Edward Everett Horton — Horton is Horton (1929) 🇺🇸
"So I decided to give myself a vacation," continued Eddie Horton. "The only way to keep me off the stage, I knew, was to make it impossible to appear before the public."
He didn't want to break a leg or black an eye. All that was far too painful.
"I shaved my head." Eddie paused a moment, a whimsical moment, to sound the effect. "A regular convict clip," he added, and drew his lips in, as Eddie always does. They formed a narrow seam of red. Then the right corner flew up in that typical Horton smile.
That typical Horton smile. That typical Horton manner. That typical Horton style. That typical Horton look.
It gets them in at the box-office. Eddie is the Hollywood motion picture stars' favorite stage actor. That's saying something. Little Wampas baby starlets sit in swooning groups to watch him. Older character men lean back in parental approval. And when one actor does that to another, it's time to all clap hands.
Eddie puts the critics at a loss for words. Gardeniaed and spatted to review his newest play at the Vine Street Theatre, the critics rush out to write "Eddie Horton Again Scores in Typical Horton Part." They sit, befuddled, before their typewriters and try to explain the spell that this Horton guy weaves. They try to tell what it is about his gait, his voice, his manner, that makes him pack the little theater where nightly he performs in this play and that, The Queen's Husband, The Nervous Wreck and Mary's Other Husband.
Flattening Fattening Flappers
They try to figure out if it is his voice or his smile or the lobin-like wink of his bright blue-grey eyes that knocks the matinee girls for a row of non-fattening chocolates and their escorts for two tickets in the front row, center, please.
They try to figure out that, if he is so funny as a perfect sap, how can he make your heart contract when he puts his arms around Allen Vincent — "the ex-President's son" in Spread Eagle — and grips him tightly, while he lies and lies and lies about the whole darned thing to his buddy, Ben Hewlett, the reporter of the piece. And why little thrills race up and down your vertebrae when he says "Good-bye," with that rising inflection, to Lois Wilson. And never once kisses her. And all the time you know that he loves the gal and gives her up.
Oh, gosh! I'm getting to be a Horton fan. I'll be wanting an autographed photograph next. Two tickets in front, please, for the opening of every one of Eddie's shows.
"You've only seen The Queen's Husband and Spread Eagle?" Eddie's mouth performed a funny little quirk. "Then you haven't seen a 'typical Horton show.'"
Upstairs on the stage they were killing Maude Fulton in the second act and Allen Vincent was having his big scene. Downstairs in the Green Room Edward Everett Horton was talking. He was clad in a blue suit and the greasepaint which his art demands. It was the same greasepaint, I should rather guess, that he had worn that day for his cinematic appearance with May McAvoy in "The Terror."
In Behalf of Lois
"The Nervous Wreck is a typical Horton show. Lois Wilson will play the girl. She is so wholesome, genuine, likable, that she makes the public like the sap. I have played The Nervous Wreck many times before, but never with a girl of Lois's type."
They say Eddie was offered a big contract to return to New York and play The Nervous Wreck on Broadway. But he refused. He likes the climate.
"The audience figures that if a girl as sweet and charming as Lois can like the hypochondriac who plays the hero, that he can't be such a bad guy and maybe they'll like him a little too. When she falls in love with him, that puts him ace high with the audience. That takes the curse off of sap roles, when a nice girl will look at him. And the sap role, incidentally, is a typical Horton part."
Eddie's made forty motion pictures and has been in Hollywood nine years. He came West to appear in stock at the Majestic Theatre, he has been in stock in Philadelphia, in Portland, Maine, in Brooklyn — where he was born — in Pittsburgh, in Albany, in Scranton, in Wilkes-Barre, in Portland, Oregon.
"Spread Eagle is a bit of a departure from the usual Horton stuff. It is more serious." Upstairs a shot rang out, and another Mexican bit the dust. "It is not a sap role. The hero is sophisticated, rather bored. The reviews were not good. In fact, they were rather bad."
His Views on Reviews
Eddie looked as if he were rather glad they had been poor. His words were short-clipped, like a close-trimmed English hedge. But there was underlying humor in his tones.
