Malvina Longfellow’s Sweet Expressions (1919) 🇬🇧

Malvina Longfellow — this artiste is just one more reason why British films are forging ahead

Malvina Longfellow, is the clever cinema star who has taken the ill-fated Lady Hamilton and made of her a live, throbbing human for all time.

Imagine beautiful, pale skin kissed into warmth by the sun, great dark eyes, calm and steadfast, but with the mystery of Mona Lisa dwelling in their depths; a broad, low, unruffled forehead, and black, vibrant hair.

But even then you have not got her. You need to see her by yourself, before you’ve realised even the A. B. C. of her charm.

Malvina at Home

I had to run down to her farm in Essex to find this out, and it was the wisest move I could have made. For Malvina at home is even more fascinating than in the pictures. Somehow the old thirteenth-century house, with its oaken beams and pretty furnishings, that breathes of lavender and days when life but glided by, seems the one and only suitable setting for Miss Longfellow.

The ancient moat and the wonderful gardens admired in turn, we strolled down to a fragrant comer in her garden, where, beside clumps of sweetwilliam and southernwood, I fired off the questions one usually asks a star.

I had just learned that my hostess was born in New York and that her father was a well-known artist, when d-r-o-n-e, d-r-o-n-e overhead in the blue, so I broke in —

“Keen on flying?”

Experience in the Air

Rather! I hope to fly quite a good deal when I have more time than just at present. The first time I went up was in Long Island with one of the first fliers — an American called Hamilton. Poor boy, he was killed in France! But there — it’s about my film work I think you said you wanted to hear.

“It was as- an artist’s model that I learned the elements of posing, and also, strange to say, it was something in that very posing that set me longing to be an actress. And once I make up my mind to gratify an ambition, then wild horses won’t drag me off the scent. I just keep at it.”

“And —”

A Super with Sarah

“Not long afterwards I made my first appearance as a super with Sarah Bernhardt, and followed that up with small parts in the Metropolitan Opera. Then I transferred my affections to dramatic work.”

But, knowing something about this, I must tell you myself that Malvina made a great hit in two Bernstein [Henri Bernstein] plays — The Thief and The Whirlwind. For she won’t do so. Modesty is her only weakness. I never met anyone so fresh and unspoiled.

A short time with Seymour Hicks at The Comedy, then into pictures, and a brilliant debut as Jacynth in Holy Orders, by Marie Corelli, and equally brilliant success in For All Eternity, Thelma, Adam Bede, and Betta, the Gipsy.

Love for England

“During the war,” Malvina continued in her soft, caressing voice, “I did some pictures in America for America, but, loving England so much and having my home here, I just had to come back.”

“How is it you’ve created such a perfect Lady Hamilton!”

“Because I’ve read every book about her that exists, and studied her from every point of view. After all, she was just a beautiful woman in love with love, and I’ve tried to interpret this.”

“And now —”

“I want to play Gwynne and the title-role of ‘The Life of Josephine,’ which I hope to do after finishing ‘Love in Bondage.’”

“And the secret of your success?” I questioned eagerly, as we shook good-bye.

“I don’t know,” she said, “unless, as a girl said to me in a letter the other day: ‘I always enjoy the pictures you’re in because you are so real.’ The sweetest compliment I ever had paid to me. It’s what I’ve always tried to be.”

—

Photo captions:

• Reverie.
• Doubts
• Inquiry.
• The dawn of a smile.
• Just pensive.

Collection: Picture Show Magazine, September 1919