Richard Travers — Sans Grease Paint and Wig (1914) 🇺🇸

There are two memories that come strongest to mind when I think back on the day that Richard C. Travers “told me things,” out on the bench on the Essanay grass-plot.

by Mabel Condon

These particular memories are of filet mignon and how fat Don Meaney was getting. Mr. Travers [Richard Travers] was responsible for the one; the other — well, had Don rolled the hundred or more times each morning as his very sympathetic friends advised, there would have been room on the bench for him too. But, unfortunately, he had neglected this little indoor sport, and so stood about, first on one tan shoe and then the other, by way of a warming-up exercise, on his several trips to the yard and the bench on the sunny side of the hen-coop. “I’ll take you to lunch— if I get back in time,” Irene Warfield had promised, as she started off in a riding-habit and a limousine to do some scenes for Director Webster. It was then Mr. Meaney introduced R. C. Travers and the latter suggested the great out-of-doors; hence the bench and the sunshine, the wide yard and the leafless saplings; not to mention the hen-coop and the duck-run, or swim, which was at our backs.

Out-of-doors, Mr. Travers feels most at home. He was born out of doors, almost; anyway, he was brought up on the air that is God’s own and could swim at four years of age, and skate at five, and at ten was a dandy tennis-player. Up to that time, the year that made him ten, his mother was the only white woman he had seen.

For his world was the Hudson Bay Trading Post and white people there were scarce. His father was a missioner and tutored the youthful Richard in studies that put him in advance of his class-mates when he did start to school, which was when he was eleven. He attended St. Andrews College, Montreal and later, Cornell, at Ithica. But always, wherever he went, he figured in athletics. He enlisted in the Boer war when he was fourteen and holds a full commission in the British army and an honorary one in that of the U. S. “There’s room for me out-of-doors,” he said, as he removed his soft green hat from the top of his six-feet-one-inch and two hundred pound weight. “And there isn’t, always, in-doors. I like the feel of the out-of-doors and never stay in when I can be out. Winter is the time I like best, and the colder it is the better it suits me.”

“I should think you would like the summer, on account of swimming and autoing and tennis,” I ventured. The sun was strong and I had to squint every time I glanced at the Travers brown grayness of eye,

“Oh, swimming doesn’t matter — I do that all the year round anyhow,” he answered. “It’s never too cold for an out-door plunge.”

“No?” I reflected upon the years of ignorance which had been mine.

“And I auto all winter too; I have designed a car that will run on ice. They tell me there’s lots of ice in Chicago in the winter.”

“Oh, yes!” I boasted. “We have a perfectly competent weather man.”

“Tennis, I like best in the early spring; summer is too hot for tennis and me. But up at the trading-post! I’ve had the greatest games of my life there. My father and I played together. We went to Niagara one year and won a championship match; my father was sixty-one at the time. He is seventy-two now, and still has a church of his own. He’s the kind of man who will never be old. He has had a wonderful life, and a strong one. Ralph Connor and he were great friends and Connor used him as one of his characters in his book, The Sky-Pilot.

“Does your father think the stage is ‘the place for a minister’s son?’” I asked out of the curiosity everybody has when he learns that the father of an actor or actress is a preacher of the gospel.

“He thinks so if I do,” replied Mr. Travers. “And I think it’s the place for me,” he added. “Though I did like medicine and I believe I would have made a big success of it, in the surgical line, preferably.” He paused, then went on, “But I practiced before I had a right to, and so lost my diploma.”

“And your father — what did he say?”

“It was one of the biggest disappointments he ever had. But we talked it over and he saw there was no help for it, so, instead of making a fuss, he just asked, ‘Well, what now?’ I didn’t know just what and started to find out. I went to the middle West and got a chance to go on the stage; I took it, became leading man of a stock company and drifted about playing in various cities. I satisfied my liking for out-door sports, every place I went. Sometimes it was hockey; I’ve played on both amateur and professional teams. Or maybe it was shooting or fishing; I learned the art of both from my father. At seventy-two, he’s the best shot and fisherman in his own district, for a radius of miles.

“And I’ve driven an engine and every kind of an auto made. It was in an auto chase that I made my first appearance in pictures. The film was ‘A Race for Love;’ in it I drove Barney Oldfield’s Blitzen Benz. And I rode in the Vanderbilt Cup race in 1906, as mechanic.”

“Foot ball is one of the sports I like best. I played it both at St. Andrews and at Cornell; I pulled stroke at 196 at Cornell.”

“And pictures?” I suggested, feeling that to be a safer topic than “pulling stroke at 196.” Had he said “sacrificed at first” or “holed out at bogey,” I might have stood a chance of knowing just what he meant.

“Pictures? — my hobby. There’s not a day passes that I do not say to myself, no matter how hard I’ve worked. ‘And to think I get paid for it!’ To me, it’s an ideal work and after fourteen years on the stage, a welcome work.”

You’ll wonder just between what and what years the fourteen spent on the stage were sandwiched. I did, too. But the fact that the powerful man with the black hair and dark eyes, that looked quiet yet never really were, had obtained a head-start on schooling and had always associated with grown-ups, accounts for his having attained manhood and the accomplishments of manhood at a much earlier age than many. At a little over thirty, he can reminisce of things that would occasion the guess that the speaker were nearer forty, did you not see for yourself that he is not nearly that.

“I forgot to tell you that I eat — I have a wonderful appetite,” he apologized, glancing at his watch.

“Had lunch yet?” Don Meaney wanted to know, as he made his third quarter-hourly advance upon the bench, the grass-plot and the rest of the scenery.

