May Allison Is Back! (1918) 🇺🇸

Dressed in the garb of Vanity, a tall, slender girl of coltish age, with hair the color of molten gold, stood behind the scenes at the opening performance of Henry Savage's production of "Everywoman."

by Marjorie Manners

As the scene shifters scurried about and the other members of the cast nervously conned their lines, or listened assiduously to catch the verdict of the tense audience out in front as to whether Everywoman was to be a first night hit or failure, this girl stood merely at attention.

With a superb unconsciousness of the implication of egotism, she remarked calmly, but in the tone of one stating an incontestable fact —

"I shall be a star in five years or I shall leave the stage."

This was May Allison's statement of her aims. When reminded of the occurrence the other day, Miss Allison said:

"It never entered my head that I might be considered conceited. I didn't feel that way at all. I merely had a great ignorance of all the difficulties that beset the road to stardom — and a superb faith. I felt also that if I could not be a star in five years — an age to me then — I had better give up.

"Recently, I received the dearest note from a girl who stood in the wings with me that evening. She is married now, lives in Freeport, Long Island, and has a couple of babies. "She asked me if I remembered that first evening, and said she couldn't resist writing to remind me of it and to congratulate me." May Allison is now an individual picture star, in the Metro firmament, and I think that note pleased her more than anything she has received since the announcement of her "come back" as a picture star.

Miss Allison has three sisters and two brothers who are all married and have kiddies, and none of them ever had the slightest wish for public life, but from the time she was "knee high to a duck," May, or "Sunny," was lured by the footlights — desired to be a great singer. The Allisons lived on a huge plantation in the Southern part of Georgia, miles away from the nearest house. May had never seen a show, didn't even know what a theatre was really like, but she used to skip away to the southern part of the plantation where there was a forest of age-old trees, and there she used to throw back her sunny-topped head, expand her little chest, and sing her heart out.

She grew tall so suddenly that she was what you might call skinny. At that time of her existence, May's legs were her special grievance. Her brother soon found out how he could tease her and used to delight in calling her "Spindles" and other equally appropriate names. Once May had the courage to retort. "I've got a nice ankle anyway, so there" — only to be stampeded by his reply, "Humph, yes — but who wants a leg that's all ankle?" Somehow the family never realized what a strong will "Sunny" had until after the father's death and the sisters and brothers were all safely settled in homes of their own. Then she demanded that her mother cash in all their resources and take her to New York to seek an engagement on the stage. At that time, she still cherished visions of a primadonna future — a vision which has never left her lovely little head.

Nevertheless, after a few trips to the various theatrical agencies, she was perfectly willing to accept the part of Vanity in Everywoman.

The following season, Miss Allison joined Ina Claire in The Quaker Girl and became her understudy. Then she played the ingénue in Miss Caprice, in which DeWolf Hopper was starred.

When there came a bad season for the stage after she had briefly starred in Apartment 12-K at the Maxine Elliott Theatre, New York, Miss Allison took a part in the screen production of "David Harum," made by Famous Players. Next she appeared with Edith Wynne Mathewson, in "The Governor's Lady" and became a full-fledged screen star with American-Mutual in "The House of a Thousand Candles." She then met Harold Lockwood and you all know about her co-starring with him for Metro.

But there was still that primadonna vision in the back of Miss Allison's head, and when she had amassed a pretty it tie fortune, she announced to her valiant little mother, who is her constant companion, "I am going to leave the screen and go back to New York and have my voice trained in earnest! "

And so for very nearly eight months, "Sunny" was away from the land of shadows. She and her mother took a cosy little apartment in New York and she studied vocal under Oscar Sanger at a mere detail of $25 per 30 minutes — and just about the time that her ambition was about to be realized in a London musical production, the war had to spoil everything.

But not for us — For May Allison has come back to the silver sheet. And her return is but an instance of her character — a manner of ever aiming for the topmost rung and, if anything clogs her footsteps, of kicking it aside, or finding another path.

May Allison holding the professional I-am-listening attitude while Director Harry Franklin describes some action for "The Winning of Beatrice." Standing, with left hand on his pocket book, is Hale Hamilton.

Photo by: Apeda Studio

Collection: Photoplay Magazine, September 1918