Kathlyn Williams — Kathlyn of the Golden West (1920) 🇺🇸

When the maid opened a porch door leading into an exquisite hall with a Colonial-looking stairway, I was not quite sure whether to inquire for ‘Miss Williams’ or Mrs. Eyton. But the old name stuck somehow, and the maid was evidently quite accustomed to its use.

by Doris Delvigne

In the five minutes’ grace which I had before she appeared, I was struck with the very first intimation of Kathlyn Williams’ love of freedom. Her rooms are arranged so one might walk about in the dark with no danger of knocks and bruises. The big chairs and stuffed davenport are pushed to odd corners of the room; there is a simplicity in the softly shaded, crushed mulberry surroundings which is delightful.

And when she came into the room, her hand extended in greeting, I found her typically the Western girl. With the mountains for her inspiration and the unexplored mines of her native Montana to fire her imagination, she has not lost that easy sociability, blended with a certain delightful aloofness which would indicate her pleasure in the society of humankind, but a firm resolve to live her own life, free from mental intrusions.

‘This morning I had the highest flight I’ve enjoyed so far,’ she told me, enthusiastically. ‘We rose to over four thousand feet. I do love that feeling of freedom which one just can’t get anywhere save in the air. I hope to learn to fly alone some day… It will be a great thing to be alone with one’s thoughts, far away from everything sordid,’ smiled the beautiful Mrs. Eyton.

‘Evidently you associate solitude with freedom,’ I ventured.

‘Cela va sans dire,’ came the positive answer, with a pretty shrug. ‘I’m afraid I’m something of a radical. I hate oppression in any form — perhaps that is why I avoid large gatherings when people get together and talk and talk and talk.’

One has no doubt about the bigness of Kathlyn Williams. In a way it is her birthright — she is again so evidently the girl of the West. And there is something about the Western-born girl which never enters another’s make-up. You may fetter her with ties, put her in a dramatic school, give her city environment instead of her dearly loved mountains, but you cannot obliterate that indefinable air of freedom — her independence and innate dignity.

‘I’m not working constantly, you know,’ she was saying. ‘I did that years ago in the Selig serials. Then, too, my marriage to Mr. Eyton makes me independent, and I enjoy working in the pictures now and then when I can choose my roles. I shall never give up pictures entirely, but I do want little vacations in between, when I can keep house, enjoy our home and aviate.’

We drifted back to the days when Miss Williams had done The Spoilers, journeying to Panama, where the company worked for eight weeks.

‘What do you think of The Spoilers, now that you have done so many other pictures?’ I asked.

‘I still consider it a very great picture in some respects. It is crude as we judge the photoplay today, of course, just as all the old productions are. However, the story was good — it had dramatic value, and that means so much. It means,’ she mused, ‘that The Spoilers is still being shown and making money. It proves the necessity of a good story.’

‘What are you doing now?’

‘Nothing at this special time — I have done five pictures this last year and will soon start on another with Mr. De Mille [Transcriber’s Note: William C. de Mille directed Kathlyn Williams in ‘The Prince Chap’ in 1920]. I can’t tell you anything about it save the fact that it will be a stupendous thing like ‘Joan the Woman.’

I have done ‘Her Kingdom of Dreams’ with Anita Stewart and ‘A Girl Named Mary,’ with Marguerite Clark. And I want to say right here that she is a dear little thing. She’s one girl who is tailor-made when it comes to business. She is never known to keep a director waiting. If the rest of us have to be on hand in make-up at 7 p. m, Miss Clark is there also.

‘I’ve just finished a fine part in ‘The Tree of Knowledge,’ — it’s a heavy, the second time I have played a role of this sort, but it is real, — true, — about a resourceful woman and it allows one’s imagination full play.’

‘The year before last you were not seen much on the screen?’ … We gently led the star of ‘The Perils of Kathlyn’ back to the silversheet when the talk again drifted. She would so much rather talk about her hobby — it being animals — not an unnatural hobby either when one remembers her old Selig [William Nicholas Selig] pictures with the lions and jaguars…

‘I was very ill,’ she told me, ‘and for several months I was compelled to rest and recuperate, which made a trip with Mr. Eyton to New York possible. Then he was ill with the flu, and just when I was recovering I had to take full charge of his sickroom, for it was impossible to get a nurse during that epidemic, as you’ll remember. The very fact that I had to nurse one so ill helped me to get well — I ceased to have time to be depressed and nervous over my own state.’

It doesn’t take one long to know Kathlyn Williams as self-sufficient. She belittles domesticity in no way, yet she feels that a person satisfied to do nothing but make the social rounds, with no thought of things outside of her clubs, is more or less stagnant, and even tho the screen work is not a necessity to her, she will always find time for a characterization now and then, perhaps in later years less frequently than at present.

She is essentially not the type to talk — she is a doer. Her life contains many interests, varied interests. She detests notoriety and only lends her name to an enterprise if it will assist in bringing in funds for a good purpose.

She is sweet, gracious — and big — a typical Girl o’ the Golden West, with a heart stretching to cover every living thing with a benevolent purpose.

—

‘I’m not working constantly,’ said Kathlyn Williams. ‘I did that years ago in Selig serials… and I enjoy pictures so much more when I can work now and then, choosing the roles I like best’

Photo by Carpenter, L. A.

—

She is sweet, gracious — and big — a typical Girl o’ the Golden West, with a heart stretching to cover every living thing with a benevolent purpose.

Photo by Carpenter, L. A.

Photo by W. R. Scott

—

Extracts from George Eliot

• A woman’s hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.
• She is grace itself. That is what woman ought to be. She ought to produce the effect of exquisite music.
• Plainness has its peculiar temptations quite as much as beauty.
• Each woman creates in her own likeness the love-tokens that are offered her.
• We must not always ask for beauty when a good God has seen fit to make an excellent young woman without it.
• It is surely better to pardon too much than to condemn too much.
• The best part of a woman’s love is worship.
• Remember, very slight things make epochs in married life.

Collection: Motion Picture Magazine, February 1920