Howard Hickman — A Harlequin Hamlet (1917) 🇺🇸

An intimate impression of Howard Hickman

by H. Sheridan Bickers (“Yorick”)

Howard Hickman is the man who played Count Ferdinand in Civilization.

If you have seen Civilization you know all you need know to gauge the unusual personality and no less unusual dramatic power of Howard Hickman.

The role of Count Ferdinand — soldier, idealist and inventor — was a wonderful creation wonderfully acted. It was one which called for a man of rare intelligence to interpret and of rare personality to impress. Howard Hickman has both. That is why he gave to the leading role of Thomas H. Ince’s great propagandist photoplay an interpretation as easy to remember as that of almost any other actor would have been difficult to remember to forget!

If I had to analyze the art and personality of Mr. Hickman in a word, it would be “Intellect with Idealism.” Intellect and idealism together are typified in Howard Hickman. Some actors may have more of one quality, but none have more of both. That is why he never fails in any part he undertakes. He is always intellectually bigger than his task.

When I look at Howard, I always think of Hamlet. Mr. Hickman is a screen Hamlet reincarnated with a subtle sense of humor. He has the Hamlet face and the Hamlet head. His forehead is broad and high, having a dome-like fullness that rises majestically to the waving dark hair, liberally streaked with gray. It is an intensely intellectual head, with all the pensive imagination of Hamlet in the meditative eyes, that twinkle with an elusive and half-suppressed humor. Meditative mockery is the dominant expression, redeemed by unfailing kindness. Analytic in temperament, Howard Hickman squeezes amusement out of the human comedy. He is a Harlequin to himself, finding melancholy humor in his own well-suppressed emotions and fantastic farce in his own beliefs.

Yes, handsome Howard Hickman is a Harlequin Hamlet. He thinks over his laughter and then laughs over his thoughtfulness. He has, too, the Hamlet temperament; the subtle mind playing in the reflective face; intellect shifting in» features that are carved into a tenuous refinement of contour. We have many handsome actors; but, as a rule, the handsome actor has no soul. The handsomeness of William Farnum is resonantly empty; of Jack Kerrigan effeminately full. The handsomeness of Howard Hickman is more than a mere physical endowment. All the variety of life moves behind that complex mask, waking dim echoes of lost aspirations or defeated aims, and abashing everything that is mean and low and little.

That is why I have dwelt at such length upon Mr. Hickman’s appearance. The temperament of the man permeates the technique of the actor, saturating his looks, his gestures and his whole bodily presence with a vague force and a refinement that is the living poetry of the flesh. In the part of Count Ferdinand, in the stoning and prison scenes of Civilization, it forced upon you a vision of human nature that transcended the ordinary aspect of mortality. The temper of our, time is cynically hard and metallically material. We are born and brought up to deny and disbelieve, to doubt and to deride. Coining out of that Arctic atmosphere, we were shocked by the serenity and strength of an actor whose appearance and whose art compelled a new realization of the nobility and sanctity of human life. To have accomplished that would have been a mighty achievement on the speaking stage; but to have done so in a silent drama is something by which Howard Hickman would earn honored remembrance if he had never done anything else in his life.

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Howard Hickman (Ince-Triangle)

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Acrostic

by Harry J. Smalley

She’s the little colleen that I saw on the screen
When I viewed her as “Peggy” — the treasure!
Ev’ry time that she smiled my poor heajt was beguiled,
Ev’ry move made that heart thrill with pleasure!
T is impossible, quite, all her charms to indite,
But the witch, sure, has left me a-dreaming;
I at once must confess how I feel, or, I guess,
Like a bubble I’ll burst, so ‘tis seeming!
Like a sunbeam at play, with the grace of a fay —
In her eyes are the dews of the heather!
Ever sweet as a rose, and a tilt to her nose,
Both delicious and Irish together!
Under dear Irish eyes, blue as dear Irish skies,
Roguish winks, and she knows how to use ‘em —
Kisses like honey I’ll bet are her own —
E’er be sure, too, I’d never refuse ‘em!

Collection: Motion Picture Magazine, May 1917

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