Mae Busch — “She’s a Nut — But I Like Her” (1922) 🇺🇸

The people that like Mae Busch are crazy about her. The people that don’t like her, detest her. Nobody as outspoken, as honest, as natural as Mae Busch can expect to have it any other way. I admit to being in the first class. She intrigues me. I never get tired of looking at her face. It is not beauty — it is the expressiveness of it, the changeableness that holds.

Adela Rogers St. Johns

The other day when Mae Busch happened to pass through a cafe in Hollywood during the lunch hour, I heard a pretty girl at the next table say, “There’s Mae Busch. She’s a nut — but I like her.” It struck me as one of the most descriptive and accurate phrases I had ever heard.

Mae would be the last person in the world to deny that she is a nut. She glories in it. She glories in it chiefly because of the liberty of speech and action it affords her. Of all the independence, sauciness, take-the-starch-right-out-of-you honesty that I have ever encountered, it is in Mae Busch. I have seen more than one fly by night star fall before it. Of all the exuberance of spirit, the joy and pleasure of the moment, the ability to sap the best from every joyous second, Mae Busch possesses it. Of all the downheartedness, the depths, the ready-to-throw-herself-off-the-pier moods — Mae Busch.

I saw her yesterday afternoon dashing up Hollywood Boulevard, her delightful, curly mop of short, black hair tucked into a ravishing tarn — her feet shod in tiny sandals — her tan coat drawn about her with that haughty little swagger that is all her own. She looked as mischievous and as self-confident and as attractive as a woman can very well look.

On the corner as she passed stood a pale, slender young woman about thirty. In her arms she held a little baby, a child of about three clung to her skirt, and beside her on the sidewalk was a huge bundle, evidently sewing or washing. She was waiting for the car.

Mae Busch beside her, asked rapid questions, interspersed with more rapid ejaculations of horror, and little grimaces which succeeded in making the fretful baby laugh. Ten seconds later the woman and the babies were in a taxicab, homeward bound, with a ten dollar bill tucked in the woman’s hand.

She will lend her fur coat to an extra girl and forget to speak to the wife of the president of the company when she comes on the set.

I have never been able to understand why it is — but it is always true. When Mae Busch is in the room, every man drifts toward her as a needle drifts to a magnet. She is conceded to be utterly irresistible where men are concerned. There may be more beautiful, more brilliant, more famous women present — it never seems to matter. Nor who the men are — nor where it is.

No self-respecting woman should admit to liking such a girl but it’s strange how Dorothy Davenport Reid [Dorothy Davenport] and Ethel Clayton and Olga Printzlau and Alice Lake and — though I am not famous — even me myself, do admit it.

Her one great claim to beauty is her supreme grace. She came to pictures from musical comedy and vaudeville, where she was famous in New York as a dancer. Coming to Los Angeles with a vaudeville headliner, she yielded to the persuasions of picture managers and stayed. She was first with Sennett [Mack Sennett] — where so many of our famous stars began — was featured there and has recently been seen in von Stroheim’s [Erich von Stroheim] “The Devil’s Passkey,” and latest in Foolish Wives, and in support of Lasky stars.

There is a persistent rumor that she is to be starred by Universal — a very wise choice for Universal to make, wiser than some of their past ones.

She has been married, to Francis MacDonald [Francis McDonald], but it didn’t take.

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Mae Busch is like a piece of Chinese silk that is blue in the sunlight, flame by candlelight, and rose by electricity

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Every advertisement in Photoplay Magazine is guaranteed.

Collection: Photoplay Magazine, March 1922

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A new camera study of Mae Busch. Her sensitive and touching performance in “The Unholy Three” marks a new high-spot in the career of this colorful actress.

Collection: Photoplay Magazine, August 1925