Priscilla Dean — Oh, Why Did They Name You Priscilla? (1924) 🇺🇸

In Hollywood, everybody is always wondering what is going to happen to somebody else.

by Mary Winship

They wonder what’s going to happen to Jackie Coogan when he grows up. They wonder what is going to happen to Mary Miles Minter now that she’s left her mother. They wonder what’s going to happen to Rodolph Valentino [Rudolph Valentino] when he comes back to the screen. They wonder what’s going to happen to Mary Pickford now that she’s playing grown up parts, and what’s going to happen to Pola Negri now that she has refused to bother about sympathetic roles any longer.

And I suppose most people have their own special wonder. Mine is what’s going to happen to Priscilla Dean, now that her Universal contract is ended at last and she is to make her own productions.

Probably that is because I have such great faith in the things she could do, and because to me she stood alone on the screen as a fiery, dynamic, refreshing, dramatic personality. No one has every succeeded in imitating her, no one else has ever given us the impudence, the daring, the little-devil-in-the-eyes wickedness that she gave us.

There’s a great place on the screen that belonged and still belongs to the girl who made “The Wild Cat of Paris” and “Outside the Law.”

Even off the screen, Priscilla is one of those people who act upon you like a tonic. If I feel particularly low. particularly negative, if life has lost its flavor and if what I have to do bores me to extinction, I love to see Priscilla.

• She is pep plus.
• She is never bored.
• She is never tired.
• She is never cross.

Oh, she has a temper, I grant you that. She can make the fur fly in every possible direction. She fought her way through five years of her Universal contract, and, while they licked her in the end with bad stories and worse direction, she went down lighting and with her boots on. But she’s never picky, never troubled with nerves, never catty.

I love to hear her fly into a vivid description of something her eyes dancing, her face aglow her hands and shoulders and even her feet used for illustrative gestures — and end it with her pet phrase: “Can you imagine that?”

Priscilla isn’t what you’d call a universally popular person. Not by any means. She’s too definite for that. She says what she thinks and she thinks in italics. There is still something of the enfant terrible about her, something of the four year old who wore out her little frilled panties sliding down the steps of Grant’s Tomb. But the people who like her adore her and will fight for her, and the people who don’t, simply can’t abide her. She’s rather like that herself. Either she’s crazy about someone, or she simply can’t bear them.

A famous English beauty came to Hollywood not so long ago. Soon after her arrival she said publicly and with much horror that Hollywood screen stars didn’t understand the care of beauty and that most of them were losing their looks. She said very emphatically that a beauty should never play tennis, should never drive, swim, play golf, ride horseback — nor go out in the sun without a veil. Someone read it aloud out of the Sunday morning paper when Priscilla and her husband, Wheeler Oakman, were engaged in a violent set of tennis on her own court.

“Bunk,” said Priscilla. “Those janes think too much about themselves. The best way to keep young is to forget your face. Besides, life is too short. If I had to give up all those things, I’d rather be dead right now. I won’t believe people care about these pining-away beauties. They’d rather have a little health and vigor and life in a woman.”

And she meant it. Tennis, swimming, her dogs, her horses, golf, are the things that really are important in her life, next to her work. Even in the evening, with her bright, thick mahogany hair done in stately simplicity about her lovely little head, in a distinguished evening gown and the proper jewels, she suggests outdoors.

She is a dog-woman. Her dogs are really a part of her life. And they worship her. She has all kinds. Besides her pair of prize-winning shepherd (police) dogs, she’s collected various sorts and varieties. A Los Angeles paper recently had a Story that the pound was going to put out of the way a number of lost and homeless dogs unless someone rescued them by noon the next day. Priscilla dashed out frantically, the picture of the eleven pathetic and nondescript puppies in her hand. to find them all gone but one extremely forlorn little doggie, who looked as though he combined a little bull, with a little wire-haired fox terrier, a dash of dachshund and a trifle of pug. Priscilla loaded him into her plush-lined limousine and hugged him all the way to Beverly Hills.

One of the most illuminating experiences you can possibly have is to ride in a limousine with Priscilla. She is a splendid driver herself. As a rule I dislike driving with women — Priscilla and Dorothy Reid are the only two with whom I feel perfectly safe.

Priscilla pilots a roadster with dashing grace and with the minimum of danger and the maximum of speed. But once inside a limousine, with a chauffeur at the wheel, she is terrible. She clutches the speaking tube to her breast, glue- the mouthpiece to her lips, plants both feet on imaginary brakes and stares frantically out the window. When the big car shoots through a little intense traffic — and traffic is very intense in Hollywood, believe me — Priscilla begins to do her stuff with the speaking tube.

Priscilla was born and brought up in the theater. It’s the very breath of life to her. She made her first appearance with her mother, a well-known leading woman, when she was a baby.

And all I hope is she’ll put some of that splendid energy, some of that vital personality, back into her pictures. Her experience with Universal was an unhappy one. But we’d all welcome back to the screen the old Priscilla Dean. And by the way, why, oh why, did they call you Priscilla?

It should have been Patricia, or Carmelita, or Delphine, or even Geraldine — but never, never Priscilla.

“Even a rattlesnake gives only three warnings,” he said.

Priscilla Dean’s latest, and loveliest photograph. Remembering her madcap “Virgin of Stamboul” it is hard to realize that this soft-eyed, wistfully smiling person is the same girl. She has, perhaps, lost some of fire — but has gained sweetness and repose

Photo by: Melbourne Spurr (1888–1964)

Does Miss Dean look as if her name should be Priscilla? Answer: — She does not

Miss Dean in her favorite role of Mrs. Wheeler Oakman, being supported apparently, at least — by her husband

Charles Stevenson, formerly Kate Claxton’s husband and Mrs. Leslie Carter’s leading man, is Adonis Sr., of Hollywood. Mr. Stevenson’s good looks have not diminished with the years. He preserves them and his strength by as much life out of doors as possible.

To carry out this purpose he purchased an automobile. The machine behaved very well on the open road but grew captious and ran through the wall of its garage. A few days later it repeated the caper. Shortly afterward, while on the highway, another car ran into it. Whereupon Mr. Stevenson sadly sold his capricious treasure.

Collection: Photoplay Magazine, March 1924