Percy Marmont — An Overnight Success — After Years of Plodding (1924) 🇺🇸

October 05, 2024

The cheers that greeted “If Winter Comes” were mostly for the quietly effective performance of Percy Marmont, in the rôle of the gentle, contemplative idealist, Mark Sabre. Marmont became an overnight success.

by Caroline Bell

Yet for several years he has been on the screen. Before he had been sadly miscast, just another lack-luster leading man doing his best while feeling utterly ineffectual as correct background for some scintillant woman star. With the new demand for skilled actors in individual characterizations, such men as Marmont are finding their opportunities.

“Acting is changing, unquestionably, in the films,” he explained his theories regarding his sudden success. “‘If Winter Comes’ was an example of the new possibilities, the transference of thought onto the screen not in terms of action but by subtle nuances. William de Mille [William C. de Mille] has been feeling his way toward that idea for some time. The one as yet unfulfilled ambition of my life is to act under his direction. There is no doubt that the movie is drawing in a more dignified, more discriminating patronage. To satisfy this new demand, the screen is beginning to get away from tinsel and over-exaggeration and into genuine fundamentals and more realistic interpretation.

“But my own rather startling success is due entirely to the fact that I had a wonderful chance. No trained actor could have helped scoring a hit as Mark Sabre. Without undue modesty, I feel the deepest gratitude for the opportunity to create such an individual character, particularly gratitude to the author. We actors are absolutely dependent upon the authors of our plays. When an experienced actor has a good rôle, he can play it. And the public, years ago even, was quick to recognize this point, for at various times in my career, when I’ve done a little thing passably well, it has met a favorable reception.

“It is partly up to the actor, but, in the last analysis, he is merely the tool of the author.”

When he was sixteen Marmont ran away from his English home, determined upon a stage career, later he studied music at the Academy in London. Soon that analytical quality which is the pivotal point of his character to-day showed him the foolhardiness of devoting a lifetime to what might prove to be but a mediocre talent and he returned to the stage.

In “The Man Whom Life Passed By,” which Marmont is doing now for Metro, he plays a character similar in a way to “Old Puzzlehead” Sabre. The hero of this story is an atheist whose faith has been destroyed, who goes his moody, introspective way, trying to figure out what everything is all about.

Though admitting a fondness for sports, particularly golf, even these Marmont takes with that calm reflective attitude which is his main characteristic. That reticence typical of the English gentleman who prefers reservedly to be a bystander watching the stream of pulsating life pass breathlessly by, getting a great deal of quiet amusement out of controversies, but not caring to participate too strenuously. One feels always, in his conversation, in the even tenor of his life and work, an unshakable serenity, and a quiet, but unmistakable sense of humor.

He is tenacious, but never belligerent. Always he gives that unhurried aspect of quiet contemplation. His forte lies indeed in the transference of thought to the screen by means of these idealistic characters such as he is now playing. For he is indubitably, though disclaiming it in favor of a more critical viewpoint, an idealist. And in portraying these character heroes, he is giving to the screen not only the polished technique of the actor but something infinitely more real, unconscious though it be — himself.