Kathleen Kirkham — The Divine Spark of Kathleen (1920) 🇺🇸
Nine tailors may not be able to make a man — but they go far toward putting a beautiful girl on the list of stellar possibilities, provided — provided that girl has beauty, intelligence, charm, magnetism, histrionic ability and a few other things.
by Doris Delvigne
It is because she realizes the value of clothes in her work that Kathleen Kirkham is having a wardrobe room built on the back of her lovely Delaware Avenue bungalow to accommodate her countless frocks and wraps.
It was in this bungalow that I was chatting with her — one could find no more charming spot for a chat. There are low windows stretching right across the room and almost to the ground. In fact the side walls have French windows opening out into a beautiful flower garden. Her own pet table is by a front window where a small shaded lamp gives light o’nights and where the sun streams in by day. The walls are papered — a strange thing for a California house, since we incline to wainscotings and frescoes. Rugs with blue or mulberry tints are much in evidence and chairs are most inviting.
“When did it first dawn on you that you couldn’t live without acting?” I asked her.
“When I was about ten years old,” she smiled. “I was born on the shore of Lake Michigan, at Menominee, to be exact. We had ten, twenty and thirty-cent shows there and on Saturday afternoons I went with the other kiddies of my age to see the hair-raising melodramas.
“Well, grand father had a big barn, divided by a partition wall which he allowed us to use for a theater. We cut a huge door into the partition and with the driftwood which the boys gathered from the lake, we built an arena but it looked more like a circus when I look back on it now. Of course we couldn’t remember the dialog of the thirty-cent houses but we had the general idea and would make up the words as we went along.
“They voted me leading lady unanimously but — the ‘little brother and sister who lived in the house standing on the same lot which the barn stood on refused to let us on the grounds if they couldn’t play the leading roles. I didn’t really care for I wanted to display emotion and the ‘heavy’ usually has more opportunity along that line so I thereafter played the heavy.
“At the first Saturday afternoon’s performance we made a dollar and fifty cents. We only charged a penny but elderly visitors who felt kindly disposed and appreciative of our efforts were at liberty to give more.”
Miss Kirkham has a charming and infectious smile. Her voice is low and well modulated and even at the early age of ten she must have made a favorable impression with it. And like her chum, Lois Wilson, she has soft, golden brown hair and, most wonderful of all, a natural complexion. But then, as she admits, she is “disgracefully healthy.”
“What did you do with all that money?” we probed.
“We wanted in the worst way to buy a watermelon, but after a long discussion we decided we’d invest it in wall paper and the boys promised they would paper the scenes so that our next drama would be a real eye-stunner.
“Our mothers, generally, would not come to the shows. My mother, in particular, had no wish to see me develop into an actress. However, after much persuasion she promised to come. At that time mother was very stout and we put her up on a higher seat than the others, in what she considered a dangerous position because she did not trust the rough platform we had built — and we charged her five cents because she took up so much room!
“As the show progressed, mother waxed indignant. She said that not a single member of the cast appeared without something belonging to her and that her curtains and other belongings kept bobbing up at the unexpected moment. We of the play felt rewarded, however, when the local newspapers heard of our company and sent representatives over. After the paper had written us up we played on amateur night at the ‘Little Theater’ in town. While I appeared there a member of the aforesaid ten, twenty and thirty-cent company saw me and offered me a position but my mother would not allow me to accept it.
“I was to go on to college with the money my grandfather had left for my education so when the family left Michigan and settled in Los Angeles, I was sent to the Cumnock Academy. After graduation I had a three months’ course at the Egan school and there I studied under Marshall Steadman [Marshall Stedman].
“One day I went to the Morosco Theater — I sat in the outer office of that theater so long that every attache came to know me. Then I invited Mr. Morosco’s [Oliver Morosco] secretary out to lunch, and finally was able to push my way into his sanctum, but — he had nothing for me except encouragement. I then saw Donald Bowles, and finally got an engagement to play with Dustin Farnum in The Virginian.
“It was while waiting for an engagement that I went into the movies. I had disappointments But I think they’re helpful if you do not yield to them. One grows stronger thru knocks properly met.”
Later in her conversation she told me of her screen idol — one whom she hopes to closely follow one of these days. To her Elsie Ferguson’s acting is the acme of screen artistry.
She has had splendid advantages and is broadminded, and cultivated and in every way a high type of refined American girlhood. In her new starring venture she will play real American girl parts. She will be interested in out-of-door sports and able to discard the vampy, décolleté gowns she has heretofore worn. À bas the fishtail creation; ‘twill be an uncherished memory. And with the donning of ordinary clothes will arrive the longed for opportunity to taste those sweets which Elsie Ferguson has known. The change will prove to Kathleen’s fan-list that the designing of multitudinous frocks for designing vamps and blasé social leaders has not killed the “divine spark” in a heart that has beat hopefully since her tenth year for just such honors.
“The offer I am now considering will take only one year and I am glad of that. I do not wish to tie myself up for a longer period. I shall learn a great deal, I shall try myself out and decide just what I wish to do in the future,” and the faraway, dreamy look that came into Kathleen’s blue eyes promised much.
Happy Kathleen Kirkham! To have a dream house of her own; to be popular with her fellow players and fans and directors; to be young, beautiful and happy, to remember herself as the little “heavy” in grandfather’s old barn and to know herself as Kathleen Kirkham of the Pictures! Also to know herself the contented wife of a happy husband and mistress of their little “Dream House.” No one would wish her less and it would be difficult to wish her more!
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Photo by Lauritz Bros., L. A.
“I think disappointments are helpful,” says Kathleen Kirkham, “one grows stronger thru ‘knocks’ If they are properly met”
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Photo by Albert Witzel, L. A.
Miss Kirkham will discard the vampy décolleté gowns and fishtail creations in her new starring venture and play real American girl parts.
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Collection: Motion Picture Magazine, January 1920