Ernest Truex — Who Put the True in Truex? (1919) 🇺🇸
Whoever did, or whatever did, it’s a good job. A thoro one. A complete one. And by the same token, there is nothing so difficult to recount as the essential truth. It defies ornamentation as unworthy. It scorns fine verbiage. It evades floweriness. It jeers at platitudes save of the nudest. And I must tell the truth herein, if I never have before, the truth, the whole truth about Ernest Truex because, integrally and essentially, Ernest Truex is essential and integral.
by Esther Elvidge
There is nothing of the mummer about Truex. There is nothing reminiscent of strutting, peacockwise. the boards; nothing of the spectacular; nothing of the Jarley Waxwork exhibition spirit. He is quite simply Man, the Male. More, he is fundamentally, wholly and avowedly a Family-Man. Capitals intentional. He is first of all a Family-Man. In his family, in the very bosom of his family, rests his interest, his heart and the fine good spirit of the comedy-akin-to-tears which animates his work. He rings true because he is true.
He had rather a quaint picturesque Beginning-of-Things, considering the fact of his birthplace, which was Rich Hill, Missouri. Rich Hill, a typical, rather stultified, seen-in-the-Movies little Western town. Father Truex was a doctor. Came there once to Rich Hill a magnificently characteristic Old-Time Actor, a relict of the Time of Booth, phrase richly dear to the hearts of the Craft. He was called Edwin Melvin. He had. describes Truex, with a humorous tenderness, a mouth that connected the ears with an amazing facility and a staggering display of gold teeth. He had rheumatism and he had memories. “I was with Booth, sir,” he would wheeze portentously; “with Edwin Booth. I was the Gravedigger to Booth’s Hamlet, sir, the gravedigger, sir. With Edwin Booth.”
Fate and increased rheumatics maneuvered Melvin into the hands of Truex père. Truex père did things, did great things, sir, for the rheumatics. Result: near-death-bed gratitude on the part of the histrionic Melvin and a promise gutturally intended to “make a Booth of the lad, sir, a Booth of the lad.”
The young, six-year-old Ernest-lad was nothing loath to be made a Booth of, having cherished in secret rather vaguely Boothian aspirations long ere the advent of Edwin Melvin. Edwin Melvin organized a Dramatic School and young Truex enrolled.
Edwin Melvin was a relict of an Old, Old School. He was old himself; sad, no doubt. He was sick and weary, an artist who had become humorous rather than a humorist. But he was a sort of an artist, at least an artist-soul basking in the long-glancing rays of genius dead and gone. He knew the methods of Booth. And the tricks, if tricks there were. He knew his richness. He had savored his legend. He gave a dark, sombre, heavily fragrant but invaluable store to the wide-eyed, open-eared young Truex. At seven he had young Truex strutting the boards as the Melancholy Dane. Conceive — at seven! Hamlet, seeped in tragedy, at seven. “My kids,” said the grown-up Ernest, “sing ‘Over There’ and do a bit of jazzing and that’s the limit. They’ve probably never heard of Hamlet. If they have they think it’s some new brand of breakfast food. I’m just as glad.”
Shortly thereafter, the Truex home in Missouri broke up and young Truex toured about the country with his mother and another child, a girl, of his own age. They did Shakespeare in all the small towns. Cant you see them? Pigmy Romeos and Juliets languishing with a passion it would take them years to grow and tears to know. Gay Rosalinds, grim frantic Lears, imposing Petruchios, dark vengeful Iagos and Othellos.
Then some manager saw the youthful Shakespeareans and young Truex played his first real role on the real stage as Little Aldus in Quo Vadis? From then on he just kept steadily at it, studying when and where he could in between times, working, growing more and more in love with his art, more and more determined to make good.
Now, before the low-water mark of thirty, mere adolescence for the fortuitous male, he is playing on Broadway, has played on Broadway and has effected a sinecure in the coy heart of Gotham, both speakily and screenically.
He speaks almost with perfervor of Chaplin. Chaplin, the Artist. Almost with reverence. He would like to be, he says, sort of an “Intellectual Chaplin” not that Charlie is not intellectual — he must be, of necessity, to do what he has done — but more deliberately intellectual… without the impedimenta of straight comedy — the mustache, the shoes, etc… He doesn’t want to have limitations, this Truex. He wants scope… room… breathing-space…
He is tremendously glad, he told me, of the new way in which the stage is coming to be regarded, has come to regard itself. An actor used to be sort of a freak, he said, stared at everywhere, hardly human. Now, actors are become businessmen. With methods. With dignity. With little or none of the, to him, offensive calcium. Even with commercialism, which doesn’t in the least infringe upon their artistry — on the contrary —
“This standing about the clubs,” said Truex; “drinking… gosh! Or, going about in cafes as something of j a side show. I dont see it. My profession is my job and I’m going to make good on it — I’ve still a long way to go and I’m going — but I’m merely an ordinary human being earning my bread and butter, and not anything to lose an eye over.”
One does not blame him for being a Family-Man when one regardez-vous ! photos of said family. The delectable, refreshing photos of Mrs. Ernest — and Philip and Jamie. One mentally accredits him with just that much more sound sense. One envies him in a manner of speaking.
“My boys and I are pals,” said Truex, with enthusiasm delightful to behold; “I’d rather be with them, doing things with them, than with anyone I know. I like to think they feel the same. They’re pretty much the whole show with me. When I built my house at Great Neck both Mrs. Truex and I built it for them, around their comfort and convenience. We all do things together. Talk everything over. We’re an awfully happy family. My mother, who was my pal thru all my first strivings, lives with us, and every one is pleased. There’s nothing like it.”
I asked him if he would like to see small Jamie, or Philip, or both, become actors later on.
“Why not?” he asked; “with the profession what it is, and what it will be then, if they love it honestly, if they make good on it — why not?”
Thus Ernest Truex. He is obviously awed by what he calls his “good luck.” He is having one splendiferous time out of everything and everybody. He is quite gorgeously in love with life. Life is quite extravagantly in love with him. For the rest — why not?
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White, N. Y.
Left, a study of Ernest himself, and, below, Mrs. Ernest and the two Truex kiddies, Philip and Jamie. “My boys and I are pals,” says Truex. “I’d rather be with them, doing things with them, than with anyone I know. They’re pretty much the whole show with me”
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Above, Truex in his dressing-room, and, below, as he appears in the stage comedy, Please Get Married, with Edith Taliaferro. Truex has been actively on the stage since he played the role of little Aulus in Quo Vadis? as a child
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Favored by the Stars
Boncilla Beautifier is a constant delight to use. The skin responds immediately to the treatment. Blackheads vanish — the complexion becomes rarely smooth and satiny.
Corinne Griffith
The Precious Gift of a Velvety Skin
Collection: Motion Picture Classic Magazine, June 1919
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