George Periolat — Sans Grease Paint and Wig (1912) 🇺🇸
George Periolat is lonesome and wants to go home. But he won’t let himself go because Director Dwan, Warren Kerrigan, Jack Richardson and others out at the Santa Barbara studio of the American Film Company would say, “I told you so!”
by Mabel Condon
Rather than that, the character man would stay on in Chicago, submit to the ater parties and late dinners, not to mention his heroism in being dashed madly about, around and across the city in the American’s new car — to which street cars are as lampposts and blue-coated, protesting officers but specks on the receding landscape.
And if it were not for the noise and the thousands of people, incident to the loop district, Mr. Periolat might make himself believe he is having a good time; but State street, both before and after dark, is too much for him. In comparison, the West with its “broncho bustin’” and other perils, typifies the quiet of an old ladies’ home, in Mr. Periolat’s opinion.
Hence his troubled spirit and the new line in his forehead. He has several lines there “but not from age,” the man who makes characters assured Mr. Nehls, the latter’s littered desk and me, as he opened back his raincoat, displaying thereby an English cut black and white suit, a wisteria tie and a snugly fitting collar which allowed his semblance of a second chin to lop, when he laughed real hard.
Mr. Nehls paid no attention to the ageless remark. I did; that was one of the things I went to the American office for and besides, I scented a secret. Information regarding Mr. Periolat’s age was due me anyhow, to recompense for the shock administered with his introduction. For I had splashed out into the wetness of an indigo Monday with a borrowed umbrella and the prospect of a quiet chat with an elderly — if not old — gentleman, and behold! it was a trim, almost slender and not even elderly person who removed his pince nez with a flash of triplet diamonds and shook hands with a heartiness and style which I still like to think was truly western.
And that is George Edwin Periolat. His eyes are round and blue-gray and his hair — well, I couldn’t quite decide about the color of his hair, so asked if he considered himself a blonde or brunette. He replied that his hair used to be very dark but that the West sun-burned it; his friends advise him to use another bottle and it will be about right.
But to return to Mr. Periolat’s age and the secret.
It wasn’t at all easy to get him to confess to owning a secret but he finally did and this is it — he doesn’t know how old he is! His father says one age, his god-mother another and he himself compromises by claiming to be “over twenty-one and under forty.” Now, if that isn’t a nice fix for an honest-to-goodness character man to be in! But he doesn’t care for it’s a secret, and anyway, he’s so glad at being a character man in motion pictures that so trivial a thing as his age matters not at all, in comparison.
“Photoplays,” declared Mr. Periolat as he balanced his pince nez on the end of his left thumb, “are the greatest things in the world, today; and they’ve just started. The players who get into them now, while the profession is still young, are lucky. Contrary to the legitimate stage where all classes are accepted, there seems to be but one class in picture acting and that, the refined and educated. Both the life and work are to my liking and I’ve never met as agreeable people anywhere as those I’ve met in films.”
He changed his pince nez to the right index finger and continued, with a frown that engulfed the little new line: —
“If the players would only not use so many gestures! It’s maddening, in this advanced day, to see an actress yawn, point to the clock, to herself, then up-stairs and place her head on her hands — all this to tell the spectators she is sleepy and is going to lie down. All that pantomime is totally unnecessary. It may have been required some time ago, but certainly not now.
“Another common mistake and one that is awful is talking to oneself.” The pince nez were abandoned in preparation for the pantomime to follow “You get a letter containing bad news —” a sheet of ad copy on the desk served for the letter of ill omen — “you read it, tear your hair —” Mr. Nehls rescued the ad copy from a like fate — “address the ceiling in the wild protest, ‘It can’t be true! I’ll go mad! I can’t stand it!’ Ridiculous! A look of hopelessness, a shake of the head — so — that’s all, and people understand it and like it better.”
The speaker smoothed his hair, took a long breath and continued: “The man who thinks he knows all about film acting just because he was a fine director once upon a time, or a really good actor ‘in the good old days,’ is a hindrance to the progress of whatever company he is with. For his way is not the way of today, and the people who see the pictures point him out as ‘old time’ in every instance. In film acting, perhaps more than in anything else, you have to keep up with the procession; the march is a rapid one because the industry itself is, and people have taken to it with an interest that is critical because it is intense.
“Yes sir,” (he was not looking at me) “photoplay is the biggest thing in the world today and it is being handled in the biggest kind of a way — lots of money and lots of returns.”
“And lots of personal risk,” I reminded him. “Ever get hurt?”
“No, never. I’m not superstitious but —” he interrupted himself to knock wood, “I very nearly though; one time I had to die of apoplexy. I told the director I had never died of apoplexy and didn’t know how but he said, ‘O, just drop!’ So I dropped and actually saw stars.”
The mention of stars put Mr. Periolat in mind of his beloved Santa Barbara — the ideal as if there aren’t beautiful stars in Chicago, — and he had loads of nice things to say about the place and the members of the company.
