Marc MacDermott — Sans Grease Paint and Wig (1914) 🇺🇸
It was funny how many times I almost had a chat with Marc MacDermott. If I could trip out to the Edison studio on Wednesday, that would be sure to be the day that Mr. MacDermott would be going to work in Boston.
by Mabel Condon
Then there was the week that this Edison lead played hero in real life and a dentist’s chair and allowed the operator of the chair to relieve him of seven teeth. And for the next few days Mr. MacDermott [Marc McDermott] was indifferent as to whether he would ever care to chat with anybody again. But by the following week he had completely recovered and would be in the studio all day Thursday. And on Wednesday night, Frank C. Bannon dashed off the information on a post-card, that Mr. MacDermott was sorry but found at the last-minute, that he. would have to throw himself on the railroad tracks at Perth Amboy. By which, it would seem that Mr. MacDermott had become desperate.
However, the next appointment materialized. It was late Friday afternoon. And that night the studio burned!
Anyway, we had the chat and some nice strong tea and pound-cake with fruit chopped up in it. Mr. MacDermott made the tea. It was easy, he said. We drank the tea and ate the cake from the top of a trunk in the dressing-room that Miriam Nesbitt and Mary Fuller shared, and there was more than one helping of both, meaning the tea and cake. After a subway trip clear to 245th street, one needs tea and cake! Especially if the day is one of those warm ones that prompts you to leave your muff in the office and then prompts you to regret it, just as soon as you get too far away to go back for it.
Five o’clock tea is one of the English customs Mr. MacDermott strictly adheres to; says five o’clock is such an in-between time that a person needs something like tea, about that hour.
“In England, business stops at five o’clock for tea,” related Mr. MacDermott, cutting slices of cake that were long and thick. “I wish it were the custom here.”
I wished it were too, and feebly demurred at receiving the largest slice.
“It only requires a few minutes preparation and it really refreshes one.”
“What’s that — tea? Wonder if I’ll have time for a cup?” Miriam Nesbitt conjectured from the doorway. “Yes — of course,” the host decided for her, getting another cup from behind a curtain on the wall.
“What variety of occupation are those stiff curls in front of your ears supposed to intimate?” Mr. MacDermott wanted to know, when the sipping party was nearing the bottom of its second cup.
“Night cashier in a tango restaurant — and these are tango curls,” Miss Nesbitt replied. A wild call of “Miss Nesbitt” came from the studio and she hurried away in answer to it.
“And now, tell me something about yourself,” I requested after a lapse of time in which Mr. MacDermott’s tea and cake and best stories had been stowed away, and yet he had showed no disposition to talk about himself.
“Do I have to?” he smiled.
“Certainly.” No smile.
“I don’t like to start out, I was born in London, raised in Australia and always wanted to go on the stage!”
“But there has to be a start, you know.”
“Yes; so we’ll let that stand. Well, my first work on the stage was with George Grisnold, the English actor. I was with him for seven years and we played the big cities in Australia and I went to Europe with him. Then I came to the states and joined Mrs. Pat Campbell. We played Magda and went to England and put on Sudermann’s Joys of Living. A season with Frohman, then with Mary Dainton and Dennis O’Sullivan. They were Irish players — do you remember them? They were splendid.
“I joined Mansfield’s company and was with him for three seasons. It was after a summer in stock, followed by an engagement with Klaw and Erlanger, that I came into pictures. That was four years ago and I started here, with the Edison company. I was the first one to use the yellow makeup. I got my idea from Japanese fans. Did you ever notice how yellow the faces of the Japanese figures on the fans are, in the day-time? And at night the tinting is just natural. That was what gave me the idea for a yellow make-up.”
Yellow is rather partial to Mr. MacDermott, as his hair has a tinge of that color. You would guess right away though, that the “tinge” had once been red — and Mr. MacDermott admitted it had been.
“Fiery red and the curse of my young life,” he said touching the curly locks that stand up high on his head and that look so black, in pictures. “But thank heaven, I was spared watery blue eyes,” he consoled himself. The MacDermott eyes are a very bright and a very decided brown; his mouth is straight and firm and his slight accent is English. For a further description, though the public really needs none, he is tall, and broad, and attentively pleasant. And his funny stories are really and truly funny.
He likes best the roles that allow of dramatic action and dignity, rather than those of daring heroism. The favorites of those he has played, he says were in the films “The Antique Broach,” “An Old Sweetheart of Mine,” “The Sunset Gun,” and “The Passer-by.” The last is his special favorite.
Twice in the last two years he has gone to Europe for the Edison company. The last time going over, he was dreadfully sick, and the sensation was one he is not anxious to repeat. Each of these film trips took several months time. “The Black Mask” is the name of the picture series that is getting most of Mr. MacDermott’s time, now-a-days — all but the tea-hour.
It was when I was putting on my things to leave, that I decided that thereafter, the filing-cabinet would serve as a tea-table at the sacred hour of five each afternoon. Would Mr. MacDermott drop in at some five o’clock for tea?
Mr. MacDermott would.
But I’m hoping he will telephone first, for the tea service is lacking, as yet.
Collection: Motography Magazine, April 1914