Matthew Roubert — The Screen Children’s Gallery (1914) 🇺🇸

In opening this gallery of the most famous and interesting children of the Screen, the Moving Picture World wishes to pay a well-deserved tribute to the clever and gifted little boys and girls who have helped with such skill and sincerity to make the motion picture true to life. Talent unconscious of its merit and value is the most charming because the rarest sight in the whole world of amusements. The gifted child seems more natural and less self-conscious before the tiny eye of the camera than before the crowded audience. The screen has developed much juvenile talent in new ways much to the delight of millions of spectators and much to the profit of the art in general.

by W. Stephen Bush

Master Matthew Roubert [Matty Roubert], who has appeared in many productions and whose success in the filmed version of “John Barleycorn” has been commented upon by experts, has just reached the age of seven. The interview with Master Roubert had been most carefully arranged and was looked forward to both by the stern parent and the interviewer as a somewhat elaborate and ceremonious affair. We all built on the theory that Master Roubert would be induced to concentrate on the subject-matter of the interview. He, however, distinctly refused to so concentrate but rather occupied himself with testing the opportunities for climbing afforded by the handsome office furniture. I asked him in what I intended for my most formal and compelling manner whether he liked to act in moving pictures. He professed a willingness to wager on the proposition and did it in two short Saxon words.

Pressed for details of his professional work Master Roubert declared that in “John Barleycorn” he carried a can of beer. “It wasn’t beer,” he added quickly, “it was sarsaparilla.” After assuring the interviewer that he drank the sarsaparilla as soon as he had withdrawn from the camera’s eye, the young artist broke forth into enthusiastic eulogies of his parent, proclaiming him to be the best father that ever lived.

“My papa would give me anything I want, if I asked him for a hundred dollar bill he would give it to me.”

The parent plainly embarrassed by this supreme confidence of his offspring and not unreasonably anticipating a practical and immediate test directed the conversation into more conventional channels.

Master Roubert is a charming little fellow with a mass of nutbrown hair cut in the style a la Buster. He has bright black eyes and pleasing regular features. I feel he will be in much demand as a portrayer of character parts. Master Roubert did not hesitate to voice his opinion that more pictures should be made “with children in them.” He thinks that nothing is too hard for him and he looks forward to new parts waking and sleeping. The pictures that go with this brief biographical sketch show the young man’s natural laugh and his ability to be funny in costume. Master Roubert, it is said, will shortly join the Universal forces.

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His natural smile.

Before the Camera.

Collection: Moving Picture World, February 1914