Harry C. Myers — Sans Grease Paint and Wig (1914) 🇺🇸
Harry C. Myers fitted into the flatness of his Stutz Bear-cat machine in the shadow of the Lubin studio and, with his feet stretched out miles ahead of him to reach the foot-prop, his coat open and, his head bare to the warm sunshine of an exceptional day, announced that he was thirty years old, a democrat and that he scorned public opinion.
by Mabel Condon
“I go my merry way and hope people will like me,” he avowed frankly, “But if they don’t —”
Harry is not the worrying kind. He said so. After that he buttoned his coat half-way and guessed the sun wasn’t as hot as it looked. He met no contradiction and continued placidly: “Nine years on the stage and five years in pictures is my record, Philadelphia is my home town; went to La Salle College here and most of my time went to athletics; I jumped; I was center on the basket-ball team; I lost two teeth playing foot-ball; broke three ribs and my collar-bone and knocked my knee out of place — also playing football, and I broke my leg. Greatest little sport ever — foot-ball!”
His audience murmured, “Must be!” and the one whose initial “C” stands for Clifford, went on —
“Yes, a great sport, and I was fortunate in not receiving any serious injury.”
Harry aims to be sincere or nothing, always. “My work in pictures has earned me the title ‘dare-devil.’ There is nothing I have been asked to do that I didn’t do. I like the stunts with a thrill in them. This little machine and I have had lots of excitement together. But I don’t use it in anything that would mean real damage to it because it’s too good a pal.”
The round yellow side of the “pal” was appreciatively caressed and when the appreciative one resumed a normal position he continued:
“Fortune has favored me in pictures too, I’ve had no more serious accident than falling down a sixty-foot cliff, and off of a forty-foot bridge. Jumping off the Williamsburg bridge was easy, but I broke some bones in my foot once when I slipped off a five-foot side-walk. Oh I’m a lucky guy!” Isn’t he, though!
“I’ve been a life-saver — a water one — and I write short stories in my spare moments.”
“Just ‘dash them off,’ I suppose?”
“Yes, no trouble at all, wrote and sold seven in two weeks, one time. Quite simple.”
“But you’re much busier now that you’re a director?” I ventured with the momentary disappearance of the sun and Mr. Myer’s instant inspection of the sky for further weather information.
“Much busier and much more interested.”
“Maybe that’s why you’re getting so much fatter?”
“Maybe,” he agreed, and bewailed the fact that none of his posed-for citizen pictures look like him any more and he’d have to sit for some more soon, though he hated the job.
So many of his photographs make him look rather effeminate, and in real life he is not that at all. He is six feet tall and weighs in at about the two hundred mark. His expressions, both vocal and facial, are distinctively mannish and he admits he is afraid of nothing nor of nobody. Decidedly, he is not effeminate.
“I know some of those pictures of mine make me look so,” he complained, “I guess I’ll get same new ones this week.” But the one at the top of this page is not a terribly new one.
The Myer stage work was begun in 1901 in Philadelphia stock. “I made progress in it because of my memory,” Harry Clifford explained opening the two buttons again when the sun came out. “I could take any part on short notice and often studied twelve parts a week. The Walter Stull repertoire stock company was one of the first I was with. That was road work. I was with George Lorick in stock and went out with the Fleming repertoire company and studied eighteen plays in one week.
“Five years ago, I got a chance to try pictures; this was my starting place, the Lubin studio, and it’s the best kind of entertainment. I wouldn’t care to leave it.”
A breeze sprang up from around the corner of the studio; it waved back Harry’s black pompadour and again Harry’s dark eyes sought the sky for predictions.
“Great day for a spin,” he decided.
And “Time for lunch,” came H. A. D’Arcy’s [Hugh Antoine D’Arcy] voice from the door-way of the Lubin office building.
“Next to my work in pictures, I like this,” commented Harry with another caress on the side of the yellow Bear-cat. “I can make sixty-five miles an hour in the country,” he informed, “and thirty-five miles in the city.”
“And the speed laws?” I asked, making ready to neglect the Bear-cat.
“Oh, the cops all know me!” Harry answered.
Then I went to lunch and Harry Clifford began doing things to the yellow car.
Collection: Motography Magazine, March 1914