Faire Binney — Starward Ho! (1919) 🇬🇧
Airy Faire Binney is on the threshold of fame
There is nothing in the whole of life comparable to a beginning — young green of May — a baby — an unfolding rose — the inception of song — dawning. The most delicious, the most sung and storied locale of locales is the immortal and imperishable segment of ground “Where the brook and river meet.” On that especial and particular segment stands, poised, willing and alertly ready, Faire Binney. Immediately behind, how translucent and purling a brook! Immediately before, who knows how valorous a river!
The fluttering of the wings of a newly fledged Popularity is, or should be, a phenomena dear to the heart of the psychologist, the student of that rara avis, Humanity. It is a vision as delicate as the infinitesimal whirr of the humming-bird, as flush as a ripe peach, as hardy as Hope.
It may be known chiefly by early morning ‘phone calls, immaculately kept press notices in spandy new scrapbooks, enthusiastic trips to photographers and plans only equal in cosmopolitan conquest to those of the late lamented Wilhelm and son. Comparisons are odious!
Airy persiflage aside, we found Faire Binney, before whose still enraptured vision the pinions of new Popularity are somewhat rapidly and dazzlingly unfolding, a real, half-incredulous, wholly anticipatory, confident, hardily ambitious young person. A very young person, indeed, in the roseate dawning of being a Vogue.
She resembles Ann Pennington physically. She must, because she informed me that I was far from being original in noting the similitude — and so huge and omnivorous are the capacities and capabilities of femininity in its ‘teens that heaven knows what or whom she resembleth histrionically, artistically or popularly.
She has a nice background, Faire Binney. Her child-days and school-days and high-school-days (what there were of them) were spent in and about Concord and Boston, in the musical home and atmosphere of a very musical aunt and uncle. She played about the grounds of the home of Little Women and chummed with the various grand-nieces and grand-nephews of the gentle Meg and the aristocratic Amy. She skated on the same river made vivid by Laurie and by Jo, and bicycled on the road made history by Paul Revere. But, all these influences notwithstanding, Faire decided, two years ago, that, if she were to be an actress and she just were, she had better begin, so she said farewell to the girls and boys who looked in amazement upon so ambitious a young person.
“Of course,” she reminisced, in the happy fashion of one for whom such reminiscences are no more than insubstantial memories, “I had no idea of beginning anything at once. I planned to study. And then study some more. I had had the hard and steep and endless ladder pounded into me from childhood. When I was very tiny — oh, ‘bout eighteen months, I guess — I used to hastily anticipate a lecture on ‘bumps’ by saying, very rapidly, I know all about the hardships. I know they are perfectly tragical. But I don’t care! I’ve had that feeling all along. That, so long as I once got there, I just didn’t care. I was prepared for anything — for the very worst. I was optimistic, even while I w’as religiously pessimistic. Of course, Connie cheered me up some, and yet, paradoxically (small stars say big things) she depressed me. When I heard of her success I thought, ruefully, ‘lightning never strikes twice in the same place.’ But I thought, too, ‘this is just one of the hard, steep rungs I’ve heard so much about.’ My friends thought it would be so much nicer for me to play at being a debutante, or, at most, to charm the ear by dainty nocturnes on a baby grand. I didn’t agree. Most always, I don’t.”
And so she set forth to conquer Gotham, her courage in her hands.
Amazingly enough, Gotham, so adamantine to many a knocking hand, proved, or rather, is proving, quite silkaline to Faire. Of course, sister Constance [Constance Binney], now dancing upon accomplished toes in Oh, Lady! Lady! was, anyway, an instrument of Fate when she took little Faire along with her to interview Maurice Tourneur. But, after that, there was just nothing to it!
Faire had a test made, and then was one of the sisters, real, honest, born-that-way sisters in Sporting Life, had a part in the Civil War episode of Woman and is beginning work at date of this writing with John Barrymore in his new comedy, entitled, I believe, Here Comes the Bride. Which means, of course, Famous Players, a contract, “an’ a’ that, an’ a’ that!”
Not much by way of biography, for which I am grateful, since I abhor to write biographies, but a great deal by way of potentialities cannot be written but must be sensed.
I sensed a great deal… the early morning, you know… at home… things happening… such as a jocular ‘phone call from Anthony Paul Kelly, responsible for Three Faces East and multitudinous known scenarios… mail… wardrobe to be selected… photographs to be taken… all the other fascinating insignia of the aforementioned budding Popularity. And Faire, in much the same state as the bewildered child who gazes upon the display left by Santa Claus, sees, yet does not see, must, perforce, believe, yet cannot. “It seems too good to be true,” summed up Faire, and yet, with a determined tilt of a small, determined chin, she added, “But I shan’t stop — not till I’ve gone as far as there is any going! I’ve made up my mind to that.”
Faire has bobbed, juvenile hair, a plump, childishly contoured face, wide, gray eyes and a round, not too slender figure. She has, in what might be contradiction to these attributes, common sense and a mind of her own.
She may look as tho she subsists upon lollipops for her bodily sustenance and the Dottie Dimples for her mental — but she doesn’t. Not at all. She has her own bank account, is “independent,” is going to manage all her own affairs, and has viewpoints about marriage and children and suffrage and labor, and, no doubt, theosophy, ceramics and the Syrian movement had we had time to touch upon all these little details. But we had no time. The Bird of Popularity is a rapidly ascending fowl, and upon his flight there are many things attendant. One lone interview could not detain him for a whole morning — and it didn’t. We gleaned before we left the apartment in the East 50’s, however, that just as soon as Faire is possessed of the Arabian Nights salary of a star she is going to buy an airplane first, give all her friends the time of their lives next and travel round and about the globe third. Three nice, modest little ambitions, which we have no reason to doubt will be realized.
“I want to do everything there is to do,” said Faire, “whether it be pleasant or unpleasant. When I die I want to feel that I haven’t passed by a single pleasure, a single pain. To be a great artiste — one has to, don’t you think?”
I did.
“I want to go every where there is to go. I want to fee! everything there is to feel.
This world seems to me just now to be a tremendous playroom with a workshop directly in back. One must work in the workshop, then wander about the playroom, doing what one chooses, pausing where one pleases, then going on — always going on.”
“Marriage?” I suggested; “permanence?”
“Oh, that!” the small, ascending star laughed. “That’s the very last toy in the playroom,” she said, “and nothing is permanent.”
O Youth… O Youth! O Popularity — thou bird of Paradise!
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Faire Binney’s child-days were spent in and around Concord and Boston. She played about the grounds of the home of Little Women and chummed with the various grand-nephews of the gentle Meg and the aristocratic Amy
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Faire, altho she may look as tho she subsists upon lollipops, has a mind of her own, and a bank-account, along with views upon marriage, children, suffrage and Labor
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Collection: Motion Picture Classic Magazine, February 1919