Margery Wilson — She Was Padded to Fame (1917) 🇺🇸

Margery Wilson started on the “Glory Road” by deceiving prospective employers as to her size

by J. B. Woodside

Margery Wilson ascended to stardom by using pads as ballast. Every time this new star of the Triangle forces shed a pad, she got a better job. And now that she has risen to the top, she doesn’t need pads, so at last she is her simple self again.

Although it may sound rather intimate and prying to discuss Miss Wilson’s padding so frankly, it may be excused because her pads were so vitally connected with her theatrical work. Also no other actress ever assumed such a unique method of advancement.

Long before the era of pads began, Margery Wilson first slid into the foot-light trough during amateur theatricals in a Kentucky seminary where her mother was teacher. For diplomatic reasons, her mother had to cast the children of wealthy patrons in the best parts, leaving her daughter to appear as a maid. But the rich little children got frightened, as rich little children should when they try to keep a future star like Margery Wilson down, and Margery had some success.

When her mother became ill, they went to Cincinnati, and then came the period of pads. Miss Wilson’s mother was denied salary while on sick leave and mother and daughter were impoverished.

Margery Wilson, fourteen years old, went forth job-hunting, and she almost begged employment as cash girl, salary two dollars for seven days of labor.

Then moving pictures indirectly changed her life and summoned the pads. She decided she would play the piano in a moving picture show. But her size and youth forbid such employment, although her ability was ample.

So she went home, declared three of her mother’s old dresses as material for properties, and padded herself until she presented a rotund and mature appearance. Then she got the job.

As she grew she needed less pads. So she was a few yards shy of the original assembly when she joined a stock company. But her unusual slenderness and youthfulness made first aid to the curves of her body necessary until she came to California after several years of stock work, and joined the Fine Arts company.

More than a year ago, she transferred to the Triangle studios at Culver City where she attained stardom, after wide experience in supporting, in which she deserved and won honorable mention. She has appeared opposite William S. Hart in a half dozen “Westerns.”

Miss Wilson has bagged her moose in the Canadian woods, although she got buck-fever the first time she saw the moose, and her hands shook so she let her gun fall. She has caught tuna and sea bass at Catalina, trout in Tahoe, and gone gunning for bears in the High Sierras.

She is one of the most active of motion picture actresses, and her perfect health adds to her personal attractiveness.

Another distinction she has is that she is a cousin to Dorothy Dix, the adviser of women, but it is doubtful if Dorothy Dix ever gave advice more efficacious than Miss Margery Wilson gave to herself: to wear pads and become famous.

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Margery Wilson, the “Brown Eyes” of Intolerance, is a full-fledged star now.

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Collection: Photoplay Magazine, December 1917