Chats with the Players — Carlyle Blackwell, of the Kalem Company (1914) 🇺🇸

My! but Carlyle Blackwell was a busy bee when I caught him at his new studios at East Hollywood. He was just about to start on his first play there, and the whole company was jumping around and helping matters. With a brand new stage, property room, scenery and company, Mr. Blackwell had just got to the producing stage. Carlyle led me to the pretty cottage, covered with vines and flowers, into a comfortable office, where Colonel C. Rhys Pryce was putting the finishing touch to a scenario, and into a dressing-room which breathed comfort all over it. As Mr. Blackwell changed from the overalls he was wearing — for he has had a hand in everything that was done — to an irreproachable dress-suit, we talked.

“Yes, it has been hard work,” he said, “but we have a well-appointed studio, and we are all by ourselves.” Here are some of the things he told me about his past. It seems funny to write “past” about such a young fellow as Carlyle Blackwell, but he has won his spurs by assiduous work and study, and is at the top of his chosen profession right now. “I first had the desire to be an actor at Cornell College, and at the age of nineteen I joined the Elich Stock Company in Denver, a capital acting school, by the way. From there I went straight to the Keith and Proctor’s Stock Company in New York and remained with them for fifty-two weeks — an invaluable all-round experience. Then followed a long period of dramas, light comedies and musical comedies in and out of New York, including The Gay White Way, Brown of Harvard, Right of Way, and a short season with Bertha Kalich.”

“Well, then came an offer to go into the pictures. I was very doubtful, but eventually went with the Vitagraph, with which company I remained for some eight months. Yes, I was quite successful, and I left the Vitagraph and joined the Kalem Company. I have been with them for three years now and played leads all the time.” In answer to my question as to which of his photoplays he thought his best, Carlyle quoted The Redemption, The Invaders, The Honor System, Intemperance, “Fate’s Caprice” and The Wayward Son.

“And now what are your plans?” I asked.

“I am going to devote myself to society dramas and light comedies principally. I am very fond of both. It is my intention to get the best stories obtainable and to try and live up to the high ideals J have set as my standard. I have pleasant surroundings and a loyal company, so we ought to be able to accomplish something good.”

I think he will — I am sure be will. He is deadly in earnest and full of a quiet, purposeful energy. Above the medium height, slim and good-looking, and as well-dressed a man as there is on the stage to-day, Carlyle Blackwell manages to express himself on the screen as well as any man I know. Regarding his company’s loyalty, the studio radiates contentment and comfort as well as energy, and all this will be reflected in the pictures which will be released by the Kalem Company.

He is a pleasant companion and a cheerful personality, and his usefulness to the world of pictures has but begun.

I am now going to smoke that cigar he gave me to get rid of me. I will have a little chat with that Englishman, “Colonel” C. Rhys Pryce, who is such a goodfellow and Carlyle’s right-hand man. I may get another cigar.

R. W.

—

—

Collection: Motion Picture Magazine, March 1914