The Expressions of Ruth Roland (1920) 🇬🇧

The pretty and vivacious serial star who is beloved by the children.

Ruth Roland, the pretty serial star, although born in America, claims to have a good deal of Scottish blood in her veins, and she is very fond of everything British. Ruth entered pictures more than eight years ago, and in point of experience, though not in age, she is one of our oldest stars.

She has played in quite a number of serials of a very thrilling order, including Who Pays?, The Red Circle, Hands Up, and The Tiger’s Trail.

But besides her work in pictures, Ruth has many other interests, and she is full of vivacity and energy. She likes to trim all her own hats. Another of her hobbies is horticulture, and she is ambitious to have a garden in which will flourish at least one specimen of every tree, plant, vine, shrub and flower that grows in California.

Ruth has naturally had many exciting experiences while acting for films. It was during the making of Hands Up! that the horses in the stage coach in which Ruth was seated took fright and bolted.

One of the horses fell, and was trampled to death. The stage coach began to totter alarmingly in every direction, and things looked very serious for Ruth.

She decided that there was only one thing to do under the circumstances, and taking her life in her hands, she jumped from the coach, and, luckily, escaped an injury.

The Horse Bolted.

On another occasion Ruth rode a horse blindfolded with no bridle or saddle. Suddenly the horse ran away and headed for the mountain, where there was a drop of some hundred and fifty feet.

The other artistes, seeing the predicament that she was in, shouted to the intrepid artiste to warn her of her danger. She heard their cries, and, blindfolded, she dropped off.

This accident, however, did not turn out so fortunate for her, for the horse kicked poor Ruth and tore the ligaments of one of her legs. She was laid up in hospital for six weeks.

Where Are My Jewels?

An amusing incident happened to Ruth the other day. As a general rule she keeps her jewels in a safe, where moth and rust do not corrupt, nor thieves break in and steal; but the other night she wore quite a small fortune’s worth of jewels to a dinner dance, and had therefore to keep them in her house all night.

She hid them in a perfectly safe place, and turned peacefully to sleep. The jewels, however, must have weighed heavily on Ruth’s mind that night, for she arose in her sleep, took them from their hiding-place, and put them in the pocket of her pyjamas, with a handkerchief on top of them.

In the morning Ruth looked where she had hidden the jewels, and they were gone.

“Oh, mother!” she shrieked out excitedly. Police — burglars! Fire! Help!”

After eighteen or more detectives had gone mad trying to find the jewels the maid turned them out of the afore said pocket, and now Ruth wants a cure for sleep-walking.

Loved By Children.

All children are very fond of Ruth, and every post “brings her a deluge of letters” from them. One day recently, out of ninety-three letters received by Ruth, sixty-seven of them were from children of all ages, from tots whose mothers wrote for them, to boys and girls of college age.

The lovely star believes that she must have a larger following among children than any other screen favourite, and she is prouder of this than any other part of her success.

By the way, Ruth also receives a large number of letters from people requesting her to give them things, and, of course, if she acceded to all these she would be quite poor herself. In fact, Ruth would have to make about a million a year to satisfy all their demands. Here is a choice collection from her requests: An aeroplane, a diamond-set wrist watch, a shot gun, a wedding-ring, seventeen dinner gowns, a motor-car, a ukelele, a player piano, a set of drawing instruments, a set of Shakespeare, a bride’s trousseau, a trip to London, and a portable bungalow. But poor Ruth says she has not enough money to buy even a quarter of these things for herself.

Her Motto.

“Always be on the job” is Ruth’s slogan for success, and it seems to work out fairly successfully in her case. “Never, except in the event of sickness or accident, have I kept the studio waiting,” she said recently, “and I’m not going to begin now. I realise that time is money in the making of motion pictures, and if I save time for my employers I help to cheapen production, and thereby make myself a bigger asset to them. It follows that I become more valuable as a star, and, you see, it’s a matter of business all round.

“So far as I am able to see, there is no place for temperament in a film studio, and if a girl is bigger than her job, she should get out of it.”

The subject of clothes is an important one to a star like Ruth Roland. The changes of costume in a serial of fifteen episodes of two reels each are many and varied, and, as the star is called upon to submit to all kinds of rough treatment, clothes are bound to suffer. In one serial Ruth ruined over £300 worth of clothes.

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Ruth — and her charming silhouette.

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If you want to write to her, address your letter:

c/o Ruth Roland Studios
1919, Southmain Street,
Los Angeles.

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Photo captions:

• In Suspense.
• Sweet Simplicity.
• Perplexity.
• Joyousness.
• Defiance.
• Terror.

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(Special to the “Picture Show.”)

Collection: Picture Show Magazine, September 1920