Huntley Gordon — A Well-Dressed Man of Affairs (1924) 🇺🇸

For the fashion-plate ideal of the well-dressed man of forty, the casting directors of Hollywood may henceforth point with satisfaction and considerable relief to Huntley Gordon.

One of their worries, at least, concerning the classifying of suitable types is over, for ever since The Famous Mrs. Fair completed its round of the major theaters, he has been the pluperfect choice for the comfortable and well-bred man of affairs.

Huntley Gordon reveals nothing that is remotely connected with the ofttimes tempestuous adventure of acting. You might logically suspect him of running a quiet brokerage office, posing for a conventional collar advertisement, or, with a rather appropriate gesture, “Helping Gloria Swanson on with her wraps,” all three of which he has done — the last in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife — but you would never confuse him with the popular notion of the movie hero, as sponsored by Harry Leon Wilson, James Cruze, or Spike Robinson.

The day that I met Gordon he was surveying the prospects and advantages that were open to him in the Pola Negri picture, temporarily titled My Man.

He was neatly dressed — correctly. No silk handkerchief protruded from the pocket of his coat, no large diamonds flickered upon his hands, nor did he carry a cane. His slightly graying hair was not bandolined. It was nicely and conventionally parted in the middle, and his blue-gray eyes glowed with an affability that was both natural and sincere.

I liked him tremendously, because he was so unassuming. Had he been younger I should have referred to him as naive.

Gordon’s is a story that illustrates in a unique way the reasons why the screen is “so different.” It shows the subtlety of the distinctions that the camera sometimes makes in personalities, and furthermore goes to prove that acting, as it is known on the stage, may have nothing at all to do with the business of “looking” when it comes to the silver sheet.

Gordon is a rather singular but perfectly obvious type. That, perhaps, is why he has been so long in actually arriving. He simply couldn’t be placed, because the range of his personality was so limited, and so perfectly adjusted to the scheme of the ordinary.

A character actor? Yes, no doubt. But where to put him? Not a single eccentricity on which to base his adaptability to the rôle of the beggar, the butcher or the thief! He was just a nice, attractive chap, totally unfitted for romantic costumes or anything like that, but a perfectly satisfactory drawing-room leading man’ when the part was not too young.

For years and years, therefore — he has been in the movies about seven or eight — he was indiscriminately assigned to the parts of heroes and villains in an indiscriminate list of plays.

Then he was called to California. Fred Niblo had sent for him, because he wanted Gordon for the rôle of the husband in The Famous Mrs. Fair. He arrived in the new land with a new hope, knowing the stage play from which the picture was adapted, and feeling rather sure of the suitability of the Henry Miller rôle to his type.

At any rate, the first day out on location he got hold of himself. The change of environment, the experience of working under a new and very clever director, perhaps too a certain antagonism to his presence from the assembled players and extras — especially the latter, according to Gordon himself — all worked to bring about the rare composure that he displayed.

“I knew what was in the other fellows’ minds, or at least thought that I did,” he said. “They were remarking to themselves, ‘What has this fellow got? Why should they send all the way east for him, when Hollywood is already full of perfectly good actors?’

“You know there are lots of cliques out here on the Coast, and I would hate to have to break in if I weren’t engaged before coming out. In the past few months I have aided more than one of my friends to return, who found it impossible to obtain work, despite his excellent qualifications, simply because he didn’t have the proper introduction of a contract.

“I was better off, fortunately, than they. Consequently I couldn’t be so easily bluffed out by the glances that were cast at me. I said to myself: ‘The company has sent for me. They think I’m good. And I’m going to be good.’”

Evidently Fred Niblo and Louis B. Mayer, the producer, felt that he was good, too, for at the close of the picture he was engaged for a definite contract, and not long after scheduled to appear in a good rôle in Reginald Barker’s production, “Pleasure Mad.” Finally, when Famous Players-Lasky wanted a chap for Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, who should look neither too old to be married to Gloria Swanson, and yet sufficiently seasoned and prosperous to pay alimony to seven other wives, they finally settled, after a long and tedious search — Heaven knows why, when the proper person was so close at hand! — on Huntley Gordon as the man.

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Photo by: Melbourne Spurr

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Collection: Picture Play Magazine, April 1924