Burton McEvilly — The Curse of an Acting Heart (1924) 🇺🇸
At some time in almost every man’s life he gets stage-struck. There is nothing unusual or significant about that. But when a man so loves the theater that he would rather be an obscure and struggling actor than to win an eminent position in some other kind of work, then he is really born to be a trouper.
There is a highly successful play running on Broadway this season that exposes the heart of a Song and Dance Man. It gives the public a hint of the unrelenting grip the theater has on some people. The leading character of this play after years of playing in third-rate theaters breaks away and becomes a successful business executive. But as soon as he has paid all his debts he goes back to the stage.
That character might be any of a thousand men on the stage or in the movies. They are there simply because they love it, because the lure of playing in a land of make-believe is irresistible to them. Douglas Fairbanks [Douglas Fairbanks Sr.], as you may remember, promised to leave the stage when he married Beth Sully. For a year he worked for a bond house and then the call of the stage proved too strong and he went back.
The call of the theater is strongest in people whose mothers or fathers have been on the stage. Talk as they will to their children about the cruel demands of the theater, yet a note of awe is bound to come in their voices. And the children will try to follow in their footsteps.
It was only natural then that young Burton McEvilly should feel the glamour of the theater. His mother, Mary Burton, was a popular prima donna in musical comedy twenty-two years ago. His aunt sang at the Metropolitan. Their dearest friends were Fred Stone, of musical-comedy fame, and his wife.
Young Burton really got hopelessly stage-struck at the age of eleven. He started playing Hamlet all over the house even when his sister was banging ragtime.
When he got to prep school he specialized in dramatic club work. Really, his classes hardly existed for him. And later at Seton Hall College his major study was again that playful off-shoot of the English department. There he played in Richard III.”
He started out on the stage the next season perfectly willing to uplift the drama if he could only get to it. He started out bravely with a bit in Jack and Jill, a musical comedy that featured the incomparable knees of Ann Pennington. By the end of the season he was acting as understudy for the leading man, but they were a healthy lot and never gave him a chance to play;
After that the stage cold-shouldered him and he studied photography. Eventually, he landed in Richard Burke’s studio as assistant.
And then one day the makers of Screen Snapshots brought Pauline Garon to the studio to make one of those little informal movies of theirs. Burt was asked to be in it. and of course the old urge that should have been dead came back stronger than ever. He had to go back to acting.
At first he played extra. Just a little more experience, directors say, and they will give him a real chance.
Whether he is a good actor or not, no one can say yet. But one thing is certain, he is happier than he ever would be anywhere else. The urge to be an actor is nothing to laugh at, for it overshadows everything else in the life of a person who is really stage or screen struck.
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Photo by: Richard Burke
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, May 1924