Oscar Apfel — From Standard Oil to Stutz (1917) 🇺🇸
It was evening, and I sat with Oscar Apfel, the man who has started many stars on the road to affluence.
We were sitting on the steps which front his Hollywood home. The house stands high and the lights of Los Angeles twinkled like a million stars down below us. Only those who know Hollywood of an evening can imagine how quiet it was; an occasional automobile honk and a mocking-bird, with an inverted judgment of the time, were the only sounds to be heard. Rowdy sat between us and demanded attention when he thought he was out in the cold. Rowdy is an awfully important person; he works in the films and has been seen with such noted people as William Farnum, Gladys Brockwell and others. Rowdy is an old-timer, some seven years old, a Boston bull, who is very proud of his genealogical tree and, incidentally, of his Master and Mistress.
Oscar’s eyes were dreamy, so I puffed in silence and my patience was rewarded, for he pulled his pipe from his mouth and, waving his hand toward the boundaries of his grounds, said, “I have been working all my life for just this. If anyone asked me what else I wanted, I would find it hard to answer them. Away back when I worked for the Standard Oil Company in Cleveland — worked at a mighty small salary too — I used to conjure up a home in some spot where I would get all the trees and flowers I wanted; lots of open space and in the midst of my dream there was always just this house with dens, pictures and comfort — and a Stutz. It took a little time, but here it is!”
Oscar Apfel is the possessor of what many a speaking stage star has longed for and still longs for — a permanent home with lots of space and comfort — and a Stutz.
That sums up the lure of the motion picture to the artists of the speaking stage; the love of the art itself comes later, and when it comes it sticks like a burr.
Rowdy could tell all about his Master’s picture career, that is, if he could talk. This career covers over five years of the hardest kind of effort and work, of honest endeavor and the acquisition of knowledge.
“It was Plimption of the Edison who persuaded me to try my hand at pictures,” Apfel says. “Like many others, I was afraid it would injure my standing in the profession. Plimption laughed at me and told me to take a chance, and I took it with a one-reeler — I don’t remember the name of it — but Herbert Prior and Mabel Trunnelle were my principals. When I directed Aida in one reel, it was regarded as a big production and caused a lot of comment, and I considered myself some pumpkins when I put on Charles Reade’s ‘Foul Play,’ Stevenson’s ‘Black Arrow’ and ‘Martin Chuzzlewit,’ each in one reel. We worked fast in those days, too. I remember well putting over three reels in five days.”
About this time the moon began to make the twinkling electrics below us grow dim, and a dancing streak of white in the west of us proclaimed the ocean, while the shrubs and flowers assumed a more definite shape. The moon caused a diversion, and Oscar was able to turn to matters which interested him more. He began to tell of his vegetables, roses and a variety of other things not associated with the films, There is not a doubt about his love for this house of his; it shines in his eyes.
Mrs. Apfel called us in, and we sat in the den — and such a den! It is a veritable arsenal, even if the weapons, most of them, are unsuited to modern warfare. There are small cannon, guns of every vintage and of every pattern since bows and arrows went out of fashion. There are also heads of elk, moose and deer, and one magnificent silver caribou, of which he is especially proud. He says there is another fine example in the Museum of Natural History in New York, but that is the only other one he knows of. This silver caribou was shot by Hugh Bernard, the Alaskan fur-trapper, and was given to a Captain Smith, who is the owner of many “huskies,” which he has loaned to Apfel for use in Northwestern features. Smith sold the head to Apfel.
More pipes, more reminiscing.
“I often think that my start in the dramatic world was about as good a one for experience as could be imagined,” he continues. “I joined a traveling company, and was with them for forty-seven weeks on one-night stands. Such an experience must either make or break a beginner, but I made up my mind that I wanted to be an actor and a stage-manager, and I stuck to it. I was utility actor, clerk, props and what-not; but it was this experience which got me my first job as stage-manager with Eugenie Blair, and I stage-managed with occasional parts with Eleanor Mantell, Sarah Truax, Charles Hawtrey and goodness only knows how many stock concerns.”
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Collection: Photoplay Magazine, August 1917
(The Photo-Play Journal for August, 1917)