Edythe Chapman — Secret of a New Mother Type (1924) 🇺🇸

I once knew a girl who changed her name because of her fondness for Edythe Chapman, who plays the rôle of the Puritanical mother in Cecil DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments.”

by Peter White

That was all of twenty years ago, of course, when Miss Chapman was on the stage. She did sweet and romantic parts opposite her husband, James Neill, whom you may have seen in character in the pictures, and her personality exerted a charmed influence over the hearts of dozens of young admirers.

I always look back on that incident when I see Miss Chapman to-day, and I have told her about it, and seen her eyes brighten, and heard her own lips recall how much these things come to mean to an actress in later life.

You’ve seen Miss Chapman in dozens of features, particularly those of Mr. De Mille [Cecil B. DeMille], like “The Whispering Chorus,” “Old Wives for New,” and “Saturday Night,” but you have never watched her do a character more difficult perhaps than that of Mrs. Martha McTavish, the woman to whom the letter of religion means more than the spirit. It isn’t the sort of part you’d expect Miss Chapman to play in view of the recollection that I have told you, because there is something forbidding about the type, and she has always been associated with a quiet, if sometimes too obvious, maternal gentleness.

The reason why Mr. De Mille selected her is somewhat curious. It shows just how much family background, and a person’s early life may come to mean in the studio, even when he or she is advancing in years.

Miss Chapman came of a stern old Presbyterian family of English descent who lived in Rochester, New York. They were kindly people, and her father was prominent. He was, moreover, reputed to be the third best penman in America at that time. Miss Chapman can remember that the first money that she saved, some fourteen dollars, was given to clothe an African negro for one year. She herself prepared to become a teacher of the missionaries.

All the time she had suppressed longings for the stage, and finally when she had the chance she left home and went to New York. All thoughts of a career as a missionary were put behind her immediately and she set out to obtain a part in a play.

Now, years later, the astute De Mille, ever well-versed m the selection of types, has resurrected for her, in a way, the surroundings of her early life.

—

Edythe Chapman’s rôle in The Ten Commandments is of a God-fearing woman, who has done a great deal of good in the world, and yet at the same time does wrong by her intolerance.

Photo by: Donald Biddle Keyes (1894–1974)

Collection: Picture Play Magazine, February 1924

—

Among Those Present:

1. Claude Gillingwater — A Movie Homesteader
2. Edythe Chapman — The Secret of a New Mother Type
3. Lou Tellegen — The Return of the Great Lover
4. Percy Marmont — An Overnight Success — After Years of Plodding
5. Virginia Valli — The Sleeping Beauty Wakes Up
6. Mildred Davis — One Half of the House of Lloyd
7. Will Rogers Rambles