Ivy Close — A Famous British Film Actress (1920) 🇬🇧
You must all know her. Know that seductive face that stands for English beauty unadorned.
I mean Ivy Close.
No need for me to rhapsodise over her beauty, but I can’t help myself. Her hair is just a crown of straying sunbeams, her face, a perfect cameo, flushed delicately with life. And her eyes, her lips, her slim exquisitely modelled figure, are all in keeping. To few of us does Nature grant such all-round grace, and perfume it with such unaffected charm.
But, trying not to be too conscious of her unusual beauty, framed as it was in Watteau blue silk with a piquant little Tarn to match. I asked, “What was your first film?”
“Dream Paintings, by Elwin Neame and me. Quite a short one. Elwin was the artist who painted the pictures, and I did the coming to life, and, incidentally, through that very film, came to — dare I say, fame! For you see, Mr. Hepworth [Cecil M. Hepworth] happened along, liked our Dream Paintings, and asked me to play in The Lady of Shalott.”
Her Films
After that Miss Close appeared in the Ivy Close Films for a time — A Girl from the Sky, Ghosts, The Terrible Twins, and many others, and then trekked across to America to beautiful Florida, where for four months she revelled in the sunshine with the Kalem Film Company, producing the famous Ivy Close Comedies you all know so well.
Of course I asked her the usual question. “Did you like America?” which she answered almost Scotch-wise, “Did I not. But it was out in Florida that I just escaped being killed. No fake about that.”
“Tell me,” I asked breathlessly. I didn’t like the little look of horror which darkened those crystal-clear eyes.
“I was playing in The Stolen Gaol, with Arthur Albertson,” she smiled again. “and we’d just come to the part where we went out of a three-storey high building on to a scaffolding, preparatory to coming down a rope together. Below stood eight men holding a fire net ready to catch us.
“Suddenly the scaffolding broke, and the men, horror-stricken, dropped the net and we dropped too. Fortunately for me I fell on Arthur, but he, poor boy, was pretty badly smashed up, and wasn’t able to play again for a long time.”
Britain for the British
Shortly afterwards Ivy carne home again, and appeared for Broadwest’s in The Ware Case, and The House Opposite, with Matheson Lang, and in Missing the Tide, and The Irresistible Flapper, with Basil Gill and Gerald Ames. Then on she flitted to the Master Films in Adam Bede, A Peep Behind the Scenes, and Darby and Joan with Derwent Hall Caine, which you’ll all be able to see shortly.
“My last, picture was The Flag Lieutenant, which I played for Barker’s [William Barker],” she said.
“And your ambition — every actress has one, you know,” I teased.
“Ambition.” she flashed. “Yes, I do have an ambition, and that is to see the film business in Britain soar to the stars. It can be done.
“I want, too, to appear in British productions that will knock American into a cocked hat. ‘Britain for the British’ is my ambition in a nutshell,” she ended whimsically.
Most Photographed Beauty
Miss Close is probably the most photographed girl in the world, since the day when she first won fame as the most beautiful type of English girlhood. Scarcely a week goes by without her photograph appearing somewhere.
Quite a large amount of her time is taken up with posing before the camera for photographic Studies, apart from her work in the studios.
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Beautiful photographic studies of Miss Ivy Close
Collection: Picture Show Magazine, January 1920