“We’re just the nicest big family imaginable,” enthused the character man of the “fambly” (to steal a word copyrighted by the Goat Man). “There has never been the least bit of dissatisfaction among us nor has there ever been an unpleasant word spoken during the two years we have been together.
“Warren Kerrigan [J. Warren Kerrigan] is the finest man I ever knew —” and he meant every word of the five-minute oration which followed. Pauline Bush and Jessalyn Van Trump, he said, call themselves “bachelor girls,” intimating they have had proposals but refused them. Miss Lester (Mrs. Frank Beale) he declared to be a “dear woman” and asserted that “they’re not making them any finer than Director Dwan [Allan Dwan] and Jack Richardson.”
“Everybody in Santa Barbara knows the players to see them,” he went on, “all except me. I’ve often heard the remark, from someone near me. ‘I wonder where they keep the old man? Nobody ever sees him.’ And Mr. Periolat laughed at how his appearance out of films fools everybody.
“I’ll be glad to get back,” he confided as Mr. Nehls was called to an outer office. “They treat me fine everywhere and of course I enjoy it, but —.” I understood. “Just last week, my father offered me his business if I’d stay, but business life, to me is like being in jail and serving a term. My father runs a skin game,” he added, and then I knew that C. F. Periolat, the city’s best known furrier, is George Edwin’s father.
“I hate business,” continued the character man, “and I especially dislike the fur business. I was in it, for five months, and as a result, detest the sight of fur. I have a fur coat and I shudder when I look at it.
“But we’re even, my father and I,” he laughed, “for he dislikes my line of work. He only saw me play once and that was the worst show I was ever in. Went out to Hammond to see me, too, and said the whole thing was ‘punk.’ I agreed with him, that time, and wanted him to come to the Illinois or the Studebaker when I played there; but he refused, saying he had had enough. “My work suits me just fine, though,” and there were both conviction and satisfaction m the Periolat voice. “I was on the legitimate stage for fourteen years and started film work with the Selig company. I was there eight months, then came to the American Film Company with Director Beale and have been with its western company ever since, almost two years. This is the first vacation I have taken; they gave me two weeks to stay away but I’m going to stick it out till after the holidays and then take the fastest train I —”
“Do your Christmas shopping in Chicago?” I interrupted to ward off the impending attack of lonesomeness.
“Did it before I left home,” he answered with an air of pride that would make most anybody resolve to shop Yule-tide gifts on the Fourth of July, hereafter.
“I’ve stored up some Chicago souvenirs to take back with me; but —” and the joke seemed to be a good one — “they won’t see the gift they think I came here for.” Curiosity prompted an expectant, “What?” “A wife. Every member of the company was sure I was coming up to be married.”
“Perhaps you were,” Mr. Nehls put in as he reseated himself at his desk; and he said it in the kind of voice that meant “Were you?”
“Yes, perhaps you were?” I echoed.
“But I’m not married,” evaded the character man, and added in a jubilant, misery-likes-company voice, “neither is Kerrigan.”
With the exception of the mysterious remark, “People change,” he refused to say another word on the subject so I let him help me on with my coat and trotted back to the office on the side of Clark street where the rain had dried away and the sun was brightest and thought — But you’d like Mr. Periolat, too!
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Memory Restored at a Picture Show
A man giving the name of J. Emerson Gittig, who declared he was employed by a Columbus wholesale house, is held by the Baltimore, Md., police, according to a message from that city. The arrest, it is said, followed a statement by the man which gives evidence of a rare case of aphasia. Moving pictures, he is said to have declared, restored him to his lost identity and told him of a wrong he had committed.
His statement, voluntarily given to the police, is reported to have been:
“About two weeks ago I severed my connection with the concern, but there were some outstanding debts to collect and I collected about $120. I was on an electric road when I got horrible pains in my head and got off at a hotel to get some whisky.
“I remembered no more after that until I came to myself in a Baltimore moving picture theater. On the screen was thrown a picture story of a young man who went wrong financially and then straightened up by making an open confession of his wrongdoing. Then I knew who I was again.”
Ask for Kansas City Censor Board
Kansas City, Mo., has been divided into districts, each in charge of a captain, and women working under the orders of the various captains will inspect every motion picture theater in the city. When the investigation is ended a complete tabulated sheet of information concerning the class of films and surroundings at every theater will be presented to the city council. The object of the information is to convince the authorities of the need of a duly authorized censor of the films. There is no venom in the fight the women are to make on bad films and undesirable practices at certain motion picture shows. They are going to ask and expect to receive the support of the better class of managers. The women say the motion picture shows are here to stay, provided they do not make the mistake of becoming a menace to public morals.
American’s Effective Advertising
Exhibitors have been writing in about the excellent display advertisements of the American Film Manufacturing Company. The effects are produced by a new system inaugurated by Manager Nehls in which the illustration is first mounted on a white bristol board. The border and detail are then carefully drawn by an expert artist and a half tone made of the entire layout.
No two borders or designs are identical and the entire effect is very pleasing as well as more economical both in labor and in engraving, so Mr. Nehls says.
Collection: Motography Magazine, December 1912