"I don't mind a bad review now and then. It revives interest. People get to saying 'I hear Eddie Horton's new show is punk,' And then they rush to see the next one to see if it is true."
Eddie has made forty pictures. Ruggles of Red Gap, a sappy English role, directed by James Cruze, was the first. Then a fantasy, "Beggar on Horseback," which was what might be termed a flop.
If it had been released now as a German importation directed by a man whose angles are all cubistic, it would undoubtedly be a sensation.
"You can't halt the action of your film to insert a subtitle every hundred feet to remind your audience that they are looking at fantasy, not realism."
It was Theodore Dreiser who said in speaking of a certain type of comedy, "Are not these nonsensicalities but variations of that age-old formula that underlies all humor — the inordinate inflation of fancy to heights where reason can only laughingly follow; the filliping of the normal fancy with the abnormal?"
And then there was "To the Ladies," which was not a bad picture at all. And, now and then, between legitimate theater engagements there have been pictures at Universal, "Taxi, Taxi!" being one, — La Bohème for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer being another. There was also a series of two-reel comedies, produced by Harold Lloyd, for Paramount release.
But, somehow, the motion picture public has not become addicted to Horton as they should. Not as the Los Angeles theater-going public has.
Shaving Himself from Temptation
So I shaved my head," continued Eddie, picking up the abandoned remark and shaping it into a lariat of conversation. "It was nine or ten years ago. I had just returned from Oregon where I had been in stock. I went up to the Maine woods — miles from anywhere — alone with my dog. I wanted to spend the entire summer there. But I knew that if I got to thinking of the theater, I'd be popping back into town at the end of two weeks. The only thing to do was something that would make me unpresentable. And I shaved my head."
Today his hair is dark and shining and well-brushed. There may be discreet grey hairs at the temples. He admits he has been on the stage for eighteen years. His first appearance was in the Columbia University play, In Newport. He's been on the oards continuously ever since.
"It was so desolate in the Maine shack that all I could hear was the Iorn cry of a loon, the rustle of pine needles, the soft drip of a nearby waterfall. One day I was out on the lake and I saw a taxi steam up and a tall figure descend. I couldn't imagine who it was. Paddling back, hurriedly, I discovered my brother, Winter, back from the war and full of ideas, with a telegram for me in his hand.
"Winter wanted to go to Los Angeles and start some sort of business. I opened the telegram and there was an offer from the Majestic Theater in Los Angeles for me."
The Horton boys couldn't resist a Fate like that, so they went.
"Imagine the look on the face of the theater manager when he saw the new leading man enter with a Sing-Sing bob. But the hair grew and so did my liking for Los Angeles."
Winter D. Horton is now manager of the theater where his brother is nightly drawing crowds. A sister has moved West. So has Mrs. Horton, mother of so much talent. No wonder Eddie turns his back on Broadway.
He Likes Likable Villainy
"I'd like to play Scarpia on the stage," said Edclie, suddenly. " I'd like to play Scarpia with a sense of humor. I'd like to play Iago, with a sense of humor, on the screen. I suppose every actor has his aspiritions." And the wise, witty smile flared. It's hard for an audience to hate a villain with a sense of humor. And I should like to create a likable villain — one that they would have the devil of a hard time hating." No wonder the students at the University of Southern California insist that Eddie Horton address them every now and then. No wonder his fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, buys out the house every time Eddie opens a new show.
No wonder I want an autographed photograph. Three silver cocktail shakers stood guard on a table in the Green Room.
"They belong to the Bon Ton Club. Gloria Swanson and her husband stop in on Wednesdays, and Lois Wilson and Maude Fulton, and others. We call it the Bon Ton Social Club."
The sight that sets the sirens sighin' is Edward Everett Horton, little known to the films, but a byword for infatuation among the women who are.
The screen stars like Edward Everett Horton. But he evinces no less a leaning toward them — toward one of them at least. Which is natural, inasmuch as she is none other than Lois Wilson. The scene is one they took part in together at the Vine Street Theatre, in Hollywood Horton is Horton.
Collection: Motion Picture Classic Magazine, May 1929