Pell Trenton — Pell of Pell Manor (1920) 🇺🇸
The first thing I asked Pell Trenton was the whyfore of his first name.
by Emma-Lindsay Squier
By rights, I should have quizzed him concerning his stage and screen career, but when a man has a name that sounds as if it might be an abbreviation for “Pellingham” or “Pellerford,” or something equally romantic, to say nothing of its being a great deal like “pal” and a hit like “pill.” he may expect to be asked for an explanation, even tho names are strictly personal affairs and as such are supposed to be exempt from cross-examination. And he wasn’t the least bit offended. Indeed, he seemed pleased to talk about it.
“I’ve wondered why no interviewer ever asked me that,” he beamed upon me. “Every one else does as soon as the law allows. I’m proud of it for various reasons, and it is my ‘monicker’ and not a stage name, as every one seems to think.
“I am a descendant of the first Lord Pell, who came over from England in 1600 and was given a grant of land in New York in what is now Westchester County. The eldest son has borne the name all down along the line — hence the cognomen for me.”
They had told me at the Metro that I would find Mr. Trenton somewhere on the lot, wearing a kimono and a classic hair-cut, which was their more or less subtle way of telling me that he was playing in The Willow Tree, an adaptation of an old Japanese legend, and that he made a romantic-looking hero.
When I first glimpsed him, he was wearing a gorgeous black kimono with gold dots, and he was standing near a half-moon bridge in a perfect Japanese garden — made for the occasion out of the prosaic Metro lot. While waiting for the camera-men to adjust reflecting screens and mirrors, he was engaged in the somewhat startling occupation of powdering his nose in public, while Viola Dana, metamorphosed into a dainty Nipponese maid with tinseled black wig and butterfly kimono, was doing likewise. They seemed quite oblivious of each other’s proximity until Director Otto [Henry Otto] shouted, “Action!” when they hastily put away their make-up boxes and stood very close to each other in the time-honored position for those in love.
“Camera!” called the director. “Run across the bridge, Vi — right after her, Pell — call to her, ‘I’ll catch you!’ Run off after her — cut!”
Little Miss Dana hurried away to change her costume, and it was a rather weary but intensely romantic-looking Pell who led me over to the steps of the tea-house set for a chat between scenes.
“I didn’t know whether I was going to get a minute off or not,” he said, dabbing his face carefully with a handkerchief. “I am playing opposite Miss Dana in this picture, and many of the scenes are taken in this garden. There are only a few hours a day when the sun is right for shooting, so we have to take advantage of every minute when the light is good.”
He has a deep, rich voice — baritone, I suppose you would call it, with that inflection which betokens at once a New Yorker and an actor. He has grey eyes that regard you alternately with twinkling humor and flattering sincerity, and his forehead is of that classic variety that in a mid-Victorian novel would be termed “brow,” possibly with the adjective of “lofty” or “noble” before it. His hair is brown and has a slight wave that becomes a positive crinkle over the ears, and the I’m sure he won’t own up to this, the fact remains that he has a romantic face. You could visualize him as Launcelot or François Villon, or as the first Lord Pell of Pell Manor, in powdered wig and satin waistcoat.
“I enjoy working in The Willow Tree immensely,” he told me, when we got around to talking pictures instead of Pells. “It is an adaptation of the play that made such a success in New York, and I take the part of the English sculptor who falls in love with the little Japanese girl who pretends that she is the willow-tree image come to life.
“Let me show you thru the garden,” he invited. “It is a real achievement — perfect in every detail.”
He helped me across a narrow little bridge that spanned an artificial canal, and we stopped a moment to watch the white ducks sunning themselves on the banks.
“At first the stream was full of gold-fish,” he said, “but ducks are no respecters of movie props, and they ate them all the first day.”‘
The garden was indeed a miracle of realism, carpeted with soft green grass, filled with transplanted willow trees, cherry trees in full artificial bloom. Oriental pergolas, quaint pagoda-shaped bird-houses, stone storks and fantastically cut shrubbery. At one end of the garden a hill rose steeply, and this, Mr. Trenton pointed out, was built by the studio carpenters, in tiers like the seats of a circus, and covered with green shavings to simulate grass. To the camera’s eye the illusion was perfect. There was not an inch of the magic garden that did not look as if it had been born and educated in Japan.
We sat down in the bamboo pergola, and Mr. Trenton talked about his work on stage and screen.
“I really started in to be a lawyer,” he said, “but just as I was ready to take my examinations I took a notion that I would rather be an actor. Perhaps if I had had a great deal of trouble getting started my ardor would have been dampened, but as it was, I got a bit with Julia Marlowe the first thing in The Goddess of Reason. I stayed with her company until she married Mr. Sothern [E. H. Sothern], and after that — well, I’ve had a checkered career. I’ve played everything from the stern father who shoves his erring daughter out into the paper snowstorm to the jealous husband in Parlor, Bedroom and Bath, which was, by the way, my last stage appearance in New York. From 1910 to 1918 I played one hundred and fifty leads in stock companies in Salt Lake City, Bridgeport, New Haven and New York, and I was a juvenile in Herbert Blaché’s company — he is with Metro now, you know, and directed The Uplifters, in which I played opposite Miss Allison.”
Somehow we got around to talking about the war.
“Oh, yes, I enlisted,” he said, “but I didn’t get across — worse luck! I was in the officers’ training camp at Palo Alto when the war flivvered. I think I would have made a good soldier, too,” he continued, a trifle wistfully. “It’s in the blood. All the Pells and Trentons have been military men, and I am what mother calls a ‘double son’ of the Revolution, because two of my ancestors fought in that war, one as a Tory and one as a Colonial.”
After being mustered out, Mr. Trenton took up picture work once more, having before his enlistment played with Mrs. Vernon Castle in Stranded in Arcady and with Clara Kimball Young in The House of Glass. Since the war he has been with Metro, and has played opposite May Allison in The Uplifters, Fair and Warmer and is now Viola Dana’s leading man for The Willow Tree.
Somewhere from the interior set an authoritative voice was calling for “Pell,” and Pell responded in a tone that was a little regretful — at least I imagined that it was, and I hope I was right.
“I won’t detain you a minute longer.” I said, as we walked down the gravel path from the pergola, “but I would like to know about your hobbies — what you do outside of pictures.”
For some reason he seemed much embarrassed.
“I — er — oh, I ride horseback, and — do you really want to know?”
Of course, I did. He was so mysterious about it I thought it must be duelling or moonshining.
“I play poker!” he confided, in a stage whisper.
“So do I!” I responded, in the same tone, and we shook on it.
“I’ve always thought,” he added, in hurried confidence, “that my fondness for that indoor sport was responsible for my part as the Mystic Shrine husband in Fair and Warmer. You remember, he was a poker devotee.”
The casting director tells me positively that such was not the case. But far be it from me to contradict Pell of Pell Manor.
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Pell Trenton started out to be a lawyer, but changed his mind. He made his debut doing a “bit” with Julia Marlowe in The Goddess of Reason.
At the right is a glimpse of him in the garden set of The Willow Tree
Photograph by Evans, L. A.
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Trenton enlisted when America went into the war. He was at an officers’ training camp at Palo Alto when the war ended. Pell considered it rotten luck, since he comes of a military family.
At the left is a snap of Trenton in the act of being interviewed
Photograph by Evans, L. A.
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Collection: Motion Picture Classic Magazine, March 1920