Rhea Mitchell — The Lovely Riddle (1918) 🇺🇸
It’s exactly like a fairy-tale or a moving picture plot — just exactly. You know how it is in the pictures.
by Grace Kingsley
First she’s a pink-gingham heroine, swinging a sunbonnet by one string — (she never wears it because if she did the sunshine couldn’t light up her hair) — and then her father or uncle makes a fortune with his invention canning icebergs to send to the equator or something; and in the third reel she’s all dolled up, and lives in a millionaire’s house that’s been furnished with trading stamps.
That’s just the way it was with Rhea Mitchell, Paralta star. Professionally, of course. They called her “Ginger” Mitchell then, when she played the pink-gingham heroines, and they threw her into the ocean and over precipices and they used her to stop trains with; and Bill Hart [William S. Hart] was her lover and treated her rough.
Well, any little girl who’s been used to romping around in the open naturally finds it a little cramping to her style to have to dress up and look pretty all day, playing those heavy things — dramatic roles and psychologically intellectual roles. Rhea wasn’t used to it. She was fond of taking a plunge into the Pacific whenever the fancy happened to hit her or her director; she rode, too — they called her “the stunt girl.”
“But no more black-and-blue drama for me,” said Rhea the other day, as she sat knitting, on the back porch of her Hollywood bungalow, where the sunlight fell in brilliant splotches on her golden hair, just as sunlight has a way of falling.
“Down at Inceville, you know, there was so much room to throw a person about. Any bright idea they happened to get about you could at once be put into execution. They painted you with red blood as a matter of course and tradition; but it wasn’t at all necessary as a rule. Why, the first day I came home from work, I said to mother: ‘I’m not an actress any more; I’m an acrobat.’ I just can’t get used to being all painted up white instead of covered with alkali dust.”
Dave Warfield, they say, wants to do Hamlet.
Rhea Mitchell, she says, longs to indulge in the bright, sunshiny stuff.
“Just for once, I wish they’d let me romp around in comedy and curls — not brick-in-the-hat and pie-in-the-eye comedy, but bright, sunshiny roles —”
There you are!
“But,” she continued, “they never will. Sometimes in the Inceville days they used to let me start out happily; though of course something desperate always happened to me before the end of the first reel —
“Do I weep naturally in my sob scenes? Yes, I do— that is, I either can’t weep at all, or I have to swim out. Music helps. Just let the studio musicians begin playing Somewhere a Voice Is Calling, — I don’t know whose voice it is, maybe the laundryman’s or somebody I owe money to — anyway, I go right to it.
“I’ll tell you something. I miss all that daredevil horseback riding and swimming and romping about; and sometimes I revert to type, put on my old riding habit, send down to the riding stables for a horse, and have a nice mad gallop to the foot-hills. Why, I never was out of California in all my life until I went to New York last year. Did I gaze up at the tall buildings? Maybe; — but I was mighty careful to brace myself, because I had a friend who didn’t, and she fell right over backwards.
Miss Mitchell’s hair isn’t red — that is, not exactly. We’ve just said it’s gold. But Miss Mitchell herself tells you that they never call her “Rhea”; she is “Ginger” Mitchell to anyone who knows her at all. As there is nothing in her disposition to warrant such a name, it must be the hair. It’s pretty hair, anyway; and it does look golden in the sunlight.
If it was any other girl who’d been born in Portland, Oregon, and you were writing about her, you’d say: “And she is as lovely as the most prized flowers of the Rose City” — or something like that. But if you’re talking about Rhea Mitchell, you don’t. It isn’t necessary; and besides, what wouldn’t she say to you the next time she met you!
She has a freckle under one eye — just one freckle. If you have never seen one freckle under one eye, you can’t begin to appreciate Gin — Rhea. Because, although she herself hates it. has employed every known and unknown remedy and every advertised freckle lotion, it won’t come off. Everybody hopes it never will. Not that everybody is mean about it. But Ginger Mitchell wouldn’t be Ginger without that freckle.
She has had all kinds of stage experience. Started in stock in Portland, then filled engagements in every city on the Pacific coast excepting Los Angeles. For one season she played the Orpheum circuit with the late Sydney Ayres in a dramatic sketch. Later she became ingénue lead with the Alcazar stock in San Francisco, and then came her screen debut with the New York Motion Picture Corporation. She appeared in many of the old Broncho, Domino, and Kay-Bee films before she really won wide recognition in “On the Night Stage,” in support of Hart and Robert Edeson.
