Milton Sills — Blue Book of the Screen (1923) 🇺🇸

It was from the high pedagogical pedestal of a Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Chicago that Milton Sills stepped into the limelight of the stage and, afterward, the screen.

He gives Donald Robertson credit for this change in his career. Robertson was organizing a new theatre movement in Chicago while Sills was in the midst of his academic pursuits, and, having seen the latter in amateur productions, made him an offer. The austere walls of philosophic endeavor could not withstand the opportunity to act in plays by Ibsen, Shakespeare and Maeterlinck, and Sills accepted.

In 1909 he played in support of Carlotta Nillson in Avery Hopwood’s This Woman and This Man, produced in New York City, and in other notable stage productions, among them The Fighting Hope, put on by Belasco, with Blanche Bates in the star role; Clyde Fitch’s last play, The Governor’s Lady; The Happy Marriage, a Frohman offering in which Sills and Doris Keene were featured; Sardou’s Diplomacy, which had an all-star cast; and Panthea, in which Sills, Olga Petrova and others were featured.

The first picture in which he was starred was a Fox production, “The Honor System,” in 1917. Sills regards this one of his best early pictures and one which gave him wide publicity. A few of his later outstanding successes were “Behold My Wife,” “The Little Fool,” “Burning Sands,” in which he was featured with Wanda Hawley, and big roles in The Great Moment, “At the End of the World,” “Miss Lulu Bett,” “The Furnace,” “The Cat That Walked Alone” and Adam’s Rib.

Six feet one and a quarter inches in height and weighing 189 pounds, Sills is a commanding figure on the screen. His brown hair and gray eyes fit well into strongly marked features.

Sills was born in Chicago, Ill., on January 12, 1882. Being young and exceptionally virile, he likes the recreations of outdoors, and is an exceptionally good horseback rider. He also goes in for gardening on a scientific scale and gratifies this inclination fully.

He is married, his wife being a cousin of Edith Wynne Matheson. A daughter, Dorothy, is eleven years old. He has a home in Holly wood that is chiefly distinguished by its quiet taste and the good books that line its walls.

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Milton Sills is just a regular fellow in spite of having studied to become a professor of Philosophy. He has the same easy-going manner off-screen as he is noted for when before the camera.

Collection: The Blue Book of the Screen (1923)