Chats with the Players — Fred Mace, of the Keystone Company (1913) 🇺🇸

There are a good many broad avenues in Los Angeles, that thoroly up-to-the-minute city, and street upon street of beautiful all-the-year-round bungalows — but it contains only one Fred Mace.

Lest you do not know him by name, and recall only his laughter-breeding, rosy gills and those flippant little gestures, all his own, and remember him only as “that man” of the Biograph Company who poked such clever and ridiculous fun at Sherlock Holmes, in the “Sherlock” pictures, and whose Algy, the vigilant, blundering watchman, was as odd a creation as the Handy Andy of our fathers, to say nothing of his One-Round O’Brien, the Don Quixote of pugilism, let me introduce him again — Fred Mace, late of Philadelphia and New York, now settled, with his parents to bless him, permanently in Los Angeles.

Fred does not claim to be one of the original cherubs of the “City of Angels,” but he is the merriest, most whole-souled, jolliest-faced citizen that they have captured and tamed in many a day. It was not that Fred loved the Biograph Company less, but that he loved the town of his adoption one better, and, too, the little garden patch of flowers by the bungalow’s side, and the old folks glorying in his home. Small blame, says I, and “good cess” to him. But I have put the trunk-rack before the bonnet — Fred has lately come into a car, and talks mostly in the language of the auto — and I must tell you how I met him.

I had gone out to his home, 305 South Union, primed for a write-up, but was informed by his Jap man-of-all-work that he was out cruising in his new car. I turned away sadly, down a country road.

Fred Mace was not to disappoint me, however. A cloud of dust, accompanied by the hum of a well-tuned motor, came to my eyes and ears. Presently a streak of gray machine shot up the road, and stopped in front of me.

A rosy man, about thirty-four, I should say, with merry, gray eyes, crisp, dark-brown hair and an agile shape of some two hundred pounds, jumped down beside me. There was no mistaking the famous double-peaked cap of a Dutch rabbit-shooter, and the joyous, flapping gesture of his hand. It was Fred Mace, out for a holiday — no one could miss his identity.

“Hop in,” he said, in a “get-acquainted” voice. “You’re the interview man; yes?”

We sped south, toward the coast.

“I just couldn’t leave this town,” he began, “when Biograph left, so I joined Keystone, with Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand.”

We lit cigars. I missed his familiar calabash of photoplays.

“To begin with,” he resumed, “as to whether I am married or not, the jury is still out, but I’d love to have a wife and four children in the pictures — expenses are heavy to the breaking point.

“My early education was not neglected,” he went on quickly, “critics to the contrary, for, after romping thru about all the schools in Philadelphia, I was graduated as a first-class M.D., also, later, a D.D.S. (dentist). Don’t forget the ‘graduated.’ I never use these letters, however, except in extreme cases, like giving myself gas and filling my own teeth.

“My eventual call was for the stage, tho, and, among many other plays, I reckon my favorites to be those in which I starred — naturally. The Chinese Honeymoon, Piff! Paff!! Pouf!!!, The Empire, Time, Place and the Girl and the Chocolate Soldier were the most successful ones. There were others conducive to outdoor work, such as walking home —no, don’t put that down. My career was, rather, an escalator of unbroken successes.

Good?

“But, as in my adolescent life, I felt that I was filling the wrong cavity, so to speak, and so joined Biograph out here two years ago. Then the Imp Company, and, now, Keystone, since my joining them, the finest of them all. Such is fame.

“As an afterthought, I concede other great photoplayers, however, such as Costello, Bunny, Walthall [Maurice Costello | John Bunny | Henry B. Walthall] and Mary Pickford. Mary Pickford, bless her! Since her husband is in far New York, I can say, without fear of contradiction, that she was the sweetest ever.”

We slowed down in front of his bungalow; his talk had been so rapid-fire I had lost count of time and place.

“Won’t you come in and look at my books?” he asked. “Very fond of Whitcomb Riley and Kipling — got some first editions of them.”

I thanked him, and spent a pleasant half-hour in his study. I noticed, en passant, that here was no littered camp of the proverbial actor, but a well-ordered, cozy home.

A curious thing was that as soon as we had settled down in his study, his talk became less abrupt, more contemplative, less flippant. Maybe it was the influence of his surroundings — the psychology of home. We shook hands cordially at parting. I had almost forgotten a pet question of the editor’s and put it, as a Parthian shot: “Have you any theories of life, health, or living?”

“Keep clean,” he answered quickly, “even tho an effort at first. You can apply it to ‘most everything — health, morals, or a sore back. After a while all the neighbors get the habit, and you can backslide just a little. Keep the brake on going down hill, blow your horn (even in your saddest hour), and hire a man to clean your car.”

“Is this literal or figurative?” said I, a bit puzzled.

“Arcadia Mixture,” he smiled, with a flip of his plump hands; “smoke it in my calabash.”

The Tatler.

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Collection: Motion Picture Story Magazine, April 1913