Muriel Ostriche — Sans Grease Paint and Wig (1914) 🇺🇸
At three-forty-five o’clock on a recent warm afternoon, Muriel — there’s only one Muriel! — danced herself out of a studio setting and into her dressing-room with the remark, “We’ll get that 4:15 train yet.” But would we?
by Mabel Condon
Anyway, Muriel [Muriel Ostriche] said so and I was ready to run for it whenever she would be and the rate at which she doffed make-up and make-up clothes promised well for the fulfillment of her word. So I sat back in the most out-of-the-way corner of the little room to give her as much room as possible, and guessed we had better both play sphinx until the 4:15 out of New Rochelle had been captured. But Muriel had no such kindred thought.
“It’s been a wonderful day,” she began with the letting of her long, naturally blonde and naturally curly hair out of a tight psyche. “It’s been a rush from one scene to another and from the studio to the dressing-room and back again. And that’s what I love — lots of rush.”
With her monogramed white comb she deftly pulled a blonde ripple over the top of each ear, then drew it up away from the ears so that they — the ears — were in plain sight. For they’re wearing ears, this season.
“But that’s the way; when we’re busy we’re very, very busy and when we’re not — well, when we’re not, why I wish we were.” Again she paused; this time to insert a large amber pin behind her left ear in the completed coiffure.
Were it almost anybody else but Muriel, I would have asked. “Tired?” But one would never think of asking such a thing of Muriel. For she always looks the pink of fresh restfulness. And she is a joy to look at. Also, she is a rapid dresser, and was even then slipping into a lavender-striped frock with lacy throat and sleeves.
“You know, if I don’t get away when I say I do, there’s always somebody sure to say, ‘Maybe we’ll use you in another scene.’ But it’s always so late there’s never another scene, so I manage to be ready when I say I’ll be.”
She reached up for the top button of her dress, stood on tip-toe and got the wrong one. “Allow me.” She did.
“Thank you; most times I can do it myself, but when I’m in a hurry I miss, sometimes.”
“Miss Ostriche! Muriel!” came a heavy voice from somewhere. It approached, it hesitated outside the door.
“Well?” asked Muriel, stooping to the glass to better direct the service of her powder-puff.
“Want you for another scene — hope you haven’t your make-up off yet?”
“Yes, I have and I’m hurrying for the four-fifteen. But if you really want me —!”
There was sweetness in Muriel’s voice; there was plaintiveness in its tone and, clearly, there was evident self-sacrifice in the sentence that she purposely, or otherwise, left incomplete.
Meanwhile she pinned on her hat and looked for her gloves.
“No; that’s all right — go right ahead. We’ll do it the first thing in the morning,” came the voice from the other side of the door and then, as it wandered down the hall, —
“Better hurry.”
“The director — he’s the dearest thing,” was Muriel’s explanation of the voice as she came out of the shirt-waist box with the gloves. “Now, my commutation ticket — and I’m ready!”
She snapped off the light, we closed the door after us and got as far as the end of the hall.
“That hat won’t do at all, not at all,” a big man in shirt-sleeves was saying to a big woman in a semi-tailored frock. “You must have one bigger than that — wider and kind of, kind of —” he made wonderful movements with his hands by way of illustrating just what kind of hat it was he desired her to have.
“There, that’s the kind I want for this scene.” The unfortunate “kind” reposed upon my head.
“Come on — let’s hurry,” Muriel whispered, pretending to neither see nor hear the shirt-sleeved one. “He’ll make you stop and give it to him, if he wants it badly enough, and we haven’t the time.”
“The scene will only take fifteen minutes — and then you can have your hat back,” promised the man blocking our path.
“But we haven’t time, really we haven’t. And besides, this lady’s company,” defended Muriel.
“But I have to have the hat,” insisted the one who wore shirt-sleeves.
“Wait — I have just the thing for you,” offered Muriel in a bright-idea tone. She ran back to her dressing-room and emerged in less than a minute with a shapeless straw shape that could be pinned up or down, that could be be-feathered or be-flowered but, that, just that minute, was entirely trimmingless. Thrusting it into the director’s hand, she declared, triumphantly —
“There — just the thing!” and before he could recover we were gone. But wait, not entirely! From a window Bert Adler signaled a message of importance.
“Don’t be a minute — I’ll signal the car when it comes,” said Muriel, and I hurried into the Adler sanctum. At the end of the prescribed minute there were a series of calls from the street. A motorman’s bell clanged at five-second intervals. At the end of another stolen minute, Muriel appeared at the door.
“We’re waiting,” she said and was gone. I was with her. The street-car was standing at attention in front of the studio and when we were seated and Muriel had said, “Thank you” to the motor-man in her very sweetest voice, she explained, “He waited a whole minute”
Yes, we got the four-fifteen and Muriel picked out the shady side of the almost empty coach and tucked her feet under her and smoothed the lavender-stripes of her dress. And she smiled.
“Nice New Rochelle,” she said soothingly, as the train purred out of the station. “It doesn’t seem possible that I’ve been going to the Thanhouser studio for a whole year! I wonder where I’d be now if I had taken the stage offer I had a year ago, instead of staying in pictures and shifting to New Rochelle?” There was a little pause to extend her commutation book to the conductor and she smiled a “Thank-you” to him and resumed:
“I’m eighteen and I started when I was fifteen. Just playing extra, though, at the Biograph studio. I was going to high-school then. A little later, I played in a Pathé picture, in several Reliance stories and then joined the Eclair stock company at Fort Lee. Then I came to the Thanhouser studio — and for the last several months have played all their Princess brand leads. Mr. Hite [Charles J. Hite] is the grandest man to work for; everybody at the studio likes him so well! And the directors and everybody else there are so nice. that it is a pleasure to be with them.”
And it was a decided pleasure to watch Muriel as she talked. Every expression finds its outlet so surely in her wide blue eyes and she has a little trick of making a question, that is yet not supposed to be a question, out of her statements every minute or two, until you begin to listen for it.
For instance, she said, “It is a positive pleasure to be with them — See?” “And you are under no obligation whatsoever to say either “Yes” or “No.” Watch for it, if ever you talk with Muriel. The first time though, you are apt to be so interested in thinking to yourself, “Isn’t she pretty?” that you won’t notice. But the second time, you will, surely.
“Here’s my station — One hundred and twenty-fifth street. I just have to ride fifteen more minutes on the ‘L’ and then I’m home — See?”
She waved a good-bye from the platform and I entertained myself with my first thought, “Isn’t she pretty!”
—
Tom Santschi Honored
During a quiet little dinner last week at Los Angeles, William N. Selig [William Nicholas Selig] was host and Thomas Santschi, the actor, was the guest. It was a modest little affair, but had memories to make it notable. Just before the black coffee was brought in, Mr. Selig carelessly handed Director Santschi a broad, black ribbon which was fobbed with the world-known Selig “Diamond S” brand, the gold outline of which held in its dazzling embrace, forty-two diamonds. This elegant souvenir signaled the completion of Thomas Santschi’s fifth year with the Selig Polyscope Company, and a similar line of tokens will be presented to other faithfuls at the end of like periods with this great picture corporation. The gentler sex will receive brooches of similar design.
Collection: Motography Magazine, May 1914