Ralph Graves — Reversing the Process (1925) 🇺🇸

Many players have started in comedies to end up as a dramatic star.

Ralph Graves is working it the other way around. “Dream Street” brought him to the fans’ attention, and every one thought of him only as a serious young” actor of considerable promise. But the promise was slow in fulfillment.

Just why he signed for a series of two-reel Sennett [Mack Sennett] comedies was not understood at first. The assumption on the part of some was that he was another of those lights that, under masterly direction, flame up and then flicker out.

“It was a gamble,” Ralph explains, now that his experiment promises to work out. “The slump hit me hard and the rôles offered me were not encouraging. I saw little chance ahead of ever being permitted to create the character on which I had set my heart — a character in some respects similar to Charles Ray’s country boy.

“So when Sennett offered to gamble with me, I decided to try to build up my character from short comedies. It hurt my pride — the comedown — and knowing that people were calling me a washout. My first pictures were rotten. But they’re improving. We put this typical young American — plumber, street-car conductor, and so on — in humorous situations of every-day reality.”

It is possible that in the spring Sennett will feature him in five-reelers, which would be a definite step toward his goal.

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Collection: Picture Play Magazine, March 1925