Marguerite Snow — She Never Worked for Griffith (1918) 🇺🇸

In the course of several years' experience in collecting data concerning the lives and works of more or less famous screen personalities, a certain formula has become extremely familiar.

by Randolph Bartlett

If the person whose questionnaire one is filling out has been in pictures since they were in their now familiar infancy, the fascinating information comes something like this:

"A friend of a friend of mine was working at the old Biograph" — it is always the "old" Biograph, though there never has been a new one — "and I went out to see how they made pictures. Well, I was sitting there watching them, and the last thought in my mind was ever trying to do it myself, when a man pointed at me and said, 'Who's that little girl over there?' Well, you can imagine how prised I was. The man wanted me to go on right away and take a part in the picture. It was Mr. Griffith."

So when I discovered that Marguerite Snow was of the picture infantry and realized that she had not pulled this line, I prompted her.

"A friend of a friend of yours was working out at the old Biograph —"

"No," she interrupted. "It was Thanhouser."

"But Griffith never directed at Thanhouser."

"I never worked for Mr. Griffith."

Here was a startling story — a girl who had been in pictures all this time and never been inside the Biograph studio, and was not discovered by Griffith. And yet they say there's nothing new under the sun!

Nor did Marguerite have to run away from home to go on the stage. If she hadn't done it voluntarily her parents would, probably, have compelled her to do it. Her father was Billy Snow, a famous minstrel man in the days when it was open season for that form of entertainment. They lived in Savannah, Georgia, and little Marguerite passed her childhood checking off the number of years before she would be permitted to become an actress. And she didn't have any discouragements to encounter. Her debut was in James O'Neill's last revival of "The Count of Monte Cristo," after which she was engaged by Henry W. Savage. She was one of the many "College Widows" and enjoyed a great deal of success before she ever heard of movies.

In those pioneer days, successful actresses who engaged in film adventure, were a little ashamed of it. They regarded it as slumming, and concealed their identity, so as not to lose caste. Marguerite Snow was no exception. When she went to work for Thanhouser she didn't want her friends to know about it so she changed her name. She called herself "Margaret" Snow.

"Funny, isn't it?" she said. "But it isn't half as funny as some of the things that actors and actresses have their press agents send out to increase their popularity. Every time I pick up a moving picture tradepaper, these days, I discover that a certain star has just recovered from another automobile accident. I wonder how she ever gets time to do a picture. There's another one that seems to have a penchant for buying clothes, and there's usually a story a week to this effect. It looks to me as if she must be the buyer for a wholesale clothing house on the side.

"It isn't always the fault of the stars, though. A press agent who was supposed to be keeping my name favorably before the public very proudly one day sent me a newspaper clipping, which began, 'Miss Marguerite Snow disagrees with Daniel Frohman.' I wired him asking why he didn't have me pick on some one my size, like the President or General Joffre."

"What are your own diversions?"

"Playing with the baby," she declared.

Another startling fact — a young actress who is a wife and mother, and isn't afraid that it will make the public hate her if it becomes known. Her husband is James Cruze, and a mighty fine actor too, separated at present from his fireside by the entire width of the American continent, for the Cruze-Snow home is in New York, and James is at Lasky's, in Hollywood.

Miss Snow's latest screen activity is the Wharton serial, "The Eagle's Eye," made at Ithaca, with which patriotic creation readers of Photoplay are familiar. Before that she was with George M. Cohan in "Broadway Jones," and in various Thanhouser, Metro and other productions, and of course you remember the heroine of The Million Dollar Mystery. She had just finished the Flynn picture when I met her.

"What are you going to do next?" I asked.

"Well you see, it's like this," she replied, with a twinkle. "Mr. Zukor has been coaxing me to accept a contract to star with Paramount pictures, and Metro is anxious to have me come back there, and some very big capitalists want to organize my own company for me, so I don't know just which to accept."

"In other words, you know the Broadway patter, even if you don't use it in your business," I said.

"You can't get away from it if you have ears to hear," she answered. "It's old stuff now, but a lot of the girls don't seem to know it yet. Perhaps you didn't know, though, that I did have one of those things once — a company of my own. We had awfully nice offices."

"How were your pictures?"

"I didn't say we made pictures — I said we had nice offices. We didn't get as far as making pictures."

I can't think of anyone but Marguerite Snow who would not have added, "But of course you mustn't say anything about that in print."

A remarkable girl, and that's the truth.

A recent photographic study of Miss Snow.

Photo by: White

"The Million Dollar Mystery," most famous of all serials, had Marguerite Snow as its heroine.

This is Julie Cruze, Marguerite Snow's baby — and very patriotic, too, say we.

Boy, Page Booth Tarkington!

Mr. Tarkington, we have just seen your play, Seventeen, and we believe that we present you, herewith, the sole and original model of your young man in the momentous dress-suit — that dress-suit which was expanded for father, cut down for the son, rented by the tailor and damned by the whole family.

The soulful lad with the bee-stung upper lip, languishing in the photographer's best prop chair, is Wallace Reid, and beside him stands his mother.

At this time Geraldine Farrar's future heavy lover was an inmate of Perkiomen Seminary. The year was 1909, and eighteen summers had been made more glorious for Wallie's presence on earth. With these known dates the class in high-angle mathematics may now begin to figure out Mr. Reid's real age.

He was then everything but an actor. He was a poet, an editor, a short story writer, a violinist, a bass-singer, a football player, a member of the track team, and a debater.

After leaving school, Wallace Reid went to Newark, New Jersey, and began workaday life as a reporter on The Star. Then he went on the stage, shifted suddenly to cow-punching, went back into the newspaper game, and finally got in front of the camera.

Photo by: White

After divorcing his sixth wife, Nat Goodwin will appear in "Married Again," on the screen. Write your own comment.

Harry Houdini, the handcuff king, is under a contract to appear in a movie serial of mystery. What's a contract to an eel like Harry?

Every advertisement in Photoplay Magazine is guaranteed.

Collection: Photoplay Magazine, September 1918