Mary Boland — Doing It Over Again (1939) 🇺🇸
Mary Boland, seasoned trouper, reviews her past
by Mary Jacobs
If you had your life to live over again, how would you live it? Would you do the same things over again, relive them in the same way? There aren’t many movie stars big enough to answer these questions truthfully, but Mary Boland is one who did.
You would think that this woman, loved on the screen for her amusing portrayals of hare-brained women, loved off the screen for her daring wit, still sought by men at an age when most women merely thrill vicariously to their daughters’ romances, would have nothing to regret. But Mary Boland feels differently.
As we sat chatting together, an air of peacefulness pervaded the room. Here was ease and luxury, with never a trace of the struggle that has made them possible. And Mary, sitting there, hardly looked old enough to be reflecting upon the years and saying, “If I had my life to live over again —”
Smiling at her secretary she said, “We’ve often discussed this, haven’t we, Jean?”
Jean, a pretty woman in her thirties, nodded.
“Wouldn’t it be grand,” Mary Boland sighed, “if we could go back to sixteen with the wisdom of the forties? If I could live my life over again, I’d live it in the same way except for my mistakes.” She chuckled. “You can see what a silly woman I still am when I tell you that it is only upon my mistakes that I have built anything worthwhile.”
“Is there anything you’ve ever done that you regret?” I asked. For a moment there was silence.
“There’s something I haven’t done that I regret,” she said. The words came haltingly.
“I have moments when I feel sorry for myself because I didn’t marry. I miss not having children. If women only know it, they’re much better off being married, raising families than pursuing careers, which, after all, are always thankless things.
“What are women to do with themselves in their leisure time? Let them develop their talents and make themselves interesting companions to their husbands. When you’re young, time seems inexhaustible. There’s so much time to do everything you dream about that you keep putting things off. As you grow older, you realize how little time you have left. I know I get a pang whenever I waste an hour. If I had my life to live over again, I’d say to myself, ‘Ah, I’m young, but every hour is precious. I must grab it.’”
While she spoke, her hand touched a yellow rose in the vase beside her, and the petals fell like leaves dropping from a tree in autumn. They seemed symbolical of her unrealized dreams and for a moment I saw Mary Boland as she really was, not the gay, assured woman of the world moving from one success to another, but as a woman who knew how little of the world’s blessings she had really acquired.
As though she realized that she was giving herself away, the mask was suddenly back on her face. “How stupid of me,” she said, brushing the petals into the palm of her hand and tossing them away. “Another thing I’d change if I had my life to live over again, is to rid myself of my unnecessary sensitiveness.
“When you’re young, you make a lot of mistakes, and you feel very intensely about them all. Even today I’m sorry for young people because they suffer so. Sometimes we say, enviously, ‘if I could only be sixteen again,’ but sixteen is really a horrible age, when people haven’t learned to build up defenses against life. As you grow older, the edge goes off your emotions. Nothing can be as devastating as it was when you were very young.
“I’ll never forget my early days in the theatre, and how sensitive I was when I was poor. For two years my entire wardrobe consisted of a few old dresses, one hat and one coat. How I dreaded going out to look for work in those clothes! I used to imagine that everyone was looking at me pityingly, laughing at my poor queer get-up.”
After four years in stock, Mary Boland came to New York determined to get a job in a Broadway production. Such was her courage that when she was offered the lead in Bertha, the Sewing Machine Girl, by Sam Harris, who planned to assemble a company to tour the sticks with this melodrama, she turned it down, though she needed work desperately.
Disdainfully she looked up at him. “I can’t take that job,” she said. “I came to New York to appear in a Broadway production. I’ve had my fill of small towns.”
Astonished, he glanced at her shabby attire. “Thousands of better actresses than you would be glad to grab this chance.”
Mary shook her head and stumbled out, to hide her tears. At the time she was walking from theatre to theatre and hiking home to save carfare.
“The first job I landed in New York was opposite Robert Edeson, in the Broadway show, Strongheart. For my try-out, I borrowed some clothes from a friend.
“It was this same friend who allowed me to sleep on the couch in her flat for six months till I got this chance. That was after my credit was exhausted with boarding-house keepers. How I loath them! I always used to think that they were the only horrible type of person extant. They’d knock on your door at ten o’clock at night and yell, ‘Turn out the light. How do you think I’m going to live if you keep the gas burning all night long?’ They’d watch you as if you were a criminal, fearing that you’d leave without paying.
