Edward Earle — Our Mary’s First Leading Man (1918) 🇺🇸
“Perhaps you have heard of an old melodrama called ‘The Silver King.’ No? Well, it’s not surprising. Things grow old, die, and pass away quicker in the theatrical world than anywhere else.”
by John Dolber
I looked at this Ancient Mariner and grinned. From his words you would have thought he wore chin whiskers and could speak of Abraham Lincoln from personal knowledge. The fact is that he was a young, boyish chap, slim and eager-eyed. It was Edward Earle, who thus calmly adopted the role of a Thespic Rip Van Winkle. He grinned at my grin and went on with the yarn.
“It was while I was playing in The Silver King in Toronto, years ago, that I first met the girl referred to in the company at that time as ‘that little Smith girl.’ For years I carried about in my trunk with me a photograph of her in the ragged costume she wore in the play. She had a shawl, her toes poked out of her shoes and she carried a bundle of papers. The autograph in round childish letters said ‘Yours truly, Gladys Smith.’ It was not until several years later, when, looking at a Biograph picture, that I realized that ‘that little Smith girl’ was Mary Pickford.
“During the run of The Silver King ‘the little Smith girl’ annexed a whole family of kittens which she kept in her dressing room during performances. She often caused consternation to the stage director by bringing them out during rehearsals, and in a tragic moment would precipitate them upon the keys of the piano where they would scramble up and down until corralled by a property hand and taken back to the Smith dressing room.
“It was also at this time that ‘the little Smith girl’ seeking to avenge herself upon her mother for some necessary chiding she had received from this thoughtful parent, took her best ring and buried it out in one of the Toronto gardens, announcing the fact of its disappearance to her mother, thereby securing, as she thought, a sufficient revenge.”
Having started life as Mary Pickford‘s leading man would seem a sufficiently auspicious beginning for any young actor, but then, of course, it didn’t bring Edward Earle the attention in those days that it would today. He was fourteen and Mary Pickford eight. Still, the course of true love ran quite smoothly for him, his true love being the stage. “Blessed,” remarked a philosopher of old, “is the nation whose annals are vacant,” referring, of course, to annals of wars and vicissitudes. There have been no wars or vicissitudes in the annals of Mr. Earle. I said something of the kind, commenting that he must have found success rather easy of attainment.
“Easy!” he almost shouted. “Easy! Why, I’ve had to fight for everything I ever had.”
“Do you remember Alice in Wonderland? How she ran and ran until she couldn’t go any further and when she dropped by the wayside she discovered that she was just where she started from? ‘Why,’ she exclaimed, ‘I’ve run so fast and I haven’t gotten anywhere at all!’ ‘No indeed,’ they answered, ‘if you want to get anywhere you’ll have to run twice as fast!’
“It is so with us. We work and work and work, and if we stop for breath we discover that we are just where we were when we started. If we wish to advance we have to work twice as hard, so I have worked twice as hard and I have been rewarded bv a fair amount of success.”
Fair amount indeed! Mr. Earle has attained, in four years, a very enviable position. He breezed into the New York film colony four years ago and said, “I’m here.” That’s all but it was enough. Immediately the Edison Company took advantage of the fact. He was a success from the start, for not only did he screen well, but they learned that he could skate and dance — not just well, but wonderfully — and besides he could do anything else that they wanted him to do — fight, swim, row, fence, drive a car, and has added to the list of his accomplishments, aviation.
So you see Mr. Earle’s success did not just happen. It didn’t even come knocking at his door. He had to get out and unearth it.
From the Edison, he went to the Metro, but his greatest success has been with the Vitagraph Company where he is now working. This is because his director had perception enough to know that Earle’s greatest asset was not his clothes nor his appearance nor his histrionic ability but his keen sense of humor. He is about to be launched in a series of comedies. Wesley Ruggles, who directed “For France,” Earle’s biggest success, has been drafted and the polite comedies in which Earle and Agnes Ayres are starred, are directed by Graham Baker.
But while Mr. Earle bears no battle scars from his career, lengthy for so young a man, he has collected a lot of interesting anecdotes about stars with whom he has played. He says that his most enjoyable stage experience was with De Wolf Hopper.
“Few stars I have known are so well loved by their companies,” said Earle. ‘We all called him Wolfie, though he seldom barked or growled, and I never knew him to bite. He was a wonderful entertainer and thoughtful for the comfort of each member of his company. Many, many nights after the performance we would sit around the stove in the lobby of a small town hotel listening to the wonderful stories Wolfie could tell. It was a remarkable fact that he never repeated himself.
“Sleeping late was one of the things he liked best to do. He always had a note put on his door, ‘Please do not disturb,’ and would make an appearance only in time for the performance or to catch the train. One morning, however, getting down to breakfast at 10 o’clock, I was startled to find Mr. Hopper, his breakfast already finished and he reading a newspaper. With a proud smile he announced he had been up since 6 o’clock, adding the explanation that a little child in the next room had waked him at that hour with the repeated inquiry of its parents, ‘Is beakust ‘eddy?’
That was the pass word among the members of the Hopper Company for several weeks following.
“I passed several Christmases with Hopper on the road. One that comes particularly to mind was celebrated on a private car between Cheyenne and Denver. Getting into Cheyenne I had been delegated to go out and get a Christmas tree. So before the evening performance I sought a grocery store, bought an eight-foot tree and all the ready-to-eat groceries available, and marched down Cheyenne’s main street to the train with the tree over my shoulder. Mr. Hopper bought out the five-and-ten store, and after the performance that night we had a wonderful celebration.”
David Belasco has no more devout admirer than this same Mr. Earle.
“There is another example of the necessity of work to success,” he said. “I suppose many people think that all Mr. Belasco does is order other people around, and sit back and enjoy the results. Nothing could be further from the truth. He is indefatigable. For two years I was in a Belasco Company. I recall a Belasco rehearsal which began on the afternoon of a balmy fall day and ended twenty-four hours later in one of the most awful blizzards I have seen.”
But while Mr. Earle is an entertaining story teller, that is not the thing one likes most about him. If you must know, you who are acquainted with him only from seeing his shadow on the screen, it is this — that he confines all his acting to this same silversheet. He is at once a pleasant young chap, with whom any one would be glad to sit around for an hour and swap yarns, for he’s just as good a listener as he is a talker.
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Director Graham Baker explaining the set to Edward Earle and Miss Agnes Ayres, who is playing opposite Mr. Earle in his series of “polite” comedies, for Vitagraph.
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Mr. Earle’s success did not just happen. He had to get out and unearth it.
Edward Earle is essentially a leading man, not a villain. Consequently he needs expert direction in this gun-man scene they ere about to shoot. But he’d better throw away his cigarette before he starts in; it’s a good prop, but rather out of place in a big scene like this.
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“Now, do it like this, Mr. Earle,” says Director Baker. “If I did it like that I’d be a director, not an actor, “ said Mr. Earle, while Agnes Ayres looked on.
The “little Smith girl” (Mary Pickford) — would brine her kittens out during rehearsal and in a tragic moment precipitate them upon the piano keys.
Collection: Photoplay Magazine, March 1918