In 1916 Miss Mitchell was with American. Now, — a star, for Paralta.
“Date of birth. Miss Mitchell, — day, month, and year?”
“December 10th,” said Miss Mitchell. Ginger.
Her eyes dance so, you can’t fix the color of them to your satisfaction. If we said they were blue, and they happened to be grey, — well, you know how you’d feel about a thing like that, yourself.
She doesn’t cook nor sew nor garden. She hasn’t a single Belgian orphan to her credit. But she has adopted two Sammies, and she sends them cigarettes and candy and sweaters and socks and scarfs and wristlets. Right now it’s another scarf she’s working on; her socks are fit for a king — only of course she doesn’t believe in kings — and you should just hear her chatter in technical language about the different kinds of bandages and surgical sponges and things that they need “over there.”
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As a vamp, Ginger makes a mighty sweet ingénue. From “The Overcoat,” an old American picture.
Rhea has just seen someone she knows down the street, and she’s waiting for him at the approach to her Hollywood bungalow. (Note: the pronoun for “one” is always “he.” That’s grammar.)
Photo by: Stagg
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How Miss Mitchell can look-up-at-one! She’s doing it in this scene from “The Phantom Extra.”
Rhea got into her riding habit and posed especially with the animals. Why? To give us a chance for a clever caption. But we’re not going to do it.
Photo by: Stagg
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Plays and Players
Franklin Ritchie, at one time regarded one of the best leading men in motion pictures, was instantly killed in an automobile accident near Santa Barbara, Cal., in January. Mr. Ritchie began with the Biograph company and for a long time he was with the Ince company. Later he went to Santa Barbara, where he played with the American and while in that city he retired from the screen to go into the automobile business. He married about two years ago.
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Mary Pickford was accorded an honor last month that was never before conferred upon any American woman when she officially reviewed the troops stationed at Camp Kearny, near San Diego, Cal. The affair was arranged by the officers of the 143d Field Artillery and signalized the adoption of the entire regiment by the little film star. Before that she had adopted only half the regiment, the first battalion. After the regiment had passed in review before Little Mary, who, by the way, was seated on a horse with all the big officers, there was a lunch with the officers, a football game between Mary’s regiment and the Grizzlies’ regiment of artillery, a dinner complimentary to the star in the evening and the regimental ball at Coronado, where Mary and Colonel Faneuf, of her regiment, led the grand march. Major General Strong, commanding the Fortieth Division of the United States Army, was present during the ceremonies.
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Universal’s usual midwinter shakeup came as per schedule with its usual casualties. Among the prominent ones who are seeking pastures new are Herb Rawlinson [Herbert Rawlinson] and Louise Lovely, both of whom have appeared in Bluebird productions. A large number of minor players also succumbed when contracts expired and others went despite contracts, the company blaming the government fuel conservation order for the drastic action. Universal claims to have enough film “on the shelf” to provide a regular release up till next August.
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The coal situation in the East caused a veritable exodus of film companies to the Coast, where they can get along without coal forever, as oil is used almost exclusively for fuel. Besides, no fuel is required to keep warm in Los Angeles. Theda Bara was one of the first to depart Sunset-wards.
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“M’liss,” Bret Harte’s story of early California days, is to be Mary Pickford’s next. The story was done once several years ago by the World and to prevent the usual performance, Artcraft bought up the World film before starting on the picture. Frances Marion adapted the story to the screen and Marshall Neilan directed it.
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Richard Travers, who won a captaincy at Fort Sheridan, Ill., has seen service before, under the Union Jack in the Boer War in South Africa. On one occasion as a sharp-shooter Travers had a narrow escape which will bear retelling. He had been lying full-length for some time, behind a small hillock of sand, awaiting his chance to draw a bead on one of the enemy: and his cramped position finally became so intolerable that he moved his head and shoulders a little way in order to get relief. And in that second a bullet struck the sand where his head had been. “Dick”’ heard the shot and looking up saw the body of a Boer sharp-shooter falling from a scrubby tree several hundred yards away. Some British sharp-shooter had shot the Boer just as he fired at Travers.
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Every advertisement in Photoplay Magazine is guaranteed.
Collection: Photoplay Magazine, April 1918