Renée Mayer — A Chat with a Pantomime Idol (1919) 🇬🇧

Renée Mayer loves acting for the pictures. She likes the excitement. Anything with a “thrill” in it appeals to her, and when you remember that she was nearly drowned during the taking of a recent film, you cannot help admiring her pluck.

This dainty little actress began her stage career at the age of seven. That was in a charity performance. No one who saw her in Puss in Boots or Hop o’ My Thumb, or any of the famous Drury Lane pantomimes, can ever forget the charm she gave to the old nursery stories.

As Others See You.

I felt very strange the first time I saw myself in a film,” she told me. “I had always imagined that I knew just what I was like, but the girl on the screen seemed somehow different. It was very funny to see oneself from the outside like that.”

During the taking of the National Film, when Renée Mayer appeared among such stars as Ellen Terry, Marie Löhr, José Collins, Matheson Lang, James Carew, and Sam Livesey, she had a big struggle with a German who, in the story, invaded her home.

When he came upon the scene she was busy washing up the dishes in her cottage. To give a homely touch to the picture, the producer had an opened tin of beans in tomato sauce placed on the table when the film was prepared, and stacks of clean dishes showed the result of Renée’s industry.

Then came her struggle with the German. With a loaded revolver he threatens her. There is no escape, so, with despair in her heart, the young English girl turns the revolver on herself and falls across the table, dead.

In the production it was arranged that the table should collapse, and Renée fall among the debris to the floor.

Not So Serious After All.

All went well until the fall. Cinema actresses are used to bruises, and Renée knew she would get a few. But what was that that she felt trickling down her neck? “The falling crockery must have cut me. I wonder where the gash is?” she thought.

She dared not move until the two whistles denoted that the camera man had finished.

“Are you hurt?” the others asked expectantly. Renée lay quite still, and pointed fearsomely to the back of her neck. “Is it a very dreadful cut?” she asked. A burst of laughter was the answer. The producer’s realistic beans in tomato sauce were trickling down her neck!

“Is it very tiring work? It sounds so very strenuous,” I put in. But Miss Mayer says it is only in the very hot weather that film acting is especially trying.

“The make-up is a nuisance in the summer months, too, because if you get at all hot the perspiration is likely to trickle down it in little ridges, and then, of course, that comes out in the picture.

“When we were rehearsing last summer, Mr. Herbert Brenon, our producer, used to be very particular about this. There were maids waiting around with powder-puffs, so that in odd moments we could repair any damage caused by the heat. Wasn’t it very thoughtful of him?”

Her Secret.

And then Miss Mayer let me into a secret. She doesn’t use the usual yellow make-up, like most film actresses. She has discovered a pink-and-white preparation of her own which photographs with excellent results.

She tells me she is very fond of sewing, and gets through lots of needlework in between the different sets.

The big portrait is her favourite, but I like the tiny one when she was seven, don’t you?”

—

Posing Teddy for a photograph.

Aged Seven.

Photo: Claud Harris

The Picture Show, June 28th, 1919.

Collection: Picture Show Magazine, June 1919