Muchly Mixed Musings on Mary Miles Minter (1918) 🇺🇸

October 17, 2024

In Miss Whitney’s office, “The Littlest Rebel” rebelled openly. Almost hidden in a huge green coat, and with a large, floppy hat pulled down defiantly on her yellow head, Mary Miles Minter cast one disapproving eye at the rain pouring down the windowpanes, and, with the other on her French grammar, endeavored to absorb some Allied wisdom.

by Marguerite Sheridan

It had rained for a week. And when I say rain, I do not mean a pleasant spring drizzle such as one would naturally expect in a heavenly climate like California, but a steady liquid sheet that would make the torrents of Lake Cayuga and the original “Storm Country” look like the veriest mist.

Around the American Film Company’s plant at Santa Barbara, all was woe and desolation. Releases were far behind, and general prayers were being offered for a few “rainless” days in which to shoot the outdoor scenes for the new Minter picture.

“Je reçoit, tu reçoit, il reçoit,” hummed Mary. “Oh, Miss ‘Whitney, please help me. These verb conjugations are the hardest things yet.”

Miss Whitney, the smiling and urbane secretary of the famous child of the three M’s, paused a moment in her busy day to offer a bit of assistance in the pronunciation of “la langue française.”

“Just think!” mused Mary, a moment later. “There was not the slightest use in our hurrying back from Los Angeles. I might have been there all week with Margaret.”

Margaret is Mary’s sister — Margaret Shelby. She is spending the winter with her grandmother in Hollywood, where she is having her voice trained for light opera. So whenever Mary has the least excuse — a week’s vacation or an interruption of her screen work by weather, or even the necessity of getting some new frocks for a film — Mary hurries Hollywood-ward to see her older sister, whom she simply adores.

You see, there is nothing in the world that Mary wants more than a lot of playmates all her own age, but her hours are so irregular and her film work and schooling combined so exacting that she has to forego many of the delightful fudge parties and “chummy” times that girls who aren’t so busy are blessed with.

“And some people have the funniest idea that I like to go to grown-up parties — teas and receptions and things like that,” said Mary later, so wistfully that one felt something ought to be done about it at once. “I hate them! And I hate to be stared at and pointed out as if I were some sort of a strange animal. I’d much rather be mixing mud pies with the babies they have left at home to come to tea and meet me.”

That is why Mary looks forward so eagerly to visiting her sister and having her to play with. Then she forgets all about being a film star, and Margaret forgets that she is planning some day to charm big audiences with her voice, and the two become the most mischievous hoydens imaginable. There are lots of nice things to do at Grandmother Shelby’s. And nothing that her two granddaughters see fit to perpetrate may be criticized in the little lady’s presence. For she would adore them even if they uprooted every century plant that borders the broad, well-trimmed lawn.

“But Margie is a funny girl,” Mary soliloquized. “Just think of her being so mean as not to take my name! She says that Shelby is good enough for her, and that is a dig at me, you know, because mother thought that my own name, Juliet Shelby, was too theatrical sounding, so she renamed me.

“But we have the loveliest times together, Margie and I. We go shopping together, and she loves to help me pick out my clothes. She’s dark, you know, and I’m so blond that people just won’t believe that we are sisters. And some day we are going to be able to live together all the time, I know.”

And just then the office boy came in with a big bag of mail — all for the little fifteen-year-old girl, just going on sixteen. Miss Whitney picked it up to sort it.

“They want me in the studio now. Do see if there is one from Margie, and I’ll take it along,” said Mary, hovering eagerly over the chaotic pile of notes of all sizes and colors and dimensions. There was, and Miss Whitney found it without much trouble, doubtless from long practice. Mary seized it joyfully and hurried away with a bright smile. The secretary began sorting the mail capably into four piles.

The first contained requests from fans who just wanted a picture of some actress, regardless of whom she might be, and autograph collectors. The second lot come from real admirers, from children and from judges, and literally the proverbial “doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief.”

Into the next lot go offers from managers, dealers, exhibitors, magazines, and those who are interested in a business way in her work. And last of all come the “mash” notes, which Mary never sees. So save your stamps, boys. For Mrs. Shelby is anxious to have her little girl remain one as long as possible, and she has no idea of letting her be annoyed by “objectionable correspondence,” as she calls it. There are also a great many “begging” letters, which request anything from an automobile to Mary’s cast-off wardrobe.

The letters from admirers and those sincerely interested in her work all come to Mary, who reads them eagerly for new suggestions and criticisms, most of which she notes down in a book which she keeps for that very purpose. For she considers that the people who see her on the screen are the best judges and the best critics of her work.

Mary considers that her very greatest claim to distinction comes from the fact that recently she became godmother to a whole regiment of soldiers at Camp Kearny. So she had a very military-looking suit tailored in short order, and went over and paid them a “thank-you” call for the honor they had bestowed upon her, and took her solemn oath to live up to her responsibility toward them. And if “smokes” and magazines and letters and candy are a part of that responsibility, Mary has done her part well.

And they call her “Cheero Mary.”