The Expressions of Theodore Roberts (1920) 🇬🇧

A clever character actor who has played opposite almost every well-known star.

Theodore Roberts is one of the oldest character actors on the cinema stage. He is a past master at the art of make-up, and those of us who saw him with Mary Pickford in Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley, where he takes the part of a very old man, would hardly recognise him with Geraldine Farrar in Temptation; and we are to see him as Wealth in the coming big production of Everywoman.

Mr. Roberts is a native of San Francisco, and he made his first appearance in this town on October 8, 1861; so you see he has had nearly sixty years’ experience on the stage.

Like so many actors, he did not choose the stage as his career; but as soon as he left school he became a teacher at one of the local institutions, and it was while he was working in this capacity that a member of a company playing Cardinal Richelieu became ill, and someone was needed to take his place. Theodore Roberts was chosen, and so impressed the manager that he was promptly engaged and played a prominent part all that season.

Among his notable successes on the stage was in 1881, when he played as Svengali in Trilby, and also in The Squaw Man, a play that made a great success over here when it was rechristened The White Man. He also took the part of Simon Legree in the all-star production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

After that Mr. Roberts played for a time in vaudeville. One of his sketches, entitled The Sheriff of Shasta, was so successful that it toured for quite a number of years. He also appeared in Believe Me Xantippe, which latter story, you will remember, has also been filmed with Wallace Reid in the star part.

It was a long-term contract that first lured Mr. Roberts from the stage to the screen, and since that time he has established himself as one of the greatest character actors that have appeared in Filmland.

He Missed the Applause

Mr. Roberts said that it was quite a long time before he got used to acting before the camera. He used to long for the applause that used to greet his appearance behind the footlights, but little by little he came to realise the infinitely greater scope available for his talents through the medium of the screen, and that he was gaining hundreds, even thousands, more friends in moving pictures than he could ever hope for on the legitimate stage. For, as every screen artiste knows, instead of one audience greeting an appearance, hundreds of audiences all over the country are greeting him as he steps upon the photo dramatic screen.

Another advantage Mr. Roberts gained when he decided on the screen to express his talents was that, being a native of California, he is right at home out there, and, when not actively engaged in working on pictures, he can take extended fishing trips and hunting expeditions into the mountains.

Mr. Roberts stated that he never expects to step behind the footlights again, as he now prefers the glaring arc lights of the studio.

Mr. Roberts has appeared with almost every well-known star among which we can mention Lou Tellegen in The Unknown, Anita King in “The Tyrant of Old Russia,” Charlotte Walker in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, The Thousand-Dollar Husband with Blanche Sweet, The Dream Girl with Mae Murray, Common Ground with Marie Doro, The Cost of Hatred with Kathlyn Williams, Mary Pickford in Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley, Geraldine Farrar in Temptation, Ann Little in Wild Youth, Wallace Reid in The Source, with Ethel Clayton in The Girl Who Came Back, and Robert Warwick in “Temptation.”

Personally, as you can see by his photograph, Theodore Roberts resembles most his genial, fun-loving characters, and is affectionately known to most of the habitues of the studio as “the Governor,” which title he accepts with smiling geniality.

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Photo captions:

• As a strong man of forty.
• A genial man of fifty.
• A hard man of sixty.
• As an old man of seventy.
• In his second childhood.

Collection: Picture Show Magazine, January 1920