadian Rights Sold
The Equitable Film Exchange of Montreal, Canada, has purchased the exclusive Canadian rights to all of the Life Photo Film Corporation productions. Mr. David Roskam, the president of the Equitable Exchange, made a flying trip to New York City in order to close this deal, which gives him the exclusive selling and booking rights to all the Life photo productions in Canada. Mr. Roskam has just opened a pretentious suite of offices at 591 St. Catherine street West, Montreal.
Camp fire scenes taken in outdoor places at night by the continuously-blazing light of a wonderful new invention of chemicals, have successfully been filmed by the cinema experts of the Balboa Amusement Producing Company’s studios in Long Beach, California.
Collection: Motography Magazine, October 1914