Kate Price — Sans Grease Paint and Wig (1914) 🇺🇸
“Don’t expect me to say anything,” warned Kate Price one afternoon recently when I found her enjoying a rocker and a book in her dressing-room at the Vitagraph Theater. It was with a typical Kate Price laugh that she then explained: “I put my foot in my mouth every time I open it, and I can’t tell you any pretty tales to make a story out of; all I can do is tell you the truth.
by Mabel Condon
“That’s my failing,” she bemoaned. “I have to tell the truth, no matter what. I’m right out with it. whatever it is; and Mary Charleston is the same. She’s my cousin, though she calls me aunt because I look more like an aunt than a cousin. She tells people she was born in Ireland. She’s just like me, that way; she has to tell the truth. I was born in the city of Cork and came over to this country when I was a big girl. There were other relatives with me and we settled in Rhode Island. I went to school there for two years and then went to work in the thread mills. It was then that I became interested in theatricals, for there was an amateur theatrical club that I joined and people told me I was wasting my time in the mills.
“It’s the comical roles that I’ve always liked to play.” went on Kate, putting a smile into the telling. Then the smile disappeared and Kate Price said: “It was during one of those amateur plays that I met me husband — that was twenty-two years ago. We were married eighteen years and two months and were never separated in our work until he was taken ill and wasn’t able to do anything.
“Well,” she resumed with a sigh, “it was he who put me on the stage. He took me into vaudeville with him and our team name was Price and Steele. Several times we left vaudeville for stock or a melodramatic engagement. I remember we opened in Chicago at the old Hopkins Theater in Her First False Step. I created the part of the Irish wash-woman. We played together, my husband and I, always. Then four years ago he became ill and I stayed and took care of him until our funds were nearly gone. I didn’t know what we would do when they were gone and I was pretending to my husband, right along, that we weren’t badly off at all.
“One day somebody said to me, ‘Kate, why don’t you go to the Vitagraph studio and see if they couldn’t use you?’ So I went and three days after I applied, they called me on a picture. It was ‘Jack Fat and Jim Slim at Coney Island’ — and it you want to know how really funny it was, just ask Fred Thompson; he directed it.” At the memory, the Price laugh that is guaranteed to cheer, sounded heartily and Kate deserted the rocker and pictured the slides and rolls and falls they took during the sight-seeing visit of Jack Fat and Jim Slim.
“We put one chute out of working order,” related Kate, “and I did everything I was told to do. I weighed two hundred and twenty then; that’s ten pounds more than I am now, and I had to do all the things first, and the others flying after me would all land on me.
“Well, I was black and blue for months. My husband was in the hospital and I couldn’t go to see him because I was stiff all over. It was three days before I attempted it and then I had to stand all the way in the subway, though there were lots of vacant seats. One day in a crowded car a lady offered me her seat, remarking, ‘I know you must be ill, your face looks so funny.’
“I declined the seat and she asked if I was going far. ‘Only to 200th street,’ I told her; and we were only at Brooklyn Bridge then.
“All the time I was home I kept getting notices from the studio to come back, that there was other work for me, but I didn’t go because I hated to tell what was the matter with me. But when I did go back, Fred Thompson asked, ‘What kept you away?’ So I told. Shortly after that I was put in the stock company and this is the only company I’ve ever been with.”
I remembered the death of Kate Price’s husband more than a year ago — a year last February, Kate said — and recalled a day at the studio last summer when Kate was going out to the cemetery to put a huge bunch of wild flowers on his grave.
“Often I get so blue,” confided the big-hearted woman whom the public credits with possessing a perpetual laugh. “But I put on my hat and go out to a picture show where somebody on the screen hands me a laugh, and when I come back I’m all right. So long as I can laugh, I’m satisfied: and there are so many things in the taking of pictures that make one laugh.
“In ‘Fisherman Kate,’ we went down to the docks for some of the scenes; in one of them a man was to force me to leave the docks and I kept resisting and saying, ‘I won’t go! I won’t go!’ One of the men who worked around the docks watched us a few minutes and then came over with a big iron hook in his hand and, stepping in front of me. said to the rest of the company, ‘Leave the woman alone; she won’t go if she don’t want to!” I thanked him for his protection and explained I was perfectly safe and we were only taking a picture; so he went off without a word.
