Edward Burns — Overcoming a Handicap (1924) 🇺🇸

Youth is one of the greatest assets a screen actor can have. But sometimes it is a handicap.

Edward Burns [Edmund Burns] found this to. be the case. For a long time he was kept playing juvenile rôles when he wanted to be a leading man. On one occasion he begged a casting director to let him play opposite a girl star some years his junior. “Wait till you’re a little older, son,” the director said. If we gave you that part the audience would take her for your mother.”

But he finally did become a leading man. He played opposite Constance Talmadge in East is West, and recently played leading man to Gloria Swanson in The Humming Bird. After that he played with Agnes Ayres in a similar capacity. From now on we shall probably see him being featured more and more.

Burns drifted into pictures six years ago, after having been a salesman. A Fox casting director, mistaking him for an experienced actor, cast him in a picture which William Nigh was to direct. Burns, not even knowing how to make up, got Nigh to apply the grease paint for him, by flattering him on his own make-up in a picture in which Nigh had played a part. The first scene was an easy one, and when Nigh expressed himself as being satisfied with the rushes, Burns thought he had better make a clean breast of his inexperience. Nigh took it in good part, spent some time in coaching him, and as the other scenes in which Burns had to appear were not taken until the end of the picture, he had a chance to prepare for them by observing the others.

“But the company had a good laugh,” Burns said, “when I told them later that after that first day I tried to remove my make-up with soap and water.”

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Photo by: Eugene Robert Richee (1896–1972)

Collection: Picture Play Magazine, August 1924