Even the Athletes are Lured (1927) 🇺🇸

Verily, what an invasion of athletes into the movies! Charley Paddock, “Red” Grange, sometimes known as Harold, and Gene Tunney have led the way. Armed with glittering athletic records, these three stalwart youths swept down on the film fold to make their debuts before the fans of the nation in films characteristic of their varied professions.

by Barbara Miller

Red in his gridiron thriller, One Minute to Play; Gene in The Fighting Marine (Tunney was a member of the Marines during the World War before he became a pugilist); and Charley in The Campus Flirt — in which, we hasten to add, he appeared as one “Charley Paddock, the world’s fastest human,” and left all amorous diversions to Bebe Daniels.

Now, in all seriousness, what chance has a mere Latin lover against such lusty competition? For even the most picturesque toreador is decidedly at a disadvantage in the spring, when who won the “880” is the really vital topic of conversation; in the fall, when Red’s, or his successor’s, latest sensational dash down the football field is discussed from Maine to California; and practically every night in the week, when the “fights” are of major importance.

To add variety to the onslaught, the three invaders are totally different from each other, with only their interest in athletics in common. For, obviously, it was their athletic fame that made them fit candidates for film glory. What drew them to Hollywood? Grange came for the money, frankly. “It pays well,” he naïvely remarked, anent his new avocation.

Tunney is a chap who never overlooks a bet. Here was another chance at both gold and glory. So he took it. There was a vacant space in his schedule, between a Florida jaunt and the time when he should begin training for the famous fracas with Jack Dempsey. So Tunney the fighter became Tunney the moving-picture star pro tem.

Charley is a restless, energetic soul. He has made money and has made his name known across two hemispheres. The film game appealed to him as absorbingly interesting, as well as lucrative, the sort of thing in which a fellow who worked, and used his head, could go far. And Charley intends to keep on going. He displays no tendencies to settle down just yet.

“It’s a great game!” he says, with characteristic enthusiasm. “There are so many things to learn — I didn’t realize how many until I got started on The Campus Flirt. Maybe I’ll get along. Maybe I won’t. But I’m going to work darned hard. Because I like it.”

Charley Paddock is one of the most interesting chaps I have ever met. For some miraculous reason he is quite unspoiled, though for years he has heard that indisputable proof of fame, the awed whisper, “There goes Charley Paddock.”

A scholar, too, this boy who made good in his studies at the University of Southern California as well as shining on the athletic field, where he managed to acquire practically every dash record available. And now Charley is the kind of movie actor who taps out stories for a newspaper service between shots, who lugs his trusty portable along on location and improves the not-so-shining hours.

Though he received several offers to star in one picture, to be produced in the belief that his brilliant athletic record would draw the requisite shekels to the box office, he declined, not relishing the idea of being a star for just one short picture and then having to revert to being just a member of supporting casts. For he knows that actors — like sprinters — are not manufactured in a minute. Then came the chance to play in The Campus Flirt as the so-called second lead. And he took it to “learn the business.”

In college, Charley was a boy who was not afraid to stand out alone against his whole fraternity if he wanted a certain fellow to wear his pin. He’s like that now. Has decided ideas, some of which are distinctly out of the ordinary — for Hollywood.

For instance, he heartily approved of Miss Daniels’ edict to the effect that women members of The Campus Flirt company should not smoke while scenes were being filmed on the University of California campus. Also, he wouldn’t smoke before the camera. Simply wouldn’t play that type, he declared. Interesting but surprising.

It was one of Hollywood’s well-known hot days when Red Grange and I discussed the fun, and other things, of being a movie star. The Grange set, over on the F.B.O. lot, was jammed with formidable youths in football togs — perspiring, sunburned, good-natured. There was the college atmosphere about. Red himself looked decidedly collegiate in gray flannels and sport shirt, minus the tie. It was his day off, the first in weeks.

After a businesslike “How d’you do?” he steered me out of the center of the mob and opened the interview by proudly displaying how thoroughly he had sunburned the back of his neck during the football scenes of the day before.

