The Tragedy of Mary Miles Minter (1923) 🇺🇸

The Tragedy of Mary Miles Minter (1923) | www.vintoz.com

April 21, 2023

It's nothing exactly to cry over — the tragedy of Mary Miles Minter. Thousands of children get a rougher deal. And it's nothing exactly to laugh about, either, because it isn't a pretty story no matter how you look at it.

by Helen Lee

It's just a story of Mary's fight with her Ma and it is one of the most sordid tales ever dragged before an eager public. It involves a million dollars, several divorce suits and one murder. Parts of it sound like a scenario and you can almost hear the clicking of the camera.

A Murder and a Million

"I am not Mary Miles Minter," shrieks the star, hysterically, "I am not a pretty, doll-faced girl. My name is Juliet O'Reilly and my mother owes me a million dollars."

On the other hand comes a moan from Mrs. Charlotte Shelby, the lady who is said to have collected and kept all Mary's earnings.

"She is just a poor misguided, ill-advised girl," sobs the mother. "If she comes home, all will be forgiven."

From down in Texas comes a faint rumble from the husband and father, from the humble worker who says he is Mary's dad.

"She isn't twenty-one — she's thirty," growls Father, "I'm her dad and I ought to know."

The story begins almost twenty years ago when Dustin Farnum appeared in a vaudeville act called The Littlest Rebel. Among those present in the cast was little Juliet Shelby, a blonde, curly-headed roseleaf child with a watchful Ma who collected her salary.

A Typical Stage Child

She looked cute and she could act a little — after the fashion of small children and trained dogs. She was the pet of the company and the delight of the audiences. Like many stage children, she was educated on the run.

The Days of "The Littlest Rebel"

The Littlest Rebel was made into a full length play and Juliet Shelby went on the stage with it. She was a big factor in its success.

Along about that time, the movies were offering easy money to blonde children who could smile pretty at the camera. Several years before another little girl named Mary Pickford had left the stage and walked into a fortune in the studios. Mary Pickford, too, had a watchful Ma.

In those days, a Mary Pickford was a type that could be created by an ambitious mother with peroxide and a curling iron. There was big money in it.

Mary's First Picture

One of Mary Pickford's first managers was Daniel Frohman. Daniel had a brother named Gus who was a movie manager. It was a coincidence that Juliet Shelby, outfitted with the triple-barrelled name of Mary Miles Minter, should make her movie debut under the management of Gus, the least famous of the Frohman family.

The name of the picture was "The Fairy and the Waif." The new Mary had a glittering and golden personality. She looked like a child out of a story book come to life. Her face had everything to be found in the face of the other Mary except character.

Among the players in The Fairy and the Waif was a young actress just back from a road tour named June Mathis. Because she had nothing to recommend her except brains Miss Mathis played a small part.

The little girl of The Fairy and the Waif made a great hit. The young Mary knew that the days of running around to agents' offices to look for work were over. Mrs Charlotte Shelby didn't have to be told twice that she had been handed an oil well, a block of Standard Oil stock and the Russian Crown Jewels.

Mama with the Brains

But it takes the brains of a promoter to push a profitable opportunity. Mrs. Shelby had the brains. Mary was a child, not yet of age, and she couldn't have guided her own destinies.

At that time Paramount wasn't looking for another Mary Pickford. It had the original under contract. Opportunities for big money were more limited than they are now. But the American Film Company did have a new bank-roll to spend and Mrs. Shelby showed them one way of spending it.

Dolls and Golden Curls

The press agents turned loose on Mary Miles Minter. She was just a child, still playing with dolls. Just a pink and white and gold little girl. Just a carefully guarded little rich girl, with plenty of chaperones and private tutors.

Mary lived in Santa Barbara, away from the Hollywood movie colony. So far as the world knew, the birds and flowers were her only playmates, just as the subtitles said about her in her pictures. But there were young men around Santa Barbara who wanted to ask Mary to dances and there was James Kirkwood, her director, who found her attractive.

Those around the studio knew .that Mary sometimes kicked up a fuss at home. But the queen of the family and the master mind of the home was still Ma.

