Mary Charleson (1915) 🇺🇸
Pretty little vivacious Mary Charleson, whose fame as an actress and screen star is international, has joined the Lubin players in Philadelphia and will shortly be seen in a series of novel Lubin productions.
Her first appearance will be in The Governor, a three-reel drama written by Shannon Fife, in which she will play opposite John Ince, who will also direct the picture. Following this. Miss Charleson will be featured in a series of fifteen one-reel romances called The Road O’Strife, by Emmett Campbell Hall.
Miss Charleson has thousands of screen friends and has played leads with John Bunny, Maurice Costello, Edwin August and many other prominent photoplayers. Her rapid rise in the ranks of photoplayers has indeed been remarkable and it has been due not only to her attractiveness and charm, but to her versatility — a versatility that enables her to play with natural ease and intelligence almost any type of girl or woman in the human multitude of characters.
A prominent theatrical man once referred to Miss Charleson as a bundle of human activity and the description was most apt, but he could have arrived at the truth by a somewhat shorter verbal route had he merely said she was “full of pep.”
And it is this activity or “pep” that has won for the pretty Irish girl so many friends and admirers. Miss Charleson is exactly two inches over five feet in height, her eyes are a mischievous grey-blue, she’s of the brunette type, is much better looking off the screen than on, and is a mixture of a typical Western girl and an Irish colleen.
Miss Charleson was born in the “ould counthry,” her birthplace being picturesque old Dungannon, not far from Belfast. When she came to this country her parents took her to Los Angeles and there little Irish Mary made quite a name for herself not only as a child actress but by the delightful little way in which she sang Irish songs and did Irish dances. When she was twelve years old she won innumerable friends playing in Rip Van Winkle in the Belasco Theater in Los Angeles. After that she played in stock companies in different cities in California and did a few seasons in comic opera and vaudeville.
It is as a photoplayer, however, that Miss Charleson is best known and few players have achieved fame in this line so rapidly. Directors readily recognized her natural talent as a camera artiste and in a remarkably short time she was playing leads with some of the best known photoplay stars in the country. Miss Charleson arrived in Philadelphia this week and immediately began work upon her first picture.
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“Barriers Swept Aside”
Optimistic, pleasant story of divorce and remarriage — human adjustments are its theme (Kalem, two reels).
Reviewed by Hanford C. Judson.
There is no doubt at all that among pictures, the one that is human and pleasant and especially the one in which the spectator can find material for thought helping him in judging others and himself, is always the preferred one. Such an offering is this — Barriers Swept Aside, a two-reel Kalem picture, written by Hamilton Smith and directed by Robert G. Vignola. Its theme is human adjustments. It opens with the divorce of two young people and shows how they found themselves and each other. A kindly old butler adds to the human value of the picture, although this character doesn’t enter prominently into the strictly dramatic action of the piece.
The producer of it is one who turns out remarkably even workmanship of high quality and, taken as a whole, this is amply noticeable in his latest picture. Yet one sees now and then a bit of typical, “picturey” over-registering of a point. The most apparent place is when Harry Millarde, who plays the young husband just divorced is reminded of former happiness by an old song lying on his piano. He had just had a party of rather riotous friends at the house and now has visions of his wife, and himself courting her. His passiveness during the visions and his clutch of feeling at its close do not, taken together, pull strongly as they ought at the heart strings; because the whole incident is “picturey.” Then the situation in the picture would have been made more convincing, if it had been stated why the woman who had divorced him on account of his drunkenness did not ask and get alimony. He is still rich while she has to make her living as a stenographer and for (a subtitle tells us) a pittance.
The story told is excellent and abundantly interesting. The story is the heart of the picture and makes it a good offering to the public. It is a picture that gets one interested and keeps him, not excited, but distinctly sympathetic till the close. Pretty Anna Nilsson [Anna Q. Nilsson], delicate and spirituelle, fits the role of the badly disappointed, but still loving wife. In her poverty-stricken hall bedroom in a boarding house, she prays for the good of her one-time husband who is living in luxury and selfishness. John E. Makin [John Mackin] plays the butler who tries to keep his employer as straight as possible and is full of joy when the wife comes back to the home. Henry Hallam has the role of a rude and vulgar employer of the girl. There are many perfectly staged and beautiful scenes in the picture and from the very first one is delighted with the life-like, perfect photography.
Scene from Barriers Swept Aside (Kalem).
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Mary Pickford In Mutual Feature Mob.
The famous Mary Pickford and her director, James Kirkwood, accidentally became impromptu players in the mob scene of the four-reel Majestic–Mutual feature, The Lost House, an adaptation from the novelette by Richard Harding Davis. W. C. Cabanne [Christy Cabanne] was putting on a fire scene and had stretched a fire line around the structure. Police officers and firemen were gathered in front of the line. Miss Pickford and Kirkwood were driving along in a machine and seeing the crowd alighted to watch the proceedings. They were in line with Cabanne’s camera.
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Gertrude McCoy as an extractor.
Gertrude McCoy, the Edison star, who admitted to having been stung on the purchase of her automobile, extracted the sting when she won her lawsuit in Part II of Supreme Court, New York, getting her money back, the defendant dealer having to foot the costs. Counsel for the defense objected to Miss McCoy using “lemon shade,” instead of yellow, in describing the car, but she insisted that it was truly a lemon shade even if the car did have a yellow streak in it.
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Warning to Exhibitors.
We have been informed on very good authority that a new species of advertising slides is about to be sprung on the unsuspecting exhibitor, answering the name of “Nov–Ads.” Joseph F. Coufal is the ingenious perpetrator of this novel sensation and stands sponsor for their existence. They are the latest off-spring of this notorious master of the slide art. For bill of particulars consult the Novelty Slide Company, the official records give their address as 67 West 23d street, New York.
Collection: Moving Picture World, February 1915