Mary Carr — A Contingent of Carrs (1924) 🇺🇸
“The finest load of cars I ever brought out,” chuckled the conductor of the train from which Mary Carr, the little white-haired mother of countless sob-dampened movie plots, and her six young hopefuls, clambered a few months ago, bound for Hollywood and their first glimpse of the wide, open spaces.
A motherly soul with twinkling eyes takes you on a tour of the big, rambling house to meet the various and assorted members of her brood. May Beth [Maybeth Carr], eleven, is pinched out of her nap by Thomas [Thomas Carr], an obstreperous sixteen; Rosemary [Rosemary Carr], thirteen, bobbed-haired and pert, is discovered getting the most weird effects on her fresh young face with her mother’s cosmetics.
Stephen [Stephen Carr], seventeen, ambles in from the garage where he has been doctoring the family car, and John [John Carr], with a nonchalance befitting a man of the world of twenty summers, shows you a splendid sketch of Noah Beery [Noah Beery Sr.], his own work. Luella [Louella Carr], twenty-two, has a “date,” to the others’ great enjoyment, and Papa Carr is off talking with some cronies somewhere.
“One of my pictures, ‘On the Banks of the Wabash,’ is running down the street,” began Mother Carr. “Let’s —”
“Aw, let it run, Mums,” said May Beth scornfully. “Don’t try to catch it. Mums, it’s awful! Why, there’s a man in it that bats his eyes. Huh!”
“You’re the worst thing in it, Mums,” John offered serenely, disentangling his long legs from a chair arm to drape them more effectively on the edge of the mahogany table until a glance from Mother Carr halted the journey in mid-air.
“Fine way for an artist to act.” May Beth eyed her brother in disgust. “You’d oughta be artistic. Well, I dunno just how, but be it, anyway. John’s sketches aren’t so bad, considering he’s never had any lessons.”
“Yeh, I might bring some fame to this family yet.”
“You might? Were you, by any mistaken chance, referring to yourself?” A soft, beguiling tone from dark, bandolined, juvenile Thomas. “And I suppose” — sarcastically — “the rest of us — Huh! ever hear of an artist getting fan letters?”
“Thomas got two when Over the Hill was shown,” chuckled the irrepressible May Beth. “He knows ‘em by heart. Anyhow, Stephen’s better looking — when he doesn’t laugh all over his face. He played Marion Davies’ brother in Little Old New York. And I,” May Beth paused for dramatic effect, prolonging the suspense by helping Chee-Chee, the diminutive Peke, look for whatever was troubling his fuzzy ruff, “I am going to be a star myself. Prob’ly I’ll look like Mary Pickford, I wouldn’t be surprised —”
Ensuing ten minutes of ribald jeering from youthful males.
“I’ll have George Walsh for my leading man,” the eleven-year-old continued imperturbably. “He’s so — so romantic!”
“We tee-totally disagree. He’s got a wicked way with the wimmin, but he’s got bow-legs, too —”
“Thomas! One more remark like that and you march up to your room!”
A Mary Carr interview is very much a family affair, because there is such a lot of family. A quite frank family, sparing the feelings of none in its jolly, sharp kidding.
“We’ve sort of grown up in the theatrical atmosphere,” she smiled at her turbulent brood. “John isn’t so enthusiastic — he’d much prefer drawing— but the other children are crazy about acting. Four of them were with me in Over the Hill and the others have all been on the screen at different times. It would be unnatural for me to try to make plumbers or grocers out of them. Acting just runs in certain families. The Barrymores [John Barrymore | Lionel Barrymore | Ethel Barrymore], for instance —”
“Why mention them?” with admirable aplomb Stephen started a deep bass retort that ended in a squeak. His blush brought forth a chorus of howls from the others.
Though it was her work in Over the Hill that focused attention upon gentle Mary Carr, she had long been portraying the same type of sad-faced motherhood — the direct antithesis to her own jolly self.
“I had been on the stage for many years before my marriage. Mr. Carr [William Carr] was a movie director, so I, too, joined the old Lubin Company in Philadelphia eleven years ago. When the kiddies were small, I’d bundle them all up and take them to the studio with me “
“Sure, we cut our teeth on megaphones —”
“Be still. And John — my very nicest sofa cushion! Will you kindly hang your feet out the window or up the chimney! My first really good rôle was in ‘Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch’ with Marguerite Clarke. Those were the good old days — we were all like a happy family, we picture folks then. My years have been full ones and my work and my youngsters have kept me young — I needed this brood of scatterbrains,” Mrs. Carr smiled, “as a relief from my many weeping dramas.”
Her most recent work was with Colleen Moore in “Painted People,” and in “The Woman on the Jury.”
Truly, a family affair, those Carrs.
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Photo by: Walter Fredrick Seely (1886–1959)
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Collection: Picture Play Magazine, August 1924