Kenneth Harlan — Blue Book of the Screen (1923) 🇺🇸

Asked for the secret of his success, Kenneth Harlan always says, “My mother.” For Mrs. Harlan, once an actress of some attainments, has been the inspiration for her athletic son from the time of his childhood in New York until now.

Young Harlan got his inspiration for a career from visiting the “wings” of the theatres where his mother was playing.

At the Horace Mann School, Kenneth Harlan was the mainstay of amateur dramatics, appearing in plays, coaching the other players and even designing sets and costumes.

As soon as he graduated from school, he was engaged to appear in support of Gertrude Hoffman, who had a dramatic dance revue on the Keith and Orpheum circuits. Although not a dancer, the young man’s sense of dramatic values made him invaluable in pantomime.

But an ambition to be a real actor led the handsome juvenile to secure an engagement with Robert Hilliard’s The Fortune Hunters company. Having found his proper medium at last, young Harlan proceeded to shoot to the top of his profession.

Broadway recognized him later in The Country Boy and opened its arms to its new favorite.

Lois Weber saw interesting screen possibilities in the young actor and engaged him to play the leading role in “The Whim,” after tests had shown him to possess undoubted screen personality.

With the favorite as a nucleus, Bluebird Productions was formed and made a number of pictures, notably “The Wine Girl,” “Bread” and “Midnight Madness,” in which he appeared to such good advantage that Constance Talmadge offered him a contract to appear in her support in her features for Joseph Schenck [Joseph M. Schenck].

Under this contract, “Lessons in Love,” “Mamma’s Affair” and “Dangerous Business” served to bring him to the receptive notice of photoplay audiences, and as a result his name began to run high in contests held by magazines to determine the popularity of various film players.

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Portrait by Straus Peyton • Los Angeles

Collection: The Blue Book of the Screen (1923)