“Another thing that made me miserable in those days,” Mary Boland confessed, “was receiving a bad notice. It would very nearly kill me. I remember the time a New York reviewer commented, ‘Miss Boland knows less about make-up than a Sunday School amateur.’ I wept for days.
“Youth gives itself tremendous importance. When we’re young we believe we are the pivot of the world. It seemed to me at that moment, thirty years ago, that the whole world was reading that notice condemning me, when really no one was paying the slightest attention to me. “I was really very naïve in those days,” she laughed. “When I first went on the stage an actor in the company suggested that he would come up to my hotel room and teach me how to act. At first, I thought it was a good idea, but when two other men made exactly the same offer, I realized that something was wrong and turned them all down. I never did get the benefit of their training,” she said, her blue eyes dancing. She got ahead without it.
From Strongheart she went on to fame on Broadway, becoming John Drew’s leading lady when she was barely out of her teens. At first she was known only as a dramatic actress. Her gift for comedy was discovered accidentally.
Lynn Fontanne, playing the lead in the comedy, Clarence, left the show suddenly. Frantic for fear he would have to close the play, George Tyler, its producer, asked Mary to substitute for Miss Fontanne.
“I was horrified at the idea of playing a comedy role, for in those days I was terribly serious, and felt I had to play Lady Macbeth or nothing.”
At first she refused, but when George Tyler explained that she would be helping him out, she agreed. So brilliantly did Mary Boland play her role that from that moment on she was stamped as a comedienne.
About twelve years ago she accepted an offer to make silent films.
“I hated silent pictures,” she told me. “Anyone who has trained herself for the stage finds it very hard to restrict herself to pantomime.”
Mary Boland, idol of the Broadway stage, proved a flop in pictures. Bitterly resenting her failure, she fled the studios, vowing that she’d never go back to Hollywood.
“If I hadn’t been such a fool, I wouldn’t have blamed the Hollywood producers for my failure. I would have blamed myself. For I used the same technique for the screen as for the stage. One must learn an entirely new technique for films. Besides, I was too fat at the time.”
“What finally brought you back to pictures?” I asked.
“What brings everyone back?” she retorted. “Money, of course. When I sat at the preview of my first talking picture, I kept thinking, ‘Oh, all this money they’ve spent. Wait till they see me. It’ll all be wasted.’”
But it wasn’t, for movie audiences howled with glee when they heard her silly twittering way of talking. And today she ranks among our first screen comediennes.
“Is there any advice you’d give young people on living? If you were sixteen again, would you try to have more good times?” I asked.
Her smile was a little mocking as she answered. “What do you mean — good times? People spend so much time chasing around from night club to night club trying to convince themselves that they are having a wonderful time. They sit around for hours making small talk, gossiping.
“I remember once when my mother was alive a crowd of our friends came to visit us and sat around all afternoon talking about people we knew. Whenever anyone’s name was mentioned, someone found something cruel and cutting to say. It wasn’t that they meant to be unkind. They were just making what they considered interesting conversation. When they left, a strange expression came into my mother’s eyes.
“‘For the first time in my life, I am worried about you, Mary,’ she said. ‘These people have so much to say against others. What do they say about you when you’re not there?’
“That woke me up, and after that I was very careful to choose as my friends only people I knew to be loyal. Out of everything I’ve had in life, I appreciate loyalty most. I am astounded at the kindness of people. Unkind folks are the exception.
“Of course I don’t blame people for being impulsive sometimes. I’m that way myself. Will I ever forget the fool I was when I grew angry at one of my friends? We had an appointment for dinner and the theatre. During dinner he was very quiet. Then, ‘I’m so sorry, Mary,’ he said. ‘I hate to disappoint you, but I simply have to go back to the office and finish some work tonight.’ I got so mad I jumped right onto his straw hat, ruining it.
“I lost the best maid I ever had by being impulsive, and letting my temper get the better of me. I went on tour, leaving my maid, Abigail, in charge at my apartment. When I returned to New York, I walked up Fifth Avenue and saw a photograph in a Fifth Avenue photographer’s window that at once attracted my attention, of a girl wearing new silver foxes. The furs were my furs; the girl, my maid Abigail! Proudly, the photographer showed me other pictures of Abigail in my best gowns. Abigail was fired the minute I got home.”
Today Mary Boland admits, “If I had been calm and talked it over with my maid, I’m quite sure she would never have touched my wardrobe again.”
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Mary Boland has built the worthwhile upon her mistakes.
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Virginia Weidler and Peter Holden, the gentleman of Broadway fame, romp with this adorable Dutch Schipperke pup in The Great Man Votes.
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Collection: Modern Screen Magazine, February 1939