As for the movie business in general, “I’ve never worked’ so hard in my life,” he declared, very seriously. “Don’t know how the other fellows feel about it, but I’m ready to go home and go to bed after a day at the studio. Too tired for those parties you hear so much about.”

Red was, indeed, conspicuously absent from Hollywood’s social affairs. He worked, then he went home or to the fights.

One Minute to Play interested him because he wanted to see how it was done — this making of movies. But the long waits annoyed him fearfully.

However, he was glad that the picture was to be realistic, at least in that a flock of pennants and a bunch of fellows strumming ukes were not to represent college life in its entirety. Neither, though, were there any scenes showing anxious students cramming for exams, or suffering great mental anguish over their scanty chances of getting by at the end of the semester.

“And there should have been,” said the gentleman from Illinois.

Incidentally, Red would like to go back to college and get his degree. For with just a few months work he could tack a nice little A. B. after his name. And he thinks a degree is “a good thing to have,” though not necessarily an asset from a financial point of view.

Lincoln Stedman, who played the comic in the Grange picture, perhaps was associated more closely with Grange than any other member of the cast. Vouchsafed Lincoln, “Red is the most unemotional person I have ever known. If some one handed him a million dollars, I believe he would just say, ‘Thanks,’ and pocket it.

“When he plays football he is entirely undisturbed by the fact that thousands of eyes are fixed on him — that it would be a tragedy if he fumbled the ball! It’s the same way on the set. He isn’t the least bothered by the fact that he has never acted before. Just goes ahead and follows directions.”

Of course, hundreds of small boys followed the company on location trips. And Red liked having the kids around, and had an engaging habit of dispensing small change to his young admirers.

Though Grange remarked that of course it was the money that had brought him to Hollywood, he calmly turned down a big vaudeville offer at the end of his picture engagement. His father wanted him to come home to Wheaton and go fishing! And he went!

Grange has never enrolled in the high-hat brigade. Singularly unaffected and casual about his fame, he is the kind other men describe as a “regular fellow.”

But he harbors one decided prejudice. He simply refused to do his own making up. He would stand docilely while some one else smeared black around his eyes and powdered his nose, but he drew the line at handling a powder puff himself.

Speaking of his fellow adventurer, Gene Tunney, Grange said, “Tell Gene hello for me and that he played a dirty trick on me over at the fights the other night. They introduced him first and he got up and said that his friend Grange would make the speech for both.”

When I conversed with Gene Tunney in regard to his movie venture, he said, in decisive tones, “Of course, fighting is my business, but perhaps I shall make another picture some time. I really cannot say as to that.

“But I have done my best and ‘he Fighting Marine is a sincere piece of work. I wanted to make a worthwhile picture.”

Apparently Tunney had some difficulties in Hollywood, too. For one thing, overzealous admirers annoyed him. One youth in the cast, for example, presented him with an affectionately inscribed photograph when work on the Pathé serial was finished. And when Tunney destroyed the picture instead of preserving it as a souvenir of his picture experience, his fellow worker was greatly chagrined.

“But my office would be completely filled with such things, if I kept them all,” was Tunney ‘s reasonable explanation.

Gene Tunney, as the world knows, has been publicized as an “intellectual pugilist.” He is trying hard to live up to that reputation.

While in southern California he sojourned decorously at the Hollywood Athletic Club where, his friends declared, “every one loves the boy,” despite previous objections there to members of his profession.

Quite an achievement for Mr. Tunney!

Charley Paddock, he who has carried off so many sprinting records, broke into the movies in The Campus Flirt, but when it came time to make up, Charley had to call for help from Bebe Daniels.

Gene Tunney made his screen debut in The Fighting Marine, but now that he is heavy-weight champion of the world, he may not bother with any more films.

Pathé Photo

“Red” Grange, the man who has fought so many strenuous battles on the gridiron, says that acting in the movies is the hardest work he has ever done.

Photo by: Melbourne Spurr (1888–1964)

Red frankly says that he went into films for the money.

Collection: Picture Play Magazine, January 1927