Carmel Myers — She Wishes on Hay-Wagons (1924) 🇺🇸
When Appius Claudius Caecus mapped out his justly famed highway, twenty-two hundred years ago, he little thought that the day would come when it would serve as a sort of detour between Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards, Celluloidia.
by Lucille Bryers
But strange things happen, with the passing of the centuries, and all roads lead from Hollywood to Rome, and back, these days. Directors now roar in the Coliseum, once peculiarly the property of hungry lions, and where Nero stood gazing thru his emerald at scenes of pomp and splendor, film cameramen now “set up” on ruins and movie stars.
All of which brings us to Carmel Myers and myself, sitting one rainy afternoon in the Montmartre Cafe on the Boulevard. Carmel is to play Iras in Ben Hur for Goldwyn’s and so is to be a member of the latest Rome-going film company.
She is frankly delighted at the prospect, as indeed she should be. I’m sure I’d be glad to play one of the camels, chariots, or what have you, for a trip like that. Intent on gaining a few helpful pointers as to how to become a Roman movie star, I asked diplomatically:
“Miss Myers, how did you get this job in Ben Hur, anyway?”
“Well,” replied Miss Myers, and I’ll say for her that she appears to be an amiable, outspoken and unaffected young lady, “June Mathis insisted that the members of the cast have old-world faces. I have one — and besides, I wished on hay-wagons.
“I am not superstitious,” she continued. “That is, I am not very superstitious, but I do believe in wishing on hay-wagons. Every time I saw one I wished for this part of Iras, and I got it.”
I’ve been looking for hay-wagons ever since, but it seems to be an off season.
Now, it is an indisputable fact that many an ingénue wishes to be a vampire and vice versa. Comedians long to play Macbeth and Hamlet, and the gentlemen known in theatrical lingo as heavies not, infrequently cherish the desire to do comedy. The realization of such ambitions comes to but few.
Carmel Myers, tho, is one of Hollywood’s lady-like heroines who has undergone the metamorphosis and emerged a siren. I asked her if it had brought her great joy and satisfaction of spirit.
“It has not,” she declared promptly, “and after I’ve played Iras I hope to go back to the other sort of things. When people see me on the screen wearing backless gowns and smoking cigarets they won’t believe that I live quietly at home with my mother and brother.
“I’m tired, too, of having the men push me away. That’s all they do any more, as you’ll notice if you see any of my recent pictures. It was terrible,” she added unhappily, “to have John Barrymore push me aside all the time.”
I can well imagine that this would be trying. Carmel played with Mr. Barrymore in Beau Brummel and she would much rather talk about him than about herself. Really she would. When you see her in this picture, vamping him so determinedly, it may interest you to know that underneath the grease-paint was just a bashful young lady.
“Why, I was so awed at being in the same cast with John Barrymore that I hardly dared to speak out loud on the set, until the last two weeks that he was out here. Then, one day I brought my ukulele down to the studio and he heard me playing it. He liked it awfully well and got me to play one thing after another for him. Oh, he’s the most wonderful person. Everyone was crazy about him.
“He left for New York a week or two before the picture was finished and, do you know, the company just simply drooped after that. Nobody seemed to care whether they worked or not, and even the electricians and property men went around in the most dejected manner you can imagine.
“We all sent Mr. Barrymore wires of congratulation when he opened again in Hamlet in the East, and he answered them all. In the wire to me he said that he didn’t like Hamlet’s mama anywhere near as well as he did Beall Street Mama. That was the name of a silly jazz piece I’d played for him on the ukulele. I had the wire framed, and I’m going to keep it forever.”
With my usual keen intuition, I perceived that Miss Myers is some thing of a John Barrymore fan, as is indeed everyone else who has met the gentleman. Presently, tho, I got her back to the subject of herself.
“Fred Niblo is really responsible for making a vamp out of me,” she explained. “I always had wished to work under his direction and when he offered me the part of the home-breaking widow in The Famous Mrs. Fair I accepted it, altho it was entirely different from anything I had done up to that time. It really was just a small part, but every director in Hollywood must have seen the picture, and they’ve insisted that I stick to that sort of thing ever since.
“That is the disadvantage of free-lancing. You become known as a type and directors never think of offering you a role dissimilar to the ones you’ve been doing,
“But when I return from Rome I’ll be under contract to Goldwyn’s and I hope they’ll give me a part once in a while where I — well, where I get the hero at the end of the picture. Seriously, I’m getting tired of being discarded by the men.
“Why, when I think of the way John Barrymore pushed me aside —”
Miss Myers lapsed into a deep purple gloom. As luck will have it, she is one of the few screen heroines who at no time cherished the desire to become a siren.
From the day that D. W. Griffith gave her her first screen test, on thru the rather dreadful years of her Universal stardom and the following years of freelancing, Carmel’s interest was only in portraying virtuous and ladylike young persons for the silver sheet.
But the directors have changed all that. Whether she likes to or not, it seems quite probable that when she has finished vamping Ben Hur around Rome, she’ll come back to Hollywood and continue along the same lines, for there is something of the sophisticated allure about Miss Myers, before the camera. Personally, I hope she never goes back to the innocuous sort of stuff she used to do. She has developed a much more interesting screen personality since she has busied herself with leading the men astray. (You will understand that I speak only of her film activities.)
When I think of the rest of the cast June Mathis has selected for Ben Hur, I don’t know whether to roll on the floor with laughter or burst into bitter tears. But I’m rather counting on Carmel Myers to give us an alluring and altogether satisfactory Iras, even if she is still young enough to wish on hay-wagons.
I know a grand opera tenor who plays tiddle-de-winks.
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Carmel Myers said she got the role of Iras in Ben Hur because June Mathis insisted that the members of the cast have old-world faces… she has one. But she really thinks she got it because she wished on haywagons. She is not superstitious. But she does believe in the hay-wagon wishes
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Carmel doesn’t like being a siren. “Men push me away all the time. That’s all any of them have done in my recent pictures… ever since I’ve played sirens. Even John Barrymore in Beau Brummel.” That was too much. For Carmel is an enthusiastic Barrymore fan
Both photos by: Clarence Sinclair Bull (1896–1979)
Raynor, Chicago
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Collection: Motion Picture Magazine, July 1924
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