Matt Moore — Sans Grease Paint and Wig (1913) 🇺🇸
It was pay-day. Hence quite the most natural place for Matt Moore to be was in the vicinity of the cashier’s window in the Universal’s suite at Forty-eighth street and Broadway.
by Mabel Condon
So that’s where he was. Not that he hurried to get there when the window was slid back and the first check given out at eleven o’clock. Not at all! He has confidence enough in the concern to know that checks would still be given out at eleven-thirty; besides, such unseemly haste would be to the liking of neither Mr. Moore nor his train schedule. New Jersey trains are hard to please and Mr. Moore’s success with them is due to his riding on them as little as possible. That’s why Slade Clark failed to corral him during a week’s trial. Mr. Moore knew he was wanted in New York. He was also wanted in the wilds of Coytesville, New Jersey, where he was, so he weighed the importance of the calls, divided the result by the penalty of a trip on a New Jersey commutation train — and stayed at Coytesville.
Then came Saturday, pay-day. It brought with it Mr. Moore in Jersey-pressed blue suit, Jersey-shined tan shoes and Jersey-style bow tie. His black velour hat dipped and curled with the permission of a Broadway hat-maker and his gray over-coat hung slinkily over one arm. He was caneless, he was freshly shaved, his hair lay spickly high on his forehead, up from his ears and away from his collar, and, to anybody who did not know that, as yet, he had not presented himself for his check, he gave the impression of being a man at peace with everything and everybody.
To make his presence known to the cashier previous to the other officers of the company, was not the policy of Mr. Moore, fortunately, as, otherwise, I would not have met him; for I was on my way to the elevator when Mr. Gaites rushed out with a hand-shake, glanced at the man to whom he gave it, and knew him instantly for Matt Moore. I stood still so abruptly that Mr. Gaites came over and asked anxiously “What’s the matter?”
“Mr. Moore!” I answered and he repeated the answer, making it a question by means of a rising inflection that meant “What d’ye mean?” without his exactly saying so.
“Yes, Mr. Moore, Mr. Clark’s been looking for him all week for me,” I explained hoping that Mr. Moore’s rearrangement of his coat over his arm would keep him interested for a few more seconds. It did and Mr. Gaites seized him with the assurance that he could talk in Mr. Clark’s room. As Mr. Moore had come from Jersey with the express intention of getting his check and not of making an address, he looked rather dazed and Mr. Gaites hurried on with, “That’s all right — Mr. Clark won’t need to bother you, so make yourselves at home.”
“You see, Mr. Clark’s been trying to get you for a week,” I began by way of making things clear and right away he remembered the several ‘phone messages he had received but had been too busy in the making of “exteriors” to answer.
“It isn’t convenient for me to come into New York during the week,” he resumed when he had appropriated the straight-backed chair beside the Clark desk and I was settled in the swivel one, with my feet three inches from the floor. “We’ve been so busy all week over there but they tell us we’re about through and I’ll be glad of it.”
“Then you’ll move into New York, I suppose?”
“Back into New York — yes. I only live in Jersey because my work’s been there. All last winter I lived on 110th street; my brother, Owen [Owen Moore], and Mary” — and supposing you hadn’t known that Mary Pickford was his sister-in-law, you’d have guessed it by the use of the one word “Mary” — “lived on 111th. In the summer I live at Beachhurst: they have a home there — but,” and he added this hurriedly, you might almost say emphatically, “I don’t live with them.”
After that the tall young man with the fresh-looking skin and the clean upper lip creased the crease in the center of his velour hat, and changed his over-coat from his left to his right knee. When I laughed at the vehemance of this remark, he explained, “I believe in people keeping to themselves; don’t you?”
“Yes,” I agreed and, when he had turned the velour hat round the other way and began operations on the crease from that angle, I told him how much he resembled his brothers, Owen and Tom [Tom Moore], on the screen, but —
“My hair’s so light!” Mr. Moore supplied, and I said yes, that was it. You’d call it sandy and his eye-brows and lashes are the same color and even his eyes match up with them; though you’d call his eyes gray-green and you wouldn’t call his hair that. But the noses of the three Moores are identical; you couldn’t mistake one of them for a Murphy or even a Ryan — they’re Moores, the three of them, and even if it weren’t for the sleekness of heads, the wide shapely mouths and the triplet smiles, you’d know by the noses that they’re brothers.
“I lost a job because I looked so much like Owen,” the wearer of the blue Jersey-style bow tie offered. “Yes, it was my first job in pictures, too,” he went on, crossing one knee over the other and covering both with the overcoat. “It was out west with Mr. Powers’ company and when Owen and I were in the same picture, Mr. Powers couldn’t tell if it was I who came back, after I went out of a scene, or whether it was Owen coming in, and he thought other people would be confused by us too, so he asked me to join some other company. I did, when I had the chance, but had to come back to New York to do it.”
