Malcolm McGregor — Yale to Hollywood (1922) 🇺🇸
Malcolm McGregor has the makings of popularity. McGregor hails from Scotland, New Jersey, and Yale. “Well,” say folk in the know, young Malcolm McGregor is the distinct American type — and they’re going to be crazy about him.”
by Mary Winship
He is, in the language of the late lamented flapper, horribly good-looking. Dark, swift-moving, unaffected, with that suggestion of hidden force and manliness that we have always liked in our men.
He has his little story to tell. “Humility was one of my first lessons. Because when I am introduced to any of my four-year-old daughter’s friends as Mr. McGregor and I have to admit that I am not the Mr. McGregor who was acquainted with Peter Rabbit, I am immediately a social error.”
As for his history — oh, it’s one of those “once upon a time” histories, really it is. Part of it I dragged from him, part of it was told me here and there, bit by bit. And it’s quite exciting and altogether as it should be.
Once upon a time there was a handsome young man with an artistic temperament and an athletic physique who was the son of a millionaire in New Jersey. The millionaire made hammers or tractors or breakfast foods or something useful like that.
Anyway, he sent his handsome young son to Yale, where the son distinguished himself athletically and won the swimming and diving championship of the university for several years. He not only won it, but they tell me that he looked so attractive while winning it that the girls came from miles around to watch him, but he says they never, never did.
Anyway, he left college and got married to a very beautiful girl, and Papa was very much pleased, only he wanted the young man to go into business with him right away. But the young man didn’t like to work, especially making useful things. So instead of settling down, he and his wife and some pals decided to buy a yacht and sail around for a while. They disappeared utterly, sailing around the Horn and various other places and finally landed in Hollywood.
Papa wasn’t at all pleased by all this. Thus, when the young man was just beginning to find out how grand the Pacific Ocean really could be, and how sweet the orange blossoms smell, papa sent him a telegram.
They spoke to each other by wire something like this —
“Come home and go to work or all is over between us.”
“I don’t want to make hammers (or whatever it was) and I think maybe I’ll go into pictures. Shall I?”
“I hope you will be successful because otherwise you’re going to starve to death.”—
Or words to that effect.
Malcolm almost did, too. It wasn’t as easy as it sounded. But eventually he met Rex Ingram socially. Both were Yale men, and brothers of some kind, and Ingram became interested in the rich man’s son. With his unusual vision he saw a screen type and a real dramatic temperament. So he cast him in The Prisoner of Zenda.
Now he has a Metro contract and is being co-starred by Goldwyn with Colleen Moore in “Broken Chains.”
And they do tell me that when Father saw his son on the screen he wired immediately, “All is forgiven.” Or words to that effect.
Anyway, everything is serene domestically and Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm McGregor and their small daughter have a Hollywood bungalow and Malcolm is much happier.
And so are we. Anybody can make hammers —
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see also Henry King, Virginian (1922)
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Collection: Photoplay Magazine, December 1922