Mary Philbin — A Candle Flame (1923) 🇺🇸
If you have seen “Merry-Go-Round,” that brilliant picture of the butterfly-life of Vienna in the prewar days, you will regard with amazement the work of little Mary Philbin who, by past performances, seemed slated for the oblivion in which most such beauty-contest winners end their screen days.
by Myrtle Gebhart
There are flashes of poetry in her performance, keenly vitalized by something puzzling. That thing that you can’t quite put your finger on in Mary’s portrayal of the little organ-grinder who loves not wisely but too; well, is an unvoiced rebuke of circumstances that are doing their very best to ruin the talent born, by the grace of God, into this girl.
One day I watched a Merry-Go-Round scene in its initial stages. Out at Universal had been recreated the joy pool that was the Prater of Vienna before the war. Young dandies of the nobility, with the license of their class, flirted outrageously. In the corner, grinding the hand-organ, stood a little girl, forlorn. So tired of futile dreams were her eyes now they shone like pools of mystic dark-blue water in the light reflected from the gayly colored incandescents of the whirling merry-go-round. Her thin, tight little lips relaxed, pouted in the merest suggestion of desire she was restless, eager. Nobody’s face was smeared with ludicrous make-up there was about this scene a certain realism that made it seem scarcely a picture set.
Darting here, there, everywhere, the dictator of it all. A booming voice, a sharp rebuke, a guttural command. The scene bore unmistakably the imprint of Von Stroheim’s masterly hand [Erich Von Stroheim]. He dominated. Once a motherly figure seated at the side lines rose as if to retaliate for a cutting reprimand to the little organ-grinder who drooped tinder its harsh lash. A gesture from the director sent her, though ill at ease, back to her chair. Again the incandescents twinkled — again the girl’s eyes grew sad with unfulfilled dreams — the scene went on.
Months later I saw Mary Philbin again, working in a Fox picture, “The Temple of Venus.” But there was little response; the fragile figure had a certain restraint, stolidity the blue eyes that sometimes lighten until they seem a dull, apathetic gray, were strangely perplexed. The talent that had glowed that day on the “Merry-Go-Round” set, brought out of its cocoon by a buffeting yet sympathetic force it scarcely understood, had flickered out.
Mary Philbin is like a candle, an uncertain, pale light, easily smothered, as easily surcharged to a higher flame. The candle is there, but alone it is apt to die out; its life depends upon circumstances.
Three years ago a Chicago newspaper ran a beauty contest. A number of girls were assembled for Von Stroheim’s final selection. There were beautiful young creatures there, vivid personalities. Way down the line stood a little person of some fifteen or sixteen summers. People wondered how the dickens she got in there — for she was very shy and, though graceful, bore no mark of distinction. But before her the director paused, questioning. He dimly perceived that in this fragile piece of girlhood there breathed some flame. And so he insisted that she be one of the two girls chosen for an opportunity in Universal pictures. Three years have passed since that day when, after a frenzy of packing, Mary and her mother boarded the train for California. All this while Mary has been working and, I must in frankness state, failing to register especially. Though photographing with a childlike prettiness, she seemed to lack the depth of feeling of which successful pantomimes are made. Not as shallow and vapid as they thought her, it was just her inability to give expression to the thing inside of her, the thing that beat its futile wings against barred doors.
“I wanted to act but somehow it wouldn’t come out,” she told me at luncheon the other day. Like a prim child, very careful of her manners, she appeared in her lavender frock, her brown curls down her back, palpably proud of the ivory bracelet set with tiny diamonds that a girl friend had loaned her for the occasion of her first interview. “I could feel it inside of me, what they wanted me to do, but I couldn’t make my face show it.
“All the while I was trying so hard and failing so terribly, I thought Mr. Von had forgotten me and it made me miserable. But he hadn’t. One day he told me he had written a story called Merry-Go-Round with a part just for me. When he described it to me, I knew I could play that girl. The other directors didn’t understand things the way he did. He’d talk to me for hours, explaining things. And when he’d be cross with me, I couldn’t help crying.
