Georgia Hale — The Girl with the Broken Ankle (1925) 🇺🇸

This is the story of a girl who won a Chicago beauty contest. She came to Hollywood with high hopes — alone. So our tale opens with Georgia Hale — a very fine looking girl — recently out of a Chicago high school — and out of a job. She had unknowingly joined that band of screen immortals whom the casting directors had discarded.

Told by Jim Tully

That was two years ago. It is not a long period of time. To start unknown and become Charlie Chaplin’s leading lady in that period is something worthy of note. Georgia Hale is today acclaimed as one of the best actresses on the screen. And of course that made it so much harder for her. In no other business in the world is talent such a handicap. She has acted in four pictures — as an extra in two of them — as a leading lady in the other two. Her work in the last picture, Charlie Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush,” will make her world famous. Georgia has just signed a two-year contract with Charlie Chaplin. The New York writers with stepladders on their foreheads and florid French writers go clear dotty when they write about Chaplin. In one thing is he supremely great — and I write as one who has been for eighteen months on his payroll… when it comes to motion pictures, he stands almost alone, with a touch of genius. Now for the story.

Rupert Hughes was making “True as Steel” for Goldwyn at the time she arrived in Hollywood. He made a valiant effort to use Georgia, making a test of her which ran four hundred feet. Georgia waited two weeks and looked through many a doughnut in the waiting — for I have forgotten to say that Georgia landed in Hollywood with thirty dollars in money — the rest in faith. She got word after a weary time that she “was unsuited to the part.”

She made the rounds of the studios — day after day and week after week. A landlady had faith — as landladies do sometimes — else where would poets sleep? Georgia owed money in large measure, for a high school girl, and after a while she was given a part in the chorus of “Vanity’s Price.” She became so excited over this that she broke her ankle.

Now girls with broken ankles have a sad time of it — in Hollywood. The landlady still had faith. Georgia wrote cheering letters to her parents in Chicago and somehow suffered it through. Those weeks with the broken ankle meant more to Georgia than she realized at the time. She has a good brain, and she used it to think with during these troublous days, little realizing she was to be a picture star.

A short time after she was able to walk, she went to the depot and asked the fare to Chicago. She was walking toward the turning point in her life — but how is one to know?

She had met, casually, a young Austrian director, who was also out looking for the turning point in his life. He was not a director then, but a sometime assistant director and a cameraman so gifted that he was out of a job. His name was Josef von Sternberg. He had seen Georgia doing her stuff in Vanity’s Price. and he felt that she had talent. When she told him at the depot that she was tired and was trying to get home, he felt certain she had much more than talent. He was looking about at the time for players who wanted to work for glory, as he had a picture that was to cost the great sum of forty-five hundred dollars — the labor, the lease of the studio and everything. When it was considered that Milton Sills will hardly discuss Schopenhauer with a producer for that amount, Sternberg’s problem will be made more vivid.

“It was wonderful,” I said, “that Jo saw your talent and was willing to give you a chance as his leading lady.”

“Well,” replied Georgia, “I was willing to work for nothing.”

There, at the railroad station, the drifter from Austria and the drifter from Chicago — unknowingly leaped on a horse that was to carry them both to fame and fortune. Georgia became the leading lady in Sternberg’s “Salvation Hunters.”

I saw this picture four times — once with Charlie Chaplin. Georgia’s performance in it is one of the finest I have ever seen. I watched the real Chaplin that night as he watched this girl at work. I said to him, “She is greater than — so and so —” naming a well-known player. “Far — far — greater,” was Chaplin’s rejoinder.

It is presumed that producers saw her marvelous work. I am certain of this — for none of them engaged her. Fairbanks, through a combination of circumstances, put her under contract — and the wily Chaplin, casting about for a new leading lady, “lifted” her contract. She played the leading role in Chaplin’s Gold Rush. Now Chaplin — like most all men of great talent — has no patience with people who have the urge without the gift. A bad player will throw him into a mood that may last for days. Georgia’s work made him happy. I am writing this before the picture is shown. My prediction — a very great actress is walking down the road of time. She has poise and controlled fire, dignity without affectation and demeanor that must be born with the individual. I think she is one of the greatest actresses on the screen, and Chaplin thinks so too. He has signed a contract with her, and it is one of the very smartest things this terrific little vagabond has ever done.

Georgia Hale was about to become Rudolph Valentino’s leading woman. Joseph Schenck [Joseph M. Schenck] said to her, “You can wear clothes — you’ve got everything.” Chaplin saw all this first — Georgia became his leading lady.

Georgia has long since sent for her parents. They live in Hollywood with her.

I have forgotten to mention — her ankle is completely healed.

So is her pocketbook.

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Georgia was discouraged — she was leaving Hollywood when Fate stepped in and made her famous

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She has only played in four pictures; in two of them she was an extra girl — in the other two she was the leading woman. And now Georgia Hale has been signed by Charles Chaplin. You will see her in “The Gold Rush.”

Collection: Photoplay Magazine, August 1925