Creighton Hale — A Hale Fellow Well Met (1919) 🇺🇸
“| am afraid,” said Creighton Hale, as he greeted us, “that I am going to make mighty poor copy.”
by Sue Roberts
Promptly we made use of our ever- ready “Why?”
“Because,” he answered, while an amused smile curved the corners of his clean-cut, boyish mouth, “I cant talk about my favorite country estate, nor about my preference for my Rolls-Royce to any Pierce Six, nor can I say that my pet dog is a thousand-dollar pom. So, so far as a press story goes, you have picked the wrong person.”
Our spirits rose. We were decidedly tired of talking to stars who owned every extravagance. We regarded the young man beside us with respect.
He looked like a prosperous young business man. His clothes were well-tailored but did not spell theater. He wore no jewelry. He made no attempt to be impressive. He was natural.
“I hate press stories,” he went on. “In order to live up to publicity printed about them, stars would have to be millionaires a hundred times over. You cant fool the public! They know that, with the exception of two or three, actors are not millionaires, and it only makes them ridiculous to chant about their ranches, farms and country estates — in the plural. And anyway, does the public go to see us for what we have or what we are?”
Truly that round, boyish face masked a man’s mind.
“We work hard. Day after day, when I was working in the Pearl White serial, I left my house at Great Neck at 7 a. m. and drove the little old bus to Jersey City, worked steadily all day, coming home any old hour at night, sometimes so utterly fagged I’d fall asleep at the wheel — and catch myself making a bee-line for an obstructive lamp-post.”
“You are an American?” we hazarded.
“Su-r-r-re and I might talk like this,” said he, rolling his r’s maliciously.
“Oh, Irish?”
“Right, born in Cork… and —"
Seeing there was no way out of it, he recounted his history.
Creighton Hale’s father was an Irish singer and manager, who used to tour Ireland in repertoire. It was only natural that the lad should go on the stage; as a matter of fact, he was carried on before he could walk. Later he played all sorts of little Willies all over England and Ireland.
His histrionic activities were interrupted for a time when his father sent him to school in London. There he took up electrical engineering, but gave it up as a bad job and returned to the stage.
Ten years ago Hale came to America with Gertrude Elliott, (Lady Forbes-Robertson), and her company, remaining here ever since. His account of his first knowledge of pictures was told with a true Irish sense of humor.
“I had known House Peters,” he said, “in Indianapolis, where we were both members of the same stock company. When the season ended I came to New York to hunt a job, as we all do. One afternoon, while parading Broadway, I met a friend who said that a company calling themselves ‘Famous Players’ had been organized, had hired an old barn on Thirty-fourth Street and were going to make pictures. ‘Why dont you try for a job?’ he said. ‘They say there’s good money in it.’
“Nothing doing,” said Creighton Hale, and was rewarded shortly by an engagement to play at the Criterion Theater with John Mason in Indian Summer.
Pictures slipped his memory until, again on Broadway, he ran into House Peters. Peters oozed prosperity. His overcoat was of the latest cut, his hat obviously new, and he wore yellow gloves that had never seen the light of day before.
“What’s the matter?” said Hale. “Find a gold mine?”
“No,” said House, ponderously, “I am playing in pictures.”
Such prosperity was not to be slighted, the young Irish lad decided, but he wasn’t at all sure he would like pictures nor that he would be a success in them. So to try them out he secured a part as an extra under an assumed name. He played in a Virginia Pearson production in which Theda Bara was also an extra. “She was queer even then,” said Hale, dryly.
What he saw of pictures did not impress him mightily, for he decided to remain in the spoken drama. Only to have Frank Powell, then a director for Pathé, see him on the stage, take an instant liking to the young man with the blond hair, seek him back-stage and induce him to go into pictures in earnest. Hale appeared successfully in The Taint, The Exploits of Elaine and The Romance of Elaine. Some of his most likable successes were attained as co-star with Gladys Hulette in Pathe pictures. At present he is co-starring in the new Capellani [Albert Capellani] series of pictures with June Caprice. He is especially interested in their first production, Oh, Boy, the original role of which he created on the stage.
Creighton Hale’s chief fad is horses. “Now mind,” he cautioned, “dont say I enjoy my horses. But I do like to ride, and I know how a horse should be bridled and handled. I have played around with them ever since I was a kid.”
He is a clean-minded young chap, a member of the Lambs and, while he is an excellent actor, he is not one with the hectic glow of Broadway.
He has an infinite respect for the intelligence of his audiences and bewails the fact that directors feel they have to pound home every point in a picture drama.
“The great trouble with pictures today is that they leave nothing to the imagination of the audience,” said Hale.
“I’m sorry I haven’t any wild, thrilling story to give you. I am just I, you see,” he said, in parting.
But we, we weren’t sorry to have met a real human without any stagey foibles.
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Creighton Hale was born in Cork, which makes him Irish thru and thru. His father was an Irish singer and manager who used to tour Ireland in repertoire. It was only natural that the lad should go on the stage; as a matter of fact, he was carried on before he could walk
Ira L. Hill’s Studio
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Collection: Motion Picture Classic Magazine, June 1919