“I have fun playing the funny parts, but when a role is sad I’m just as sad as it is. and generally come out of the scene crying.
“I laugh easily and I cry easily; everything goes to my heart!” Kate Price analyzed with another of her laughs.
It was not necessary for her to add, “But I laugh the easier,” for those who have known the genial Kate with her dark hair drawn plainly into a knot and with the eyes and teeth and laugh and manner of one who looks for the funny things in life and always finds them, already know that to laugh is quite the most natural thing in the world, to her.
She is a comedienne to whom many owe their cures of grouch and gloom. She laughs and makes laughs.
And she is a particular favorite of thousands.
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Novel Plot in Gaumont Release
The evil influence of a superstitious power forms the theme of Gaumont’s three part drama “The Curse of the Scarabee Ruby,” released August 1. The strong, emotional story woven from this rather slender thread is of a ruby cursed by a patriarch of long ago and which hundreds of years later casts a spell over a girl to whom it is presented by an ardent lover.
As every incident, influence, and complication in the story radiates from and revolves upon the ruby’s supernatural powers of infusing an evil spirit into its wearer with the coming of darkness this must be accepted as possible at the beginning of the story, otherwise there would be no connection whatever between the events.
There is plenty of action and excitement in the picture and coupled with its mysterious atmosphere and unusual plot it will appeal to many. The photography is of high quality, and the settings and scenes expensive and well-handled. One unusually large scene is that of the dance hall showing a large section of the crowded floor and a part of the balcony. A talented cast is used in the production.
The story, briefly, is of the trials of a young girl whose lover has presented her with a large ruby which he purchased in an antique shop. Years before a curse had been put on the stone and thereafter everybody that possesses it falls under its evil spell during the hours of darkness. Mona’s fiancé becomes suspicious that she is leading a double life, his suspicions being aroused by seeing a girl in one of the city’s cheap dance halls who looked exactly like her. He decides to declare his belief to Mona when they next meet, but her innocent, friendly greeting and fresh appearance convince him that there is some mistake. He confides his former beliefs to his father and they agree that somnambulism is the only answer if the dance hall girl is Mona and not just a resemblance in one of the habitués. One morning Mona finds a wound on her neck but cannot remember having been injured in any way. At the same time an article appears in the paper telling of a raid on a band of thieves and giving a flashlight picture of the only member who escaped and telling of a wound the girl received. Peter and his father decide to watch Mona, and that night surprise her as she is about to leave the house. After a severe struggle they force her back into her room. Peter’s father discovers the inscription on the necklet, removes it and Mona returns to her natural self. As Mona was not conscious of her actions while under the ruby’s evil influence Peter and her father keep the affair a secret and destroy the ruby telling Mona that they accidentally lost it.
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The dance hall appeals to Mona during the reign of the ruby’s charm.
Mona is presented with the fatal ruby.
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Ramo Play Shows Depicts War
The Ramo Films Incorporated will receive a complete series of films dealing with the present European war next Sunday morning when the ship New York arrives in port. The pictures were taken by a representative of the company at Nancy near the Alsatian frontier of France during the German invasion last week and a play was written especially to fit the present situation by Paul M. Potter entitled The War of Wars.
It is believed that these will be the first authentic pictures of the great disturbance to reach this country and in order that they may be speedily made ready for exhibition. Frank Egan has arranged to have a Sandy Hook pilot meet the steamer in New York harbor and rush the films to the Ramo laboratory where a large force will be put to work on them at once. It is expected that they will be ready for delivery by Monday.
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Al. Lichtman, president of the Alco Film Company, has signed a contract with William Sievers, secretary and general manager of the New Grand Central Theater Company of St. Louis, whereby the latter company will handle the Alco program exclusively in the states of Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and southern Illinois.
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Edwin August and Mary Pickford are a combination hard to beat. At one time they acted opposite each other at the Biograph and an opportunity is being given to photoplay fans to see them in the plays which were produced by David Griffith and which are now being shown once more.
Collection: Motography Magazine, August 1914