“And where did you go then?” I asked, hoping he had secured what he wanted where he wanted it.
“Back to California, with the Marion Leonard company, just where I had come from. That kept me busy ‘till last spring when I joined the Imp company.”
“You must like it there, having such good parts and playing opposite Jane Gail,” I said, and he replied that he did and that he hoped they’d let him continue to play opposite her, because they understand each other’s work so well.
“I believe in being natural in a picture, and so does she,” he said, with a conviction that told he had been thinking a lot about this phase of screen work. “A good director means a big part of the success of the picture, but I believe that the players should be allowed to play their roles according to their interpretation of them — allowing, of course, that they get the right spirit of the thing. Affectation spoils any picture for me, — but there are people who seem to believe in it,” he added, with a shake of his sandy head and the uncrossing of his knees.
“It was after seeing you as Officer 4434 in Traffic in Souls that I asked Mr. Clark to find you,” I said, in preference to bluntly telling him that I knew he put naturalness into his work, as the role of Officer 4434 proved. “Then I saw you in ‘Who Killed Olga Carew?’”
“That wasn’t much of a part,” he deprecated, “but wasn’t the monkey fine?”
“Yes, the whole picture was; Mr. Laemmle [Carl Laemmle] sat next to me in the projection room and pronounced it one of the best your company has made. What kind of role do you like?”
The Moore smile showed the even white Moore teeth and the Matthew representative of the family answered, “One where I have to ride a horse. That’s the thing I like best to do, and it’s the thing I seldom get a chance to do. My check won’t stand for my supporting a horse and as I have no friends to offer me the loan of theirs, I don’t ride very often.”
He laughed at his lack of funds and friends with horses and deplored that the thing he doesn’t like to do, he will have to give time and dollars to and then he doesn’t believe he’ll ever be able to do “the confounded thing,” after all. He meant the new dances.
The mention of dollars reminded me that maybe the cashier was getting impatient guarding the Moore check. I said as much to the check’s owner, but his nonchalance over its safety was almost deceiving.
It was at the cashier’s window that we shook hands and Mr. Moore mushed his last suggestion of a blush — certainly, men who come from the County Meath, Ireland, and are only twenty-five years old, always blush even if they have “been over” since they were six years old.
You’d like Matt Moore he’s a type you’d call “different.”
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“Opportunities and a Million Acres”
To show in motion picture films the development of central part of Oregon, Ralph R. Earle, Pathé camera man, recently made an extensive trip over the central part of Oregon. William Hanley, of Burns, Oregon, one of the oldest settlers in the state and a large land and cattle owner, accompanied the Pathé man on his tour of the vast country and the journey to the cattle round up carried them to a point more than 150 miles from the Oregon Trunk railway.
Several days were spent with the cowboys and the Pathé party secured pictures of the great Blitzen canal, built to open up more than 100,000 acres of land; home seekers coming into the country, the round up of more than 3,000 head of cattle and wonderful panoramas of stretches of country which is now open for settlement. With Mr. Earle on his tour of the last of the great frontiers was Lloyd W. McDowell, of the Great Northern railway, who has devoted a great deal of time the last year, is assisting camera representatives of the various producing companies in securing motion pictures of an educational character in the American Northwest.
A thrilling experience of the Pathé party came just before Mr. Earle made the round-up pictures. The Pathé party in automobile was crossing an old lake bed, when the automobile commenced to rapidly sink into the mud. It was necessary to abandon the machine and it would have disappeared from sight had not the cowboys observed the plight of the party from the hill-sides, a mile distant, and gone to the rescue. With their lariats they hauled the automobile to dry ground, but the Pathé man took advantage of the situation and secured a motion picture record of the incident.
Taking pictures of the famous Blitzen canal in Central Oregon, 150 miles from a railroad, about the farthest point in the U. S. from a railroad.
Ralph Earle, Pathé cameraman, taking pictures as the cowboys haul the automobile from an old lake bed. It became imbedded while the Pathé party were attempting to cross to a cattle round-up.
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Kleine Adds $1,000 to Prize
George Kleine cables from Rome the announcement that he will add a cash prize of one thousand dollars for the best scenario written by an American. This is in addition to the prizes offered by the Cines Company, which range from the capital prize of five thousand dollars down to one hundred francs. Details of Mr. Kleine’s remarkable offer will be published later.
Collection: Motography Magazine, December 1913