Edna Hamel — The Screen Children’s Gallery (1914) 🇺🇸

Edna, who still has two years to travel before entering her ‘teens, is, in spite of her tender youth, a theatrical veteran, having begun her artistic career as the “Baby” in Francis Wilson’s popular success, “The Bachelor’s Baby.”

by W. Stephen Bush

Four times she has been to the Coast and very many more times she has tasted the adventures of the road. She played with Thomas Jefferson in “Rip Van Winkle.” For the last five years or so the Edison studio has been her headquarters. Asked for the reason of her pronounced loyalty to the Edison studio the young lady replied that “she liked the way Mr. Plimpton spoke to her when she made her debut in the silent drama.” She and “Andy” [Andy Clarke] go to the same school and are inseparable, “Andy” seeming satisfied at all times to defer to her. Like “Andy,” she is ambitious in her studies in school, and only recently received a prayer book from one of the sisters as a reward for her perfect lessons. She, too, is tormented by the admiration and the “silly questions” of her schoolmates.

“Recently I played a part where I had to fall into the water, confided Edna to the interviewer, “and they asked me whether I got wet.”

At the suggestion of Mentor Bannon, the little miss danced a highland fling on the spot, the mentor furnishing the music.

Some of the Edison pictures in which Edna has been seen to advantage are “Sophia’s Imaginary Visitors,” “The Little Bride of Heaven,” “Mr. Sniffikin’s Widow.” The pictures accompanying these lines show “Andy” and Edna in a new picture called “Quarantine.” It promises to be very funny.

When it became known in the studio that the interviewer of screen children was around a charming group of all the rising artists gathered like bees around a hive and Mr. Seay, the children’s idol, snapshotted them in a jiffy.

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Group of juvenile actors at the Edison Studio.

Collection: Moving Picture World, March 1914