Hugh Thompson — The Lady? No, the Car! (1918) 🇺🇸

As a rule there is nothing more simple than inducing people to talk about themselves. There are, however, three types that are consistent exceptions — a mother with her first baby, a young girl with her engagement ring and a man who has just bought a car.

by Alison Smith

I was already familiar with the first two and I discovered the third when I met Hugh Thompson. As soon as he invited me out to the garage to “look her over,” I knew that the evening would be one long struggle to learn more about him and less about his machine. I was right.

It really was a ducky, infant prodigy of a car, painted a gorgeous rich-but-not-gaudy blue.

“What do you think of her?” its owner asked, fondly.

I told him truthfully that I thought she was a pretty color.

Mr. Thompson concealed his disgust politely and patiently began to explain the mechanical fine points of the motor. When I finally looked as if I had absorbed these details intelligently, I was invited to hop in.

To obtain my interview, I saw that it would be necessary to be firm with him. “Mr. Thompson,” I said, “I came here to hear about your career, not the car’s. I write for Photoplay, you know, not Motor Life.”

And between skids and dashes and honks from the prodigy, I managed to gather the following:

He was born in St. Louis, Missouri. (I found that much in the studio directory for when I asked him, he murmured something about f. o. b. Detroit.) He began his professional career in a church choir where he sang for the excellent reason that he was in love with the organist. He left the choir-loft for the vaudeville stage singing illustrated songs until, after some stock experience, he drifted naturally into the moving pictures. In his first film, he played the blackest of villains.

We came to grief when we started a discussion of leading women stars. I was in the midst of a rather neat epigram of my own about a well-known vampire, when he suddenly announced, “Her clutch never loosens!”

“Are you speaking of the lady?” I gasped.

“No, the car,” he answered. “Oh, you were talking about the disappearance of the vapid ingénue type, weren’t you? Yes, I think she is becoming less popular. Was that her hood that rattled?”

From that moment, our conversation was one huge chaos of crossed wires.

—

Mr. Thompson and Virginia Pearson in one of the strong moments of “A Daughter of France.”

Apeda

Collection: Photoplay Magazine, September 1918