Shirley Mason — The Evolution of a Star (1918) 🇺🇸

When Mr. Frederick A. Collins visited the Edison Studio to arrange for the production of “Seven Deadly Sins,” he did the honor of selecting me for the principal feminine role.

by Shirley Mason

“Who is that girl?” he asked Mr. McChesney, the manager.

“Leonie Flugrath,” was the reply.

Mr. Collins stepped up to me. “I admire your personality and methods,” he said smilingly, “but I don't like your name. Will you change it?”

“Certainly I will, to get a stellar part!” I returned, the novel idea winning me like a flash. He just as promptly replied, “You are Shirley Mason now!”; Shirley Mason I have stayed ever since.

I suppose Mr. Collins had been reading the Brontë sisters' novels and found “Shirley” rather pleasant browsing. At any rate, he had the name ready coined before entering the studio, knew of my work in “The Poor Little Rich Girl,” and had mentally selected me to star opposite George Le Guere, prior to our introduction.

I am now very fond of the appellation “Shirley Mason,” though for quite a while it gave me a queer sense of dual personality. You see, I had been identified with “Leonie Flugrath” so long — ever since, in fact, I created the part of Little Hal for William Faversham in The Squaw Man. That was at the mature age of three and a half or four years. You had to be seven years old to play here then, I played the part in Buffalo, where The Squaw Man opened.

From Little Hal I progressed to the role of Meenie in Joe Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle, and later appeared for a whole season with Richard Bennett in Passersby. There were three of us Flugrath sisters, Edna, Viola and myself, all child actresses on the speaking stage. I remember how delighted I was to succeed Viola in the name part of The Poor Little Rich Girl. She had been the “road” star of the play for a year when other work claimed her; this gave me the opportunity to head the show for a season in the “provinces.”

Like Mary Pickford, Lillian [Lillian Gish] and Dorothy Gish and some others, we grew into stardom from infancy; when the film field opened, we were acquainted with every angle of stage art and could adapt ourselves more readily to the kindred art of the motion picture. A glance at the life histories of the leading picture stars — I mean particularly the girl stars — shows that a large proportion are the stage children of five, ten or fifteen years back.

I followed Viola in the films just as I had done in the case of The Poor Little Rich Girl. We were all living in that part of New York called the Bronx, and my sister was playing at the Edison Studio. At her request I accompanied her one day and was put on as an “extra.” From “standing back of the crowd and yelling,” in pictures, I was soon advanced to small parts, and subsequently to leading ones. My first “regular” picture was “The Little Saleslady.” Eddie Taylor [Edward C. Taylor] was my first director, but perhaps I am best remembered in support of Ann Murdock [Anna Murdock] in “Where Love Is.” Anyhow, when Viola left, I evolved into the Edison's leading woman, and thence to “stock” star, thanks to Mr. Collins's selection of me for the McClure morality series.

One of my pleasantest recent tasks was the title role of “The Appletree Girl.” It was a big change from this “homey” rural character to the distinctively Japanese part of Kiku-San in Mr. McChesney's six-reel feature, Aliens, which we have just completed under Mr. Bernard J. Durning's direction.

My role is that of a Jap girl who marries an American college boy out in Tokyo, and then separates from him under the dictation of her brother. For the last three months I have been practically living in a corner of old Japan, built with the aid of Japanese-American artists in our big, glass-roofed studio. The costumes in this picture are wonderful; there are fourteen of them, harmonized and fitted by a Japanese designer, and several of them are extremely costly.

I often look back on our childish stage experience and reflect upon the unimagined changes that have been brought about. My oldest sister is Mrs. Harold Shaw [Edna Flugrath], wife of the American director [Harold M. Shaw] who is making pictures in South Africa; Viola Flugrath is Viola Dana, the Metro star; and I — am Shirley Mason. Each attained her stellar ambition, but if the Rip Van Winkle of my early “trouping” days should come back to life, he would be hard put to it to find any trace of the vanished “Flugrath girls.”

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In this scene from Aliens [The Unwritten Code (1918)] Kiki-San seems to think the answer to the riddle of life may be read in her tea-cup.

Ceremonial costume in cherry-blossom land.

Photo by: Edison

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The ways and wiles of a Spanish dancer have changed little from those that prevailed in the days of the Dons. Edith Story [Edith Storey] is fascinating in the interpretation she gives in “The Claim.”

Photo by: Metro

Collection: Film Fun Magazine, February 1918