George J. Lewis — Big Brother George (1926) 🇺🇸
Among the new order of juveniles who have risen to prominence in the movies within the past year, George Lewis most suggests the big, sympathetic brother.
by Myrtle Gebhart
There is a fraternity of young fellows in the movies, whom the past year has brought into more or less prominence, whose naturalness is in strong contrast with the stagy methods of the actor of a few years ago. George Lewis [George J. Lewis], Hugh Allan, Grant Withers, Arnold Gray, Tommy Thompson, Charles Farrell, Dick Walling [Richard Walling], Larry Gray [Lawrence Gray] — oh, there are many of them. Personable, likable, steady youngsters they are, who regard acting as a sensible and serious profession and are undazzled by the glamour that used to surround the movies. They realize that success in the motion-picture field must be slowly and constructively built, much as one would train for banking or any other routine business.
A lucky break, however, carried George Lewis upward rather more quickly than the rest. The role of fighting Sammy in “His People” lifted him from the ruts of extra and bit parts into the spotlight. He insists that it was just luck and that there are many other boys of equal or more talent tramping the weary rounds of the studios, hidden among the mob, who just haven’t been so fortunate. But I think, giving due credit to the chance which dropped from the skies when Director Edward Sloman selected him for the happy-go-lucky, quick-fisted lad of His People, that George won out because he had prepared himself for just such an opportunity, and because he knew he had to make good.
Of Spanish and American parentage, he was born in Mexico City, where his father represented a typewriter concern. Later, the family was stationed for a while in Rio de Janeiro. Then they came north and spent limited periods at various small cities of the American Middle West. George has the distinction of having attended school in; more towns than any boy I ever heard of.
Eventually, they settled in San Diego, where George distinguished himself at Coronado High in athletics. School theatricals and the local stock companies awakened his desire to be an actor.
“But I thought it was one of those dreams that couldn’t ever come true and I always pushed it aside,” he explains now. “When mother finally decided I should have my chance, I came to Hollywood, another Merton, determined to learn how to be a good actor.”
He glosses over the struggles of two years during which fate placed him at the head of his family, consisting of a mother and two younger brothers, without the means of a steady livelihood at hand. His first role was carrying a spear in Pola Negri’s “The Spanish Dancer;” then he was an extra in The Thief of Bagdad. Realizing that he must make more progress, he held out for bits, often remaining idle for weeks rather than work for, say, ten dollars when he had set his salary at fifteen a day.
Give up and get a job clerking? Often, during months of despondency, he thought himself foolish to be sticking to this crazy acting gamble, but there was a tenacious streak in him that stubbornly held him to the line he had sighted, certain that some day it would get him somewhere. With each succeeding film he graduated into more important bit work — Captain Blood, “The Lady Who Lied,” and Mrs. Valentino’s [Natacha Rambova] “What Price Beauty.”
During these two years of bit work, he made test after test, each time hopeful of getting a real role. The seventh test brought him unexpectedly the part in Universal’s His People which flashed his name into electrics.
“Give all the credit to Sloman,” George urges. “I didn’t realize the importance of the picture or of my part until we started. I thought it was just another bit. Then, when I came on the set and found Rudolph Schildkraut, Rosa Rosanova, Kate Price and other skillful actors with years of training behind them. I was set to be canned.
“Sloman called me aside and put his arm around me and said. ‘Now listen, kid, don’t be scared. You’ve got it in you. I know that. Don’t throw me down. Let go.’ His confidence in me acted like a tonic.”
Having been permitted to see none of the rushes, George did not know, when the picture was finished, whether he had succeeded or failed. His contract with Universal was for two months more, carrying an option clause, but without pay. For forty days after the film’s completion, unware of the rumors drifting around Hollywood that Sloman had made a knock-out picture, George was idle, facing the possibility of having to go back to the bit rut.
On the fortieth day he was called to the Universal offices and placed under a five-year contract. It was not until the film was previewed and acclaimed by an enthusiastic audience that he knew he had made good.
Following The Old Soak, in which he played the son, Clemmie, George commenced a series of two-reelers, The Collegians.
Of all in the new group of juveniles who seem like the kids you would go with if you lived in a small town rather than like actors of glamorous Hollywood, George to me possesses the most brotherly qualities. His stocky build, his brown hands — for after his week-ends of camping, he comes home with skin berry-colored — the sympathy that is always ready in his brown eyes, all suggest that comfortable, big-brother quality.
Glancing back over the year that I have known him, I recall George first as a shadowy, self-effacing figure at banquets and parties, smiling appreciatively whenever he was noticed but loath to force himself — George at church, regularly — George speeding and endeavoring to appear a little rakish in his topless roadster of most plebeian make. I see him taking his mother for long drives on pleasant Sundays. I see him scuffling with his brothers.
He may have some of those shocking “bad habits” that one hears so much about, but if so, they have escaped my notice. He neither drinks nor smokes, not so much because of the moot moral question as because he regards his health as a possession to be cherished.
There’s nothing sappy about George. He has humor, and he is very genuine and sincere. But he has that rare combination of gentleness and strength.
Young movie sheiks may come and go, bringing a thrill and leaving the momentary bitterness of hot-worded quarrels, the tang of jealousies.
But life brings so many thrills, en passant, and so few real brothers, that, after all, isn’t one brother worth the whole pack of sheiks?
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George is very much of a home-loving, outdoor boy, earnest and sincere.
Photo by: Roman Freulich (1898–1974)
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Collection: Picture Play Magazine, October 1926