John Harron — The Handicap of a Famous Name (1924) 🇺🇸

After seeing Johnny Harron in Dulcy, and The Gold Diggers, and hearing directors praise his work, I am beginning to think of him as a real individual at last.

Before, I — like most of the rest of the public interested in motion pictures — just thought of him [John Harron] as the cute young brother of dear Bobby Harron [Robert Harron], who died a few years ago, after having made a signal success in Griffith [D. W. Griffith] pictures.

One afternoon when an earthquake seemed to be brewing, I interviewed Johnny on the veranda of his Hollywood bungalow. He seemed equally scared of the interview and the earthquake. In his boyish, exuberant way he professed enthusiasm for Louise Fazenda, rainbows and dancing, emoting in pictures, smoking all the time, making pictures, going to the theater, and making money. Then to vary his confidences he lightly passed to mention of his intense dislike of thunder, shoe strings, detours, laughing gas, and earthquakes.

“This is only my second interview,” he explained as he noticed my growing bewilderment at his nervous flow of revelations. “The other time was long ago, and I took Louise Fazenda with me for moral support. Louise didn’t want me to appear too much of an imbecile, so she talked fast and furiously to the interviewer, telling him the wildest things imaginable about my cleverness and so forth. Every once in a while I would get up enough nerve to say ‘Gee whiz, Louise!’ That was all. And when the interview appeared, there it was in cold print, that flock of ‘Gee whizzes.’ I’ve never used the expression since.”

Johnny is just Johnny. In acting ability I might go so far as to say that he is the Glenn Hunter of the West. A big statement that, but Sidney Franklin, Mary Pickford, Constance Talmadge and Harry Beaumont are a few who will bear me out in this. He is the new-type boy hero. His learning is from observation and experience rather than from books, and there is nothing superficial about him. Talking with him you feel as though you were conversing with a kid brother; that the same brother is very much of a tease and that you did wish he would go to college and become a. star athlete before striving to star in pictures. You want to say, “Johnny, read this, or Johnny, study that,” but then Johnny wouldn’t be Johnny at all if he did.

It was after the death of his brother, Bobby, that Johnny took his fling at picture acting. Mary Pickford gave him his first part in her “Through the Back Door.” Johnny’s likeness to his brother was striking and the “show me” attitude was everywhere prevalent. The opinion that one actor in a family was ample, seemed to be general. Therefore Johnny was rarely ever given a chance to prove what he could do. But this year he has started to come into his own and it seems very likely the name of Harron will once more become celebrated.

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Photo by: John Ellis

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Collection: Picture Play Magazine, March 1924