Marjorie Daw — in Love (1921) 🇺🇸
“Here I am playing Love,” Marjorie Daw remarked distractedly. “And I’m not at all the sort for the part. Tell me, do I look like a person in an allegory?”
by Barbara Little
She didn’t. She hadn’t any of that stuffed with cotton and mounted on stilts look that some actresses achieve immediately after being chosen to typify Faith or Hope or Prosperity, or any of those intangible things that are so dear to the hearts of allegory writers. She hadn’t any of that stark, staring magnificence that made some of the actors in the ill-fated film version of “Everywoman” look like animated monuments. What she really looked like was the younger sister of the prettiest girl you ever saw, or a composite picture of dozens of boarding-school flappers in New York on vacation.
Although she said, ‘‘Here I am playing Love,” she wasn’t really at that moment. She was in New York for the purpose of playing Love in the Famous Players-Lasky production of Experience, but at the moment she actually was playing hookey from the studio. She should have been there making up for work, but instead, at twelve-thirty she was just eating breakfast in her hotel, some miles away.
“Love brought me to New York,” she remarked with mock dramatic intensity, her eyes twinkling. “But honestly it is the theaters I am thinking of all the time. I don’t see how any one gets any work done here. Out on the Coast, our work is the whole thing. There isn’t anything else so interesting going on. But here — there’s a different theater to go to every night. I love the excitement of it all, but I expect that it gets tiresome after a while. The first day that I went shopping here I felt just like a fairy princess who had been granted several wishes. I bought dozens of things that I know will be perfectly useless, but I couldn’t resist them.”
When Miss Daw finishes speaking, she looks at you as though to say, “Well, what next?” I suspect that she looks at life that way. It has given her so much while she is so young. When she compared herself to a fairy princess she did well, for she has not only the beauty, but a little of the queenly poise that a princess should have. And only a fairy princess, or the Red Queen out of “Alice Through the Looking-glass” could have such a delicious, ironic sense of humor.
Sometimes there is a faint suggestion of a gleam in her eye that says, “Go ahead and size me up if you want to; you’re not perfect, you know.” And that proves that Marjorie Daw has not acquired the motion-picture star manner. That manner — as you may know — is similar to the bedside manner of many physicians. It makes you feel of overwhelming importance, it makes you beam and glow. It makes you self-satisfied and comfortable, and after the flattering effect of the person with the manner begins to wear off, you say to yourself, “What a fool she made of me!”
Assuredly, Marjorie Daw is not like that. She is just a little bit brusque. I suspect that when she is older she will be more gracious, and that will make her more popular with people who like to be flattered. But give me Marjorie Daw as she is; sometimes her shrewd scrutiny makes one squirm, but she is genuine all through. “I don’t want to ask any one to champion me,” Miss Daw insisted when I asked her why she was considered upstage and undependable. “But it would be nice if the truth were told about me once or twice. That story about my utter disregard of appointments with important people all grew out of one little incident. Some one had arranged for me to meet two writers one afternoon, and I understood that I was to meet them at the McAlpin. It was a glorious afternoon, I had been invited to go yachting, and I was a little bit nervous about meeting them — I never got over that feeling, you know. But I would have kept that appointment in spite of anything. I went to the hotel and waited and waited. Finally thinking there must have been some mistake, I called up all the hotels I could think of — but I missed the Astor, and that is where they were waiting. They didn’t even try to find out if there had been a mistake, but immediately put in the paper that success had apparently gone to my head. And all the time I was waiting, the most forlorn-looking spectacle in the McAlpin.
“That one newspaper article might not have made much difference, but since then those writers have rarely missed a chance to criticize me, and their remarks have been quoted in other papers. It must be a disappointment for you to meet me and find that I am not so terrible.”
She smiled at me roguishly as she said that last sentence. It was as though she confided, “See what a good imitation I can do of a misunderstood ingénue who begs the dear representatives of the press to be kind to her.” As a matter of fact she doesn’t care much what critics and interviewers think of her. It is the fans out in the audience that she wants to please.
“It’s quite confusing coming from the California studios here.” She returned to the subject of motion pictures after a lengthy discussion of desserts suitable for a twelve-thirty breakfast. The argument — and the luncheon ended with pineapple ice, incidentally.
“The studios here are so businesslike! The buildings are so like factories, that you feel as though you’d come out in a can or a package, neatly labeled. Out in California they are quite different, just great, rambling, informal places. It seems to me that Mary Pickford has the ideal studio, and Lois Weber next. They are like big homes, and over at Mary’s, even when they are working hardest, it seems like a crowd of neighbors on some one’s front porch. I remember one afternoon when I went over there some one had brought Al Green [Alfred E. Green], the director, a fox terrier puppy to take home to his little girl. He stuck it in his pocket, and all afternoon — all the while he was directing some very serious and dramatic scenes, that fat little puppy, with his front paws and nose hanging out of Mr. Green’s pocket, surveyed the world as placidly as could be. There are always lots of animals around for every one to play with, and no one seems to be too busy to stop and chat. And yet they work awfully fast.
That seems to me the best sort of atmosphere to work in — best for the actors I mean. Anything that makes your work more friendly, more human, ought to be encouraged. That reminds me of Love. You know Mr. Barthelmess [Richard Barthelmess] and I are trying to play Youth and Love as though they were Mary Brown and the boy who lived next door. When we were rehearsing we called each other Dick and Marjorie, and when we changed and tried to say “Youth” and “Love” we acted so stiff and unnatural that the scene was ruined, to my mind.
“I don’t suppose that I’m romantic enough for the part. I’ve never been swept off my feet by the wonderful big love scenes I have played in. Instead of looking desperately in love and wide-eyed with wonder I am always afraid that I will look cross-eyed and lovesick. Once I did in a picture with Mr. Fairbanks [Douglas Fairbanks Sr.]. I was trying so hard not to laugh at him.”
And Marjorie Daw can say all of these things with impunity. For she is ideal for the role of Love. She is simple and unaffected, and under her pleasantries there is a poignant tenderness that bespeaks hidden depths. She pretends shallowness sometimes, I believe, in an effort to hide things from an ever-prying public that are precious to her. She is one of the most unmannered young actresses on the screen to-day. She hasn’t a single cute trick, and she is so deliciously pretty that her director never has to devise beautiful tableaux or striking backgrounds for her; he can just let her walk through her scenes naturally, knowing that everything that she does will make a beautiful picture. If you doubt this, just go to see her in Bob Hampton of Placer.
As for her not being sentimental, well — there is a difference between sentiment and sentimentality, and Marjorie Daw has lots of the first with none of the latter. And as for romance — this has nothing to do with it, but I just thought you might be interested to know that the young man she goes around with is so short that she has been shopping for all sorts of beautiful slippers with flat heels. Even a beautiful motion-picture actress has to compromise sometimes.
Marjorie Daw is so deliciously pretty that her director never has to devise beautiful tableaux for her.
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, July 1921