Richman, Poorman, Beggarman — ! They’re All Frank Losee (1919) 🇺🇸
Frank Losee started out as a boy to study law. That is, the he to which his folks were able to dictate. But in between dusty volumes young Losee was haunted by the whispers of himself — the callings of his heart’s desire. He — wanted — to — act.
by C. Blythe Sherwood
And because his want was earnest, because his earnestness persisted in caring for a thing of interest, because his interest was supported by youth in all its doggedness of determination — he gave up plowing printed words, and joined the Hooley Stock Company of Brooklyn.
When a famous cartoonist made world-known that series, Let George Do It, he meant really, and should have said, “Leave it to Frank.” Whenever the Hooleys were in doubt as to whom they could cast for their varied parts, they would come up smiling with the inspiration, “Say! There's that big, young person — the good-looker with the round voice.”
His thirty years’ training on the legitimate stage well prepared him for the cinema. Mr. Losee has played the roles of richman, poorman, beggarman, thief, as vividly as he enacted the parts of doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. To both his stage and screen directors he showed that, when it came to a tossup between tradition and something new, he could win out with the latter, by completely abolishing the idea of having just “certain people for certain people.”
He did away, once and for all, with the belief that, if an aged negro were needed to portray an aged negro, the casting men would have to go out and find an aged negro.
These incessant switchings from part to part admirably fitted him for larger, more permanent roles later on. There are few veteran theatergoers who, the minute they touch upon the subject of Bertha Kalich in The Kreutzer Sonata, do not spontaneously remark, “And Frank Losee! Will you ever forget him?” Then followed a successful run in The House Next Door, and after that his memorable two years under the management of David Belasco in The Rose o’ the Rancho.
Four or five years ago, while he was acting with William Faversham in The Hawk, William Faversham, who was just starting to attempt his first picture, tried to persuade him to “come along with me and slide into the silversheet.” “I flatly refused,” now laughs Mr. Losee. “After growing up in the land of realism, it seemed ludicrous to dwindle down to the movie studio of make-believe.
“My initial screen work happened when The Eternal City was being filmed. I went to watch one day, partly out of curiosity, partly because Elliott Dexter and Pauline Frederick are old friends of mine. As I appeared, one of the directors called to me, ‘Hello, Losee! You’re just the man we need. Come, exactly as you are, get in on this. All you have to do is lie still and pretend you’re dead.’ Well, you know how any old thing goes during vacation! So I took up the challenge and acted the corpse.
“That is how I got my first drilling in playing before the camera, too. For as I lay there on my back over an hour, while the others around me rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed, I could not help but absorb the directions. I was compelled later to make use of them, for altho I was ‘dead’ at the beginning, I had to continue with my part, as they had taken the last scene first! After I finished that picture with them, I went back next season to play with Ernest Truex and Henry Miller in Just Outside the Door. We ran only nine days. That left me without something to do and prompted an offer to be with Dexter again and Marguerite Clark in Helene of the North by the Famous Players–Lasky, with whom I have been ever since.
“My ideas haven’t changed any. I feel the same about the lack of verity under the Cooper–Hewitts now as I did at that time. In fact, the taste of the pudding had given the proof. For instance, here I am talking to you, and at any moment the boss will call me, and out of a perfectly clear sky I shall have to go on, feel miserable, act tragically, and show that my heart is breaking because my daughter ran away with a second-lieutenant. As you are bound to ask me, then, why I am here, I shall deliberately, without any pretense, tell you the truth. Having been born, schooled, influenced, grown and now getting old and wise in New York City has made of me a confirmed commercialist!
“You can put it in print, too. I am not ashamed of it.”
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Upper right, Mr. Losee playing himself; just below is a glimpse of Mr. Losee with Pauline Frederick in Sapho; in the lower right corner, as Scarpia in La Tosca; as Uncle Tom in the small circle; and, lower left, in Great Expectations
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Collection: Motion Picture Classic Magazine, May 1919