“Then when Mr. Von left some said I’d never do anything under Mr. Julian’s direction [Rupert Julian]. I made up my mind,” her thin little lips pressed firmly together, “I’d show them. I tried to remember all the things Mr. Von had told me. I felt all keyed up. Sometimes I knew I wasn’t doing well and it seemed as if my heart would break.”
It is that nervous feeling that Von Stroheim awoke to expression from the plastic clay of little. Mary’s soul that gave to her role those high lights of realism, that undercurrent of leashed frenzy as of a girl-soul starved. She idolizes Mr. Von; he is almost a god to her. He took her from the monotony of her childhood; he gave her this” “big chance.” After he left, nobody understood her. And I think a lot of credit should be given her for trying to keep the light shining that he had touched aflame in her.
Mary Philbin’s talent is utterly unconscious. Not a thing of the mind, of technique, rather a capacity for feeling, born into her, over which she as yet has little control. It is shut in, has no chance to develop, for she is denied almost every contact which would teach her the things she should know about life. Her mother, tenacious to her faith in her daughter’s talent, self-sacrificing, devoted, saw ahead a fulfillment of hopes, a release from the drabness of their Chicago life. Many have been her hardships, her denials, that Mary might put her best foot forward. Her concentration upon Mary’s career is to be commended.
But in some respects her overzealousness has retarded the development of the very one for whom she would give her life blood. Realizing as mothers do the dangers that beset the path of innocent young girls, Mrs. Philbin has guarded Mary even too closely for her own good. She is seldom allowed to go out alone or with other young people. In most girls, that fetching innocence is a pose. In Mary I know it is absolutely real. She knows less about life than the ordinary child of ten. Love, marriage, the elemental forces that make up human relationships, these are a closed book to her. Her mind is crystal clear; it is also just a little vapid. For which I do not blame Mary.
Contacts and knowledge — these awaken and develop a girl mentally as well as emotionally. Actresses are not made of innocence. I do not mean to infer that a girl should be embroiled in emotional experiences in order to learn the thespic art. Acting is both of the mind and of the feelings. You don’t have to be actually starved in order to portray hunger but you must have known, some time in your life, that some one was hungry. You must have at least a notion of what hunger is like.
Hers is a child’s mind, unawakened, unschooled except by carefully censored books whose very ambiguity teach nothing of value. Her heart is closed in from the world, but eager to be one with it. For one brief while, under the tutelage of Von Stroheim, the flame in that childlike soul blazed high, etched itself in unforgettable moments there was to me something of pathos in those scenes wherein the little organ-grinder fought against the overwhelming forces that pressed her soul down. They let down the barriers, showed me the futile longings of which Mary herself is scarcely conscious.
Undoubtedly the problem is a great one, that of the mother who would’ shield at all costs yet who vaguely realizes that genius’ development does not come from denial. Mrs. Philbin herself often expresses uneasiness. Once she spoke hesitantly, “Mary is growing up. Sometimes.” hopelessly, “I feel that I’m not doing all that I should for her.”
“What Mary needs,” interjected a young leading man with brutal frankness, “is an affair.”
Mary, who was present, turned to her mother, a brooding, a faint hint of restlessness, in her blue eyes. “What’s an affair, mother? I hear them talking about ‘affairs.’ They must be thrilling. How do you get an affair, mother?” I would have sworn that Mary’s innocence was unfeigned. Mother blushed and hastily, changed the subject.
Just the other evening Mary celebrated a red-letter event — the first occasion upon which she was permitted to go out with a young man without mother along. Of course the young man was of irreproachable character and another couple, a publicity man and his wife, chaperoned them; but even this taste of the life hitherto denied her brought a flush to Mary’s cheeks. At a table near them at Sunset Inn, I found the transformation in shy little Mary, the excitement that shone in her eyes, much more interesting than Connie Talmadge’s [Constance Talmadge] latest suitor or the gyrations of the orchestra leader.
