John Roche — The Man Who Sold Himself (1925) 🇺🇸

Personality has done for John Roche what endeavor fails to accomplish for many. At each step from choir boy in the town of Penn Yan, a pin-point on the map of New York, to featured screen player with a long-term Warner Brothers contract, a charming personality has “sold” him to some one who aided his advancement.

His boyish soprano served in the church choir and in the home-town movie where, at eleven, he sang illustrated songs. A scout for Conway’s Band [Patrick Conway] chanced to hear him and engaged him for a tour. Returning, he found employment singing at the Hotel Seneca, in Rochester, where Charles Dillingham happened to hear him. An engagement in support of Elsie Janis for two years followed.

Musical study in Europe after his war service developed his talent and upon his return he headlined in vaudeville. Again his charm of personality found an interested buyer and a season in musical comedy resulted. Next, Monta Bell, now a director, was impressed with his engaging manner and gave him splendid repertoire experience with a Washington stock company. David Belasco dropped into the theater at a friend’s insistence, saw Roche, and signed him for the role of Armand Duval in Deburau. Later he played opposite Doris Keane in The Czarina. Big-hearted Matt Moore arranged an introduction to a movie nabob.

In the year and a half that he has been in pictures Roche has enjoyed an astonishingly quick advancement. And the noteworthy point about his career is that he never has set out to obtain a role for himself. “Kiss Me Again,” Ernst Lubitsch’s next production, presents him as a French pianist.

John Roche in a number of ways bears a resemblance to Jack Gilbert [John Gilbert]. The same dark handsomeness, wavy, black hair and glowing, vibrant eyes; the same impetuosity and rush of vitality. He has, however, more of boyish eagerness and idealism.

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Photo by: Roman Freulich

Collection: Picture Play Magazine, June 1925