Eileen Percy — Directed by Friend Husband (1921) 🇺🇸
I had no idea that Eileen Percy was a Mrs. Of course, most of the movie stars are married, off and on, but I just hadn’t visualized the dainty blond Fox star with a husband in the offing. So it was a distinct shock to hear her say when she opened the door of her handsome Wilshire residence for me one evening, “Do come in, I want you to meet my husband, Mr. Bush.”
by Celia Brynn
And you know I liked that about her. Most feminine stars keep Friend Husband very much in the background at an interview, and they generally tell you not to mention him in your story. The dear public, they explain, would much rather think their screen idols unattached than tied up for life — more or less —
Sometimes they present husband to you as “Big Brother’’ or as “Cousin,” and once a diminutive ingénue introduced her bald-headed life partner to me as “Father.”
But it wasn’t that way with Eileen Percy. “There is so much talk about unhappy marriages,” said she, “that I think the public would like to know about the ones that are a success.”
“I am sure they would,” I agreed heartily. “And how many years have you been married?”
Eileen and Friend Husband looked at each other rather sheepishly. “A year and four months,” said Eileen.
“Four months — and three days,” supplemented her husband.
“Well,” I said dubiously, “a year and four months isn’t terribly long.”
“But it’s long enough to make us perfectly sure that we’re going to stick together for the rest of our lives,” asserted Mrs. Bush, née Percy. [Transcriber’s Note: Eileen Percy and Ulrich Busch divorced in 1930]
The senior member of the firm of Eileen & Company is good-looking enough to be a leading man or an assistant director — but he isn’t. He’s just a plain business man and thinks that one professional in the family is enough. So does Eileen. If you’ve admired Eileen Percy on the screen, you’d admire her still more in her home. It is a very lovely home, with a big fireplace, rose-colored reading lamps, a big yellow Angora cat, and sleek bull terrier who answers to the name of “Peppy.” Eileen wears simple gowns of Georgette crepe with round necks and short sleeves that set off perfectly her lightgold hair, gray eyes and perfect complexion.
Is her hair naturally that shade and is her complexion her own? Ask me something easy. I do not pretend to be a wizard on beauty secrets. I only know that the effect is all that it should be. Why ask more?
There is no pretense about Eileen. She doesn’t gush over you. and she isn’t upstage. I don’t think she has any philosophy of life, and I’m positive that she hasn’t read Turgenef’s latest horror. She doesn’t play the piano, and it’s quite uncertain that she could discuss the Little Theater Movement in America. Her voice has a throaty, slightly husky quality, she smokes cigarettes, and she won’t be outraged because I am telling about it.
“Why not?” she’d say. “It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
She has never spent a dollar for personal publicity.
“That’s piffle.” she said, flicking the ash from her cigarette. “If vour work on the screen doesn’t speak for you. then you aren’t worth publicizing.”
Eileen was born in Belfast, Ireland. “Percy” is — or was — her real name, and she came to America in pursuit of a theatrical career.
“I had thought some of going back to Ireland for a visit this summer.” she interrupted herself, ‘‘but I guess they have enough trouble there without me being there to stir things up.”
“Oh, then, you’re a Sinn Feiner?” I asked.
Eileen stole a glance at Friend Husband. “Well, I’m not quite sure,” she said evasively.
But I’ve a hunch that if we had been by ourselves, her answer would have been quite different.
Without much trouble she landed in the Follies, and if you’ll look at her picture, it won’t be hard to understand why. Then one night Douglas Fairbanks [Douglas Fairbanks Sr.] saw her from a box seat and went around the next day to offer her the lead in the picture he was about to make, Wild and Woolly. So she came West three and a half years ago and has played with Bill Russell, Lew Cody, Frank Mayo, and recently signed a contract with Fox to be starred in comedy dramas.
“They engaged me at Fox to take the place of Madlaine Traverse, who had broken her contract in the middle of the picture,” she told me, “so I made Her Honor, the Mayor. which was to have been her next feature. I was perfectly rotten in it,” she said frankly. “It wasn’t my type of picture at all. It needed some one like Miss Traverse, who has a statuesque physique and a dominating personality. The critics were very kind and said that my work was good, but pooh! I know better.”
Her latest pictures with Fox have pleased Eileen more. They are Beware of the Bride and The Land of Jazz.
“Still,” she said, “I’m not so crazy about comedies, I’d rather do dramas with heart-interest themes.” This with another stolen glance at Friend Husband.
A horn was honking out in front, thus announcing that the studio car was at the door and that the interview was over.
Eileen was going to tell me about some fan letters she had received from Sweden, where they imagine her on account of her blondness to be a Scandinavian, and she started to walk down the steps with me, but Friend Husband caught her hand.
“Don’t stand outside in the cold, Eileen, dear,” he reproved her.
She said, “Yes, dear,” like a model housewife, and they went inside and shut the door.
Having seen all of which and having been duly impressed by it, I am sure that the fair Percy won’t mind my calling this story “Directed by Friend Husband.”
There is no pretense about Eileen; she just will smoke and won’t pose as a highbrow.
Kimonos that cost $25,000! It sounds like the latest bedroom farce, or the reckless excursion of a DeMille costumer, but it really is the simple story of Tsuru Aoki’s visit to Japan after an absence of twenty years. We poor benighted Americans who think that a kimono at the breakfast table is a kimono, and nothing more, have a great deal to learn. Tsuru Aoki tells Emma Lindsay Squier, and she will tell you, in the next number.
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, March 1921