Sitting so quietly, contributing scarcely a word to the conversation, Mary was thrilled to the very core of her being, I could see. When she danced — she had two years’ study back in her Chicago school days and dances with an inherent grace, her little head with its brown curls cocked to one side in quick, birdlike motions, blue eyes dreamy — she reveled in the joy of it all.
“Mother lets me go out to dinner on Sundays with two boy friends,” she told me later. “They’re awfully nice boys. I love to go to parties and sometimes I do. But mother knows best about all those things.
“I always wanted to be an actress. I’m the only child, you know, and mother’s always felt I’d do something wonderful some day. On Saturday when there wasn’t any school, I used to go to the movies and then I’d go home and play Lillian Gish for hours before the mirror. Then came the contest. I didn’t have a picture, so we went to have one taken. The photographer had gone out to lunch and his wife, who said she didn’t know much about it, took the picture. I thought it would be awful, but it was pretty good. Mother sent it in to the newspaper and in the final test Mr. Von chose me. My salary isn’t big and mother has had to scrimp so, she does without lots of things so I can have nice clothes.”
“I have the queerest dream about Mary,” said Mrs. Philbin one day. “In this dream, which recurs at least once a week with variations, something always happens to her and I lose her. It worries me. You youngsters can’t understand the anxiety of the mother heart or you wouldn’t censure me for guarding Mary so closely. I hate to see my baby grow up. She’s all I have. I want to do only what is best for her.”
No, mothers don’t want their girls awakened to emotional realities and I too hate to see young ideals shattered. But genuine acting does not come from illusion. Surely truth must come and I think it could be taught without wracking the young heart unnecessarily. Were Mary’s talent less great, I would merely shrug her aside; but it has such infinite possibilities!
Mary Philbin’s future now is nebulous. In Merry-Go-Round there was that pathos of a soul expressing itself unconsciously, in one tantalizing response to sympathetic understanding. Trading upon the success which will be hers when the picture is released, Universal is loaning her out. But they tell me that even that superior director, Frank Borzage, failed to awaken to any great extent beyond passing charm the slumbering fires in the scenes she did for his “Against the Grain.” Mary is not without her supporters there is a brigade back of her, there on the Universal lot, won by her innocence and charm, who feel that this loaning her out like a cup of sugar for the company’s profit, is not fair to her. They have secured for her the leading role in the next Universal production, “My Mamie-Rose,” a quaint tale of old New York.
Of this determination Mary forms no integral part. Money does not concern her. With one of those carefully chosen, ungendered books designed not to open the eyes of youth, she sits, a shy, lovely little figure, in a corner of the set. It strikes me that Mary would so like to go out and play — perhaps to dances with some handsome young sheik, mayhap to hold hands breathlessly in the shadow of the vine-draped veranda just a bit of tomfoolery, a playing with those impulses which at eighteen begin to make themselves felt. I’ve caught flashes in those blue eyes — flashes that suggest Mary might be very tantalizing and interesting. But Mary is a dutiful young person.
So there is the career of Mary Philbin, hanging on to precarious holds, up and down the ladder. Conjecture is futile. If ever the blinds are torn from her too-trusting eyes, if ever she sees life as it is instead of haloed by the illusions of dreams and innocence, if ever emotional awakening and mental growth are placed in her path by circumstances, I believe that the talent in this fragile, exquisite girl-body will make itself felt unmistakably.
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Off Again — On Again
It is now several years since motion-picture fans have seen Lenore Ulric on the screen, for she left the movies to find greater glories on the stage. Now the far-famed portrayer of Kiki has come back to pictures to create one of her stage triumphs, Tiger Rose. Edwin Schallert had an interesting chat with her that he will relate in Picture-Play next month.
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, November 1923