Chester Morris Defies Fame's Jinx (1934) 🇺🇸
Two of the most pathetic sights in Hollywood are, first, former picture stars now standing in line with the "extras," glad to get five dollars for a day's work. The second is the male star no longer young, who is struggling valiantly, though pitifully, through the role of a young lover when he should be playing the heroine's father, or, at least, her uncle.
by Hal Hall
It is sad but true that most Hollywood male stars when they turn thirty seem to think that they can kid themselves and the public into believing they are still twenty -one.
"But it can't be done," says Chester Morris, square-jawed Universal star, who has climbed to the top of the heap by virtue of his acting ability rather than by being so darned good-looking that women swoon when they see him. "The fellows who think they can do it are only storing up trouble for themselves."
Right here and now I am going to predict that Chester Morris will never be found in the line of five-dollar-a-day "extras," and he will never at forty be found trying to play the role of a chap of twenty-three.
Having spent a great many years in frugal-minded New England, he knows that a man's best friend in a time of adversity is a hefty bankroll, so he has established a trust fund that will be somewhere in the neighborhood of a million dollars when he is fifty. Even if it should pay him but a modest three per cent interest, the well-known wolf won't have any excuse to come snarling round his door.
As for trying to remain the youthful lover throughout the years of middle life, he has too much common sense to think it can be done. So you will probably see him in doctor and banker and big business man roles one of these days — but, if his plans work out, you will never know just when he made the change.
Morris celebrated his thirtieth birthday recently. I dropped in on the set of "Let's Talk It Over" to see him and ask him how it feels to be thirty. I discovered that in true Morris fashion, he has been doing a lot of thinking along constructive lines since that birthday. It might be well to let him tell it in his own words.
"I have never given much thought to what type roles I would play in future years until my thirtieth birthday," he explained. "I didn't feel a day over twenty -five on that thirtieth Birthday. I guess it was just the psychological effect of passing from the twenties into the thirties that started me thinking. Ever since that birthday I have been thinking more and more about the future, and I have definitely made up my mind that there must come a time when I will no longer be youthful enough to do the roles I am playing now.
"The problem is to know just when to quit trying to be young. I think the only way to do the trick is to do it gradually. Sort of slide gracefully into other roles without anyone's suspecting what is happening. Thank God for one thing. I do not have the handicap that some men in pictures have. I have never been a 'pretty boy' type. So the change will be much easier for me.
"I have always been a great admirer of Lewis Stone, and I hope that I shall be able to follow his lead. He slipped so gracefully and gradually from the young man to early middle age, and then to a dignified and entrancing middle age, that one never realized when the change came. Today he can give a lot of young fellows lessons in how to portray a tenderness and virility in love making that makes some young lovers look like rank amateurs.
"When I am forty I hope I shall have been able to keep the virility and romantic spirit of the twenties, but I do not expect to take the role of the young son of a wealthy dad and dash madly about in a topless roadster that is dolled up in college-boy fashion. That is out of the question.
"Fortunately, I am already playing, and always have played parts that verge on the heavy, and it will only be a step to get into roles that will fit. It will probably be some few years before I do get into roles that are decidedly different from those I do now, but when I reach them I hope you will never notice the transition.
"You might think me a bit crazy for getting so serious about the future when I am only thirty," he went on. But, I believe that when a man reaches thirty he should take stock of himself, and start serious planning for the years ahead. In the business of screen acting you hear so many people say that an actor has only from five to seven years in which to be a success and reap his harvest.
"There is no reason in the world why an actor should be limited to such a brief span. True, the non-thinking actor is limited, for he labors under the impression that he must play the same type of role as long as he is on the screen. He doesn't prepare himself for any other type. That's why so many actors are through after a few short years. They can't be hot, young lovers forever. When the crows-feet appear and the pouches show under the eyes they can't kid anyone any longer. They are through.
"That's what I want to avoid — being finished — washed up- when the front office discovers I am advancing in years. So, I plan to work gradually into heavy roles, and then into character parts without that awful flop which takes place when a man is suddenly called into the front office and is told he doesn't look young enough for the part.
"It is a pity that actors as a whole do not plan their careers beyond the good-looking, youthful stage, for I believe that the finest acting comes from the men and women who have devoted years to the gaining of experience; the finest pictures are those built around a player who portrays the role of a man or a woman who has passed middle life. Look at George Arliss, Lionel Barrymore, Will Rogers, May Robson or Marie Dressler. They put us youngsters to shame. But they have given a lifetime to their work, and their ability has ripened along with age. What a shame if they were not on the screen!
"So, that's what I hope to do — grow old gracefully, and make a gradual transition from youthful parts to those more mature, and as the years roll by, continue with my screen work."
Collection: Hollywood Magazine, August 1934