John Roche (1926) 🇺🇸

“‘Tis all a chequerboard of nights and days
Where Destiny with men for pieces plays;
Hither and thither moves and mates and slays
And, one by one, back to the closet lays.”

by Martha Grange

John Roche, singing bis way into the movies, has won millions of friends who will now gladly fling open to him the doors of their concert halls.

So did ancient Omar, premier scenarist of his day, carol on a piece of parchment a creed untarnished by the fleeting centuries, the creed of Lady Luck.

And, even as in olden days there seemingly were born of women favored ones for whom the sun would always brightly shine, we have John Roche of the movie game today.

Commonplace was his birthright and his cradle, his youthful education and his later years. From choir boy through “ulcerated songs” in tinpan movie houses to the stage and thence to Hollywood he came.

But Destiny released the barrier when his race began. Warner Brothers are the pawns used to advance him on his way; this after he had played in bits and second leads but four short months.

Lubitsch [Ernst Lubitsch] also may be blamed in part for this man’s popularity. For when that discriminating personage was casting for Kiss Me Again, the leading role of which required quite a deft admixture of light comedy and romantic appeal, the dice were thrown and Roche was picked despite the fact that featured luminaries in round numbers had been scrambling for the job.

Lubitsch says it took but one turn of the camera crank to prove to him that no one in the past had brought the real Roche to the screen and public; and in the next two hours of hard testing which included the gamut of registration this judgment was upheld.

That he was right — well, see that picture if you haven’t!

Just trip into the kitchen of the Fates and grab the biggest mixing bowl upon the shelf. Then stir together one bright and sunny disposition, one winning smile, one lock of dark, unruly hair, two sparkling, laughing imps of eyes, a dimpled chin, an Irish nose, a keen and effervescent wit, the body of a Mercury, and season it with spice of chivalry and culture, and you’ll have a picture of this man.

But not that he’s a tin god or that he’s irresistible. But it helps a bit to be magnetic and attractive, does it not?

To measure a mirage is just as easy as describing personality, of course. And Roche does have appeal. He portrays the romanticism and camaraderie of a lineage reputed for those traits; and they are coupled with an elusive something which a lifetime of unusually keen observation and diversified experience has brought him.

Always a deep reader, he has profited by it, and it is this last addition to the aggregate of his charms which brought him ready entree to the inner circle of the Hollywood intelligentsia.

It is in this latter group that you will find his closest friends, and he is seldom seen at parties or in places where the roysterer hangs out. The opera, symphony concerts, the theatre, vocal recitals, Shakespearean or other classical recitals, yes. There he and his mother always can be found. For those two are inseparable.

Back of his love for music one finds a baritone well-trained and of a quality unusual. A singer? He began in a church choir in his home town at the age of nine. Then the movies were in swaddling clothes; there was but one show in the town.

The showman heard of what was then a startling innovation and which now is history— the illustrated song. With his program of eighteen reels a week at $18 weekly came a set of slides with Words attached, and a badly torn and battered copy of the ballad. He sought out Roche and, after quite a little protest from his mother, hired him to sing the songs.

And every night the townsfolk heard a childish treble hitting all the high spots in the ceiling as the sweating operator in the cheesecloth “booth” changed spools of film.

The time came when the treble broke and deeper notes (and sometimes squawks) rasped through. But Roche persisted and while audiences squirmed and suffered trained a voice that finally became the talk of all the countryside.

The family moved to Rochester; he sang there in cathedral and in synagogue as well. Then came an offer from a hotel man, a progenitor of the “music with your meals” campaign. And Roche sang solos with the orchestra accompanying.

Elsie Janis sat at dinner with her producer, Charles B. Dillingham, in that hotel one night and heard Roche sing.

The youthful Roche knew nothing of the New York theatrical manager and if in his voice that night there rang a note of unhappiness and longing, it was the artist in him crying out against noisy waiters and clattering guests.

But to everyone one day comes luck. Once at least the break comes your way and Roche on the “chequerboard of nights and days” moved to Broadway with Miss Janis’ company.

Here came success again — or rather a full series of successes. Vocal accompaniments to rows of twinkling legs gave way to melodrama in a stock company and later to serious and major parts in yearly stage successes. Then came the war.

John and his three brothers went overseas. And like a great number of our veterans, he doesn’t talk much of his life there. When he came back he played the lead in R.U.R. and other stage successes and then bits in a couple of films in New York.

Came next a contract with Louis B. Mayer, the emigration west, one picture — and a broken contract because the next; part offered seemed unfit.

Then Roche free-lanced — and with freelancing came for the first time in his life discouragement. Love for pictures and their making turned to loathing overnight. And in his anger at conditions he renounced the films and all their makers and bought tickets for New York. He packed his trunks and called a baggage man and paid the gas man and the phone bill. He was through; he soon would shake the dust of Hollywood from his feet and join the host of eastern knockers.

Then the phone rang. Lady Luck had rolled the dice and turned a seven. It was First National. They wanted him. He told them that they were too late, he didn’t want the part, he couldn’t play it even if he wanted, and other argument and protests. But they insisted. Richard Tully [Richard Walton Tully] wanted him in Flowing Gold and they must have him. And they got him — for who can balk when Lady Luck has thrown the dice?

Roche still is in Hollywood. For with his portrayal over, another came his way and then another until finally this last contract with Warner Brothers was concluded. Now he’s signed for five years more, but after that — quien sabe?”

—

John Roche, good natured, handsome and an adept at golf. What more could you want?

John Roche and Marie Prevost in Kiss Me Again.

—

There is no knowledge that is not useful to a screen player. John Roche, a finished musician, plays the part of a musical genius under Mr. Lubitsch’s direction.

Possessed of manly, regular features, John Roche yet succeeds in being unmistakably himself, vigorous and masculine.

—

William S. Hart comes back to the screen in Tumbleweeds.

Collection: Screenland Magazine, January 1926