Sallie Crute (1915) 🇺🇸
When an actress is able to be really funny in comedy when she doesn’t care a bit for that kind of work, when she is able to swing to the opposite extreme and play, with dramatic force and convincing power, the fascinating vampire, around which the burden of such a play revolves, it is safe to say that the actress is uncommonly versatile and talented.
Such, briefly, is a sketchy outline of Sallie Crute, the Edison favorite.
With the sunniest of natures and smiles, it at first might seem strange that she is so often cast in that role — so often as to be known as “the Edison adventuress.” But when the picture must give good and logical evidence why men are fascinated, the reason is obvious.
Miss Crute hails from away down South and has all the sunny liveliness of the typical Southern girl. When the Southern Minstrels, on her plantation home near Huntsville, Ala., were finished, the darky performers with one voice would shout for “Miss Sallie,” and up would get the nine-year-old whom the blessed fairies had endowed with gifts and “speak her piece.” Her ambition spread with her reputation and she soon was found in the Elitch–Long Stock Company of Denver.
For various motion picture companies she then played juvenile leads, and in the latter part of 1911 and in 1912 she was the lead in the stage success, The Rosary. Miss Crute thereafter appeared with Amelia Bingham as the ingénue in The Climbers; the Widow Winters in The Three Twins; Dorothy in The Deep Purple; Agy Lynch in Within the Law; in Brewster’s Millions; Officer 666, and in other well-known plays.
Miss Crute puts her heart and soul in everything she does and is known as one of the most “natural” actresses on the screen. Her charm lies in spontaneity of interpretation, which seems to spring from the impulse of the moment, but is, in fact, the spontaneity that comes when technique is so absorbed as to be a part of one’s nature. Her impersonations are always infused with infectious good nature — and personality — except when she plays the adventuress or vampire and then we do see art, for she seems the subtle, sinuous charmer incarnate. Although these parts are essentially not the kind that win sympathy and popularity. Miss Crute is a favorite and is easily in the forefront when it comes to depicting a fascinating vampire, such as her character of Stella, the dancer, in the Edison three-reel, In Spite of All, the play made famous by Mrs. Fiske.
—
“The First Commandment”
Fine three-reel drama of Money God’s rule and how it was broken — carefully made story, exceptional offering.
Reviewed by Hanford C. Judson.
This is the first of the three-act stories that the Kalem Company is releasing on Fridays. It is a picture full of substance and high merit, promising well for other offerings of this series. The author is Harry O. Hoyt and the tale appeared first in The American Woman. Put on the screen by Tom Moore, the humanity of it is made to come out strong by skillful acting. The cast, with a single doubtful exception, is happily chosen and the characters are doubly pleasing on account of their convincing as well as attractive presentation. Among the many excellently drawn human entities it is hard to be sure where the honors lie; but, of this, one can be certain, that Marguerite Courtot, as the money worshiper’s daughter, has as far as this reviewer can see, outdone herself. She has been doing praiseworthy work; but it is plain that she is growing very speedily into an actress of more than ordinary power. She has in this picture drawn a young girl, simple, fresh and lovable on whose heart strings the changing situation plays as on a harp notes of true-hearted filial and sisterly comradeship and sympathy, full of minor chords and joyous strains, moments of pleading, tears, laughter and love. That early scene by her father’s chair in its delicacy and its girlhood is perfect, but not more so than the scene in which she receives her first foolish lover, who is a joke to her. There is no lost sympathy and no petulance; she packs him off just as a girl of that kind would. The highest kind of humor is in it…
The foolish boy, son of her father’s business rival, is played by Lowell R. Stark [Lowell Randall Stark], and is “in character” all the way, although it has been impossible for the actor to disguise his eyes and forehead that show him as, in actuality, of a diametrically different kind.
Austin Webb, as the rich man, carries his stage business with the assurance of the finished actor, and the scenes in which he contends with his more or less dissolute son (Tom Moore), who marries a stage woman (Marie Wells), are full of convincing and restrained playing by all concerned.
Robert Ellis, who plays the accepted lover of the girl, is acceptable, yet seems to find some difficulty in keeping within the measure of his part and in tune with the story — there is little romance in him.
William Calhoun, as the business rival of the rich man, who tries to force him to bring about a marriage with his foolish son, has a role that is in the background.
There is nothing startling or new in the plot; but it amply justifies its use in a three-reel picture, its chief merit being that it furnishes many unusually human scenes. One may suspect that the quality of the whole comes largely from the players and their director. The staging and photography are all that one could want.
Scene from The First Commandment (Kalem).
—
Lester and Ray in “The City of the Dead.”
Louise Lester and Charles Ray are seen in The City of the Dead, a punchy Mutual release from Inceville. Charles Swickard did the directing. The settings are Oriental, and Ray plays the part of a young American traveller.
—
Marshall and Farrington in Princess drama.
Boyd Marshall and Rene Farrington play the leading roles in And He Never Knew, by Arthur Ellert, a Princess release in the Mutual program. Others in the cast are Kenneth Clarendon, John Reinhard, Edward N. Hoyt and F. White [Arthur Ellert | Reenie Farrington | Hal Clarendon | John Reinhardt | Edward Hoyt]. The story tells how, by a clever ruse, a wealthy girl made a poor man feel that he had enough money to marry her.
—
Capt. Bonavita joins Horsley.
Capt. Jack Bonavita, for many years the most celebrated lion-tamer and trainer of wild animals in the world, has been engaged by David Horsley, and has already joined the Bostock Arena and Jungle at Los Angeles.
Arrangements have already been completed whereby Capt. Bonavita will appear in and assist in the production of Mina Films. The releases of this new licensed brand have heretofore been confined to one reel comedies, so that the announcement that Bonavita would be associated with them has given rise to much speculation as to the further policies of the manufacturer.
Collection: Moving Picture World, March 1915