Frank Mills — Mrs. Mills’ Many Husbands (1918) 🇺🇸

“Husband” is a generic term which includes all sorts and conditions of men. There is the fireside husband, the wild and roving husband, the husband who is a “good provider,” the husband temperamental, the husband phlegmatic, and assorted lots of just ordinary husbands who may be relied upon to remain true to type. Frank Mills has played them all.

by Dorothy Scott

We were discussing his screen experiences over the teacups in his up-town apartment in New York. Mrs. Mills had stayed just long enough to say “Cream or lemon?” and then had departed, obviously amused at the turn the conversation had taken.

“It never occurred to me before that I had developed into a professional screen husband.” said Mr. Mills. “But, now that I think of it, I can’t remember playing anything else on the screen. Apparently the casting director places me in the domestic angle of the eternal triangle instinctively and as a matter of course.”

“Do you like that sort of character?” I asked, with the certainty that he would not. That certainly comes from familiarity with ingénues who want to be sirens, juveniles who long to play heavy villains, and typical vampires who insist upon being cast as sweet young things.

To my surprise, he replied that he did. He has no yearning to play the dashing cavalier or the bachelor man-about-town. Perhaps it is because he plays his characters first as human beings without regard for any condition of servitude. He likes any role, he told me, that can be expressed with dignity and restraint. If a scene cannot be put over without exaggeration he believes that it is not worth working in at all.

“I have learned to face every variety of domestic catastrophe without wriggling my eyebrows,” he assured me.

He has held to these theories ever since he was a stagestruck little boy in Kalamazoo, Michigan. From the very first, he wanted to go on the stage. His earliest recollections are of an elaborate “show” which he staged in a barn with bent pins for tickets. He was forced to close by a father with an unreasonable prejudice against the proximity of the candle foot-lights to the hay. From childhood’s barnyard “stage” he soared to usherdom, and from usherdom to the “super” status. Thence, his flight up was rapid and in a surprisingly short time he found himself engaged for Belasco and Frohman productions in the old Lyceum Stock Company in New York. He married Miss Helen Macbeth, who was then in the romantic position of “the girl from home,” and a non-professional who blossomed out into a talented actress.

After a season in London, Mr. Mills returned to New York and found a great change in the public’s attitude toward moving pictures. They failed to interest him personally, however, until the enthusiasm of James Young persuaded him to have screen tests made.

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“I have learned to race every variety of domestic catastrophe without wriggling my eyebrows,” declares Mr. Mills, shown at left with Norma Talmadge in a scene from De Luxe Annie. Below — Mrs. Mills.

Collection: Photoplay Magazine, September 1918

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Editor’s Note: The above article is about Frank R. Mills (1868–1921) (see also Frank C. Mills (1891–1973))