Myrtle Stedman and Lincoln Stedman — Stedman & Son, Inc. (1923) 🇺🇸
“Why shouldn’t the mother of a grown son continue her work?” Myrtle Stedman, whose characterizations of middle-aged motherhood are deftly done in the lights and shadows of realism, smiled. “Just because Linky is capable of supporting me now, why should I give up what I have fought for all my life, it seems, what I had to fight to keep?”
by Helen Ogden
The Stedman mother-and-son combination is unique in that it is, I believe, the only such relationship in pictures. Mrs. Stedman was one of the first stars, if your memory goes back to the puny days of pictures. An early marriage and the arrival of a small son — well, no, they tell me Linky, who now boasts considerable circumference, was a chubby, round baby — kept her from the screen but temporarily. For many years while Lincoln wrestled with the three r’s, Myrtle maintained the little home — and her own stardom, despite the onslaughts of new faces.
But finally, something stronger than her own iron-willed determination won — the years that won’t be denied. And then, when Myrtle looked in her mirror and saw the faintest tracings of crow’s-feet lines about her lovely blue eyes, she sat her down and thought it all out.
“Many careers are blasted beyond recall by a too tenacious hanging on to past glory,” she reminisced for me the other evening at dinner in her Wilshire apartment.
Six of us — Myrtle, serene and matronly at the head of the table, Linky, the man of the house, trying to act natural despite the obvious responsibilities of carving, Myrtle’s aged father who lives with them, two other friends and myself. Everything about the Stedman apartment moves as on oiled wheels. None of that jerkiness or friction that one encounters sometimes, no reprimanding of servants. Mrs. Stedman’s home bears the imprint of her own serenity and firmness; like her own thoughts and beliefs, everything is apparently catalogued and one is but dimly conscious of the wheels going round.
“I had to learn my lesson — the lesson that a number of actresses on the screen to-day are due to learn shortly — to step aside when the time comes. But not out! Many actresses who have been stars won’t play character roles. Why not? The screen must have mothers and fathers — and these roles offer an opportunity to act that the insipid star-parts seldom give one.”
Myrtle Stedman made the transition from star to character-actress with more grace than any one I know of. In The Famous Mrs. Fair, she virtually ran away with the show. She has tact and an iron firmness that is encased within an outward veneer of equable temperament — and a sense of humor.
We spoke of a former well-known vampire star — whose back, alas, was in the olden days given more publicity than her face. She had been selected for the role of the thoughtless mother in Dust in the Doorway, the First National picture which Frank Borzage is now directing. But, after a few days’ work, the lady was diplomatically removed and Mrs. Stedman was asked to take the role.
“The trouble was that, being away from the screen so long, she had lost touch, was unable to adapt herself to the changed conditions.” Mrs. Stedman spoke frankly but generously of the lady’s difficulties. “She had been a star. After several years’ retirement she returned, in an all-star cast. But somehow she still retained the idea that it was her own company. One doesn’t give orders these days to the director — and get away with it. The director is responsible. He is handicapped by many things, but whatever the worth or the failure of the picture be, he alone must answer for it. And rightly, too. One can’t be before and behind the camera at the same time. But this tactless soul was of a different mind. She wanted to run the show. Instead, at her age, she should be grateful for the opportunity to act.
“It is easier, though, for one who has kept in contact with the changing conditions right along. It was hard for me to make the step to ‘characters,’ but necessity gives us courage. Linky was growing up; we had to live; besides, I realized the humor of the situation.”
A saving grace, that sense of humor. It softens the determination in her blue eyes; the firm mouth takes on a whimsical curve wholly delightful.
“Then four years ago, Linky announced that he wanted to be an actor. At first I hesitated. The idea of having an almost-grown son in pictures — well, not every actress would have cared for the idea. But Linky,” smiling tolerantly upon her big, strapping son, “was entitled to his chance. It was only last year, after he had played in a number of Charles Ray’s pictures, that we were cast in the same film, The Dangerous Age. But only distantly, one might say. We never met on the lot, as we were in different episodes.
“I should like some day to play his mother — only I’m afraid I never could be sad and pathetic in scenes with my own son, as mothers are supposed to be on the screen. Linky would start kidding me and ‘break me up,’ as the studio parlance has it.”
“We don’t go out so very much, Linky and I,” she continued, blue eyes tranquil. “We call ourselves ‘Stedman & Son, Inc.’ because we’re sort of sufficient unto ourselves. I like Linky to go around with the youngsters his age and he does sometimes —”
“But I never have any fun,” interjected Lincoln, “unless the senior partner’s there. You know something” he turned to me, pointing his finger emphatically, “I’m darn proud of my girl, I am. Her name’s Myrtle an’ she’s got a blue dress on with white thing-ma-jigs an’ a gold doo-daddle an’” — floundering — “an’ anyway she’s the best-lookin’ thing in town.”
“Linky!” his mother admonished, “be still. Don’t pay any attention to him, he’s always kidding.”
After dinner, a man came with the loveliest antiques — powder boxes and trays and goblets of hammered brass and bronze and cloisonné, things that you can’t buy in shops. Down on the floor we all sat, Mrs. Stedman as eager as any of us, with the costly trinkets grouped about us.
“Imagine putting hairpins in that — one hundred and fifty dollars! I’d put it in a glass case with a ‘Don’t Touch!’ label.”
Though obviously tempted, she folded up the gorgeous five-hundred-dollar Batik, while desire and denial fought over the antiques. Finally she selected six goblets and a tray and, with reluctance, firmly refused a three-piece enameled dressing-table set. The man’s insistence she met with a gentle firmness — she has a little way of ending a discussion instantly by a simple pressure of her lips together, a decisive gesture that must have stood her in good stead during the hardships and battles of the years gone by. But Linky, obviously very proud of his ability to do so, bought the lovely set for her.
“I’m afraid I haven’t been very good copy.” Mrs. Stedman fastened my cape, solicitous about my health — always mothering every one younger. “But a long time ago I had all the foolish fads and nonsensical theories knocked out of my system. I work because I have done so for so long that I would be lost without it, because any kind of work — star or character-acting or digging ditches — is better than loafing. And because — though it sounds asinine to say it — I want to do worth-while things.
“I try to play real women — just the sort of everyday creatures you meet anywhere — into whose lives come the dramatic happenings which constitute the plots. Pauline Frederick is the ideal I’m working toward. But I don’t talk much about all that, because it seems so silly to rave about what you’re going to do. I’m just trying to prove what thousands of other women are proving — that a woman may be a mother and a worker at the same time.”
And therein lies the reason for the imprint of realism that Myrtle Stedman’s screen-characterizations leave upon you — she’s such a regular human being herself!
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, November 1923