Juanita Hansen — Without Benefit of Custard (1918) 🇺🇸

Never again will the Castillion-Norse features of Juanita Hansen, erstwhile baby doll and exhibit A of exotic screen atmosphere, stop a custard pie. It might — if she stumbles onto the comedy set by mistake; but not on the director’s orders.

For Juanita is through with sandbag comedy. It might have been influenced by the elimination of pastry flour; we doubt it. The truth is more likely hovering around the theory that the Destiny supposed to jerk more or less of our fate-strings discovered one of them had become tangled — one belonging to Juanita. Not that she wasn’t interesting in the pastric, but because she is more so in the more austere.

Juanita has done her bit in the gay comedy. She has done it graciously and gracefully. But she has graduated. The screen chorus is behind her. She is now a star.

It all came about in a rather odd way, too. One of the most serious minded men in the motion picture business who cannot be induced to laugh at Charlie Chaplin or thrill at a serial, saw Juanita on the screen in the projection room at Universal City. The production was a Lyons-Moran burlesque [Eddie Lyons, Lee Moran] in which Miss Hansen took the rôle of a highly colored Carmen with the accent on the men.

“That tough girl can act like a house afire and she looks like a million dollars,” said he. “Sign her up. I’ll make a dramatic star out of her.”

Miss Hansen had just come to Universal City. No one there knew much about her but she was signed up, tried out, and finally put into The Brass Bullet, which started to shoot August 5th. With every episode interest in Juanita grew, until in the fifth Mr. Laemmle [Carl Laemmle Sr.] wired to the Coast to look out for several big dramatic stories in which to feature her as a star after the serial was finished. She will be added to the list of special stars and her releases will be known as Juanita Hansen Special Attractions.

Seldom has it happened that an actress’ name is so indicative of character and ancestry as is that of Juanita Hansen. For this newest of Universal stars is a Spanish Viking. She can trace her forbears to the haughty señoritas of old Castile, and the fiery old Norse pirates with the same authority that her mirror reflects these strains of blood in her striking features. A futurist would describe this rare combination as “burning ice.” But while Juanita is all this when she wants to be she is as yet untouched by that most fatal and unaccountable of theatrical diseases known as Staritis. When a number of lovely ladies of Universal City rushed forth to grab a cup in the annual bathing suit carnival at Los Angeles there was no dissenting voice in the awarding of the cup to her. Her unique creation with its crowning talisman of a brass bullet fastened to the cap contributed.

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Juanita has done her bit in comedy, has done it gracefully and graciously, she has graduated. She is now a star

Miss Hansen won the cup in the annual bathing suit carnival in Los Angeles; the vote was unanimous. We do not wonder why.

Collection: Photoplay Magazine, September 1918