Fred Thomson — By Way of a Pulpit (1924) 🇺🇸

Few of his athletic friends were mildly surprised when Fred Thomson, best all-round athlete at Princeton, and in fact, in America, decided to go into the ministry. But they shrugged their shoulders, saying he always was a scholarly duck and maybe preaching would give him leisure to pursue his studies.

Their surprise was but a quiet prelude to the whole-souled consternation of his friends when he up and left the ministry to go into the movies. Not being the sort of person who feels it is necessary to go around explaining everything he does, he didn’t tell them that he honestly looked on the movies as a more vital educational force than the church. The church, he found, was teaching mostly middle-aged and old people, and he was only interested in obstreperous young boys. If the movies was the best medium through which to reach them, then the movies was the place for him.

Returning from the Great War somewhat weighted down by medals for bravery but still young and enthusiastic and eager for new experiences, he started his career in movies. His first picture was “The Love Light,” in which he played opposite Mary Pickford. Then a Universal serial, “The Eagle’s Talons,” presented him as costar with Ann Little. In this he did all sorts of stunts that had never been attempted by a player before. He became the hero of that army of acrobats who double for Hollywood actors in dangerous scenes, for they have the utmost respect for an actor who risks his own neck.

Then he began starring in a series of Western pictures for the Monogram Company. They are just the conventional Western, with lots of riding, shooting and scenery, but they have a quality of irony and humor that reminds one of “The Bad Man.”

Fred Thomson is married to Frances Marion, the eminent scenarist, and whenever an interviewer attempts to meet him, Miss Marion is left to make apologies.

“He won’t have photographs taken and he won’t answer fan mail and he simply won’t meet interviewers — especially girl interviewers,” Miss Marion lamented to me.

Eventually, though, he couldn’t avoid me, and I found him a pleasant, argumentative, good-looking chap with a most amazing fund of general information at his tongue’s end.

“Between his thorough education and his marvelously retentive memory, what chance have we in an argument with him?” his wife asked as he proceeded to down us on each and every subject. And what chance, I wondered, has the old-fashioned Western star against the competition of this humorous, keen, athletic young man.

He heralds a new day in motion pictures.

—

Photo by: Roman Freulich (1898–1974)

Collection: Picture Play Magazine, May 1924