“No, but I have a luncheon engagement, I think,” I said dubiously, casting a searching look toward the automobile entrance.

 “I had too — I thought,” said the other occupant of the bench, also casting a searching look toward the automobile entrance.

“I think we’d better not wait any longer,” he went on, his watch telling a two o’clock message. “But Miss Warfield”— I objected. “Just who I had a luncheon date with,” he said. That cleared away any misgivings and we went to the “Winona,” a quaint, foreign-like place where you can get the best salad-dressing in the world, Mr. Travers informed. We were surprised out of the topic of the making of the wonderful dressing, however, by finding Miss Warfield at the second table on the right from the door. Director Webster and the rest of the company were at that and others of the tables and, as we took possession of the third-from-the-door table, Mr. Travers murmured, “We’ll just nod.” We nodded. “We’re not nearly through with our scenes yet,” Miss Warfield apologized from her table. “Mr. Webster said he’d barely allow us time for lunch,” she further explained.

“Yes, it’s my fault,” Mr. Webster took the blame on his fat, broad shoulders.

“Kipling’s my especial favorite; next to him comes Omar Khayyam,” Mr. Travers was saying over the top of his menu card.

Then he tackled the food question and as a result came the filet mignon. It was an especially good one; Mr. Travers saw to that. Was “Gus,” the waiter, sure it was very, very superior? “Gus” was most certain. Very well then, the lady should have it. The lady did. Then came the salad and the salad-dressing. The latter needed the little attention of a thorough mixing. Mr. Travers performed this task like a sacred ritual, the while he discoursed on — everything.

The dressing finished, the filet served, favored authors and non-favored politicians laid to rest, and the luncheon progressed. The departure of the second-table guests was not marked, so interesting a host was Mr. Travers.

And “Gus” was quite right about the filet. But it would never do for Don Meaney to take to it!

—

The Pan-American Film Company, previously organized at $10,000 under the laws of the State of New York, has increased its capitalization to $50,000.

—

Just a Moment, Please

When he gets to going, this Charlie Nixon, inspired press agent of the Selig Polyscope Co., is some regular scribe. Here’s his latest effusion:

Bessie Eyton, one of the dimpled darlings of the Selig Stock in Los Angeles recently had a curious experience. She was born and bred in Southern California, where the climate is glorious and every season is summer.

Guess you’ll all agree with Chas. that Bessie’s recent experience was a “curious” one. Eh, lads?

—

When Rev. Robert Watson opened the Ohio State Convention of the M. P. E. L., with prayer a lot of the crowd, to whom this was “new stuff,” sat around wide-eyed, wondering whether it was proper to applaud or whistle.

—

Will somebody please tell Dick Nehls that we have at last discovered a clue to the whereabouts of that lost mustache of his. Chas. Ziebarth is wearing just under his nose and a little northeast of his upper lip a dainty collection of straws colored down that looks surprisingly like that which once adorned the physiognomy of Nehls. If we had a pair of gum shoes and a dark lantern we believe we might be able to dig farther into this mystery.

—

Their Favorite Films

William J. Burns: — “Let No Man Escape” (Essanay).

Lillian Russell: — “The Fourth Proposal” (Rex).

Mrs. Wm. Haddock: — “When Billy Proposed” (Nestor).

W. N. Selig [William Nicholas Selig]: — “Does Advertising Pay?” (Vitagraph).

D. W. Griffith: — “Hard Cash” (Edison).

Our Stenographer: — “Dances of Today” (Victor).

—

Whaddaya Mean Quantity?

Vol. I, No. 6, of the weekly bulletin issued by the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company contains this paragraph:

All this territory could have been sold had Mr. Goldfish and Mr. Lasky cared to dispose of it to persons of unknown quantity.

—

Hugh D’Arcy [Hugh Antoine d’Arcy] of Lubinville sends us an item to the effect that Mrs. Wm. Howard Taft, honorary president of the Third Annual Woman’s Industrial Exhibition, asked Lottie Briscoe to send in her photograph as the leading feminine representative of the motion picture industry of the world, and requests that we publish it. Gee, I’d like to accommodate you, old top. but I’d get “in bad” right away with Nixon. Brandt, Schulberg, Robinson, Meaney, Mindil, Nehls, Ennis and Doud, not to mention a host of other good fellows, who would take offense at a mention of any other leading woman than the one they represent as “the leading feminine” — etc.

—

You’ve probably often heard of “an old fashioned Southern Hoe Cake dinner,” but we’ll bet 8 to 5 you never suspected it meant a menu like this one:

• Cheese
• Crackers
• Celery
• Deviled ham sandwiches
• Beer
• Boiled tongue sandwiches
• Beer
• Pancakes
• Syrup
• Coffee
• Lemonade.

That’s the kind of grub the delegates and visitors to the Ohio League Convention went against and to date no casualties have been reported, but Hivings, what a chance they took! We doubt if even “The Goat” could have eaten that. For our part we’d rather tackle ice cream and pickles any day.

—

Mabel writes us that some of these Noo Yawk folks accuse her of writing this Pinnacle of Persiflage, since they mistake the “N” in “N. G. C.” for “M.” Gosh, will we have to sign our whole monicker to this Chimney of Chaff in order” to get credit for our “own stuff”?

—

On second thought, though, guess we’re quite willing to have somebody else held responsible for some of the atrocities perpetrated in this Tower of Truculency. Therefore, Mabel, guess you’ll have to stand for anything they try to hang on you. and we’ll continue to hide our modest identity under the cognomen of N. G. C.

Collection: Motography Magazine, February 1914