Santa Barbara was a pretty place to live but there is no denying the fact that the American was no longer a wealthy and prominent firm. Mrs. Shelby decided she had picked the wrong pay envelope. Amid threatened lawsuits, she withdrew.

"The Second Mary Pickford"

Metro was expanding in the field and decided it couldn't get along without a second Mary Pickford. Although Mary Miles Minter had never done anything more strenuous before the camera than shake her curls, Mrs. Shelby bagged an excellent contract for her little daughter.

The youthful Mary still went on playing the pretty child and the charming innocent. Life was all sugar — before the camera. Sister Margaret Shelby, who had acted a little, stopped work. Grandma, who could handle Mary, became prominent in the household.

Some of Mary's emotional gifts, suppressed before the camera, began to assert themselves in real life.

Too Young for Beaux

It was a strange life. She had few friends. She wasn't encouraged to cultivate people. She had few suitors. She was supposed to be too young to have beaux. She had to battle against plumpness. It was just one sweet picture after another in the studio. But it was no sweets in real life.

The film executives who met Mary in business conferences had many kind things to say about her. The poor kid sometimes wanted to break loose. She wanted to say things, but she didn't know how. Like most stage children, she was rather patient and docile. But there were misunderstandings with her mother and tearful flights to her grandmother.

Ma Knew What She Wanted

To give Mrs. Shelby her due, she knew what she wanted and she knew how to get it. She was out to beat the world. She was out to capture Mary Pickford's crown.

Mary Pickford left Paramount and Adolph Zukor was the third movie magnate who was looking for another Pickford. Mrs. Shelby's chance had come. The contract with Adolph Zukor was a masterpiece. The sum total of its terms was that the company was to pay Mary Miles Minter $1,300,000 in return for which a plump, blonde pretty girl agreed to allow the cameras to shoot at her while she was romping about some scenery.

Nobody has ever been able to say positively that Mary can act. Mr. Zukor never thought of that and it never occured to Mrs. Shelby that Mary ought to learn.

It took the poor old dumb and half-witted public to discover what was wrong with Mary Miles Minter.

Mary Meets Taylor

Mrs. Shelby is the only person in the world who out-generaled Adolph Zukor. Mary got the contract and was nicknamed a Realart star. One of her first pictures was "Anne of Green Gables," directed by William Desmond Taylor.

Mary's Ma could out-manoeuvre Zukor but she couldn't battle with a growing girl. The best thing that a growing girl does is to fall in love.

The off-screen drama of Mary Miles Minter began to take on a sex interest which was forbidden in her films. Mrs. Shelby felt that a husband would considerably wreck the public's illusion of Mary as just a simple little girl. Moreover, a husband with brains and with ideas of his own about Mary's career would interfere with Mother's management.

Murder Brings Climax

If Taylor hadn't been mysteriously murdered on Feb. 1, 1922, there would have been no grand, fifth reel climax to Mary's career. There would have been no "love drama" played up in the newspapers. There would have been only the story that Adolph Zukor had dropped another unprofitable star. For it was well-known that Famous Players-Lasky considered Mary too expensive a luxury even before the Taylor case brought her name into the limelight.

But Mary herself can't forget the Taylor case. While before the murder she had been rumored engaged to one Thomas Dixon and while since the affair she has been rumored engaged to Louis Sherwin, the scenario writer, Mary still insists that Taylor was the one big love of her life. That he has come to her since his death and assured her of his love. That her mother blighted the romance. That she is out to get the million, earned while she was legally a minor, and to avenge the death of the man she loved.

The Lost and Dead Love

The lost and dead love. That, according to her own story, is the tragedy of her life.

But the real tragedy is something more extraordinary, something even more hateful.

The tragedy of Mary Miles Minter is one of stunted youth and innocence gone wrong. One impossibly sweet story after another has left her with a desire to star herself in a lurid drama, the sort of thing she couldn't act on the screen.

Mary Miles Minter now is pursued by villainous and unnatural relatives. She is surrounded by gun men who are out to shoot her. Her mother ill and in the hospital? It is so much hokum, so much movie stuff to fool the public. Mary is hard. She wants her money and she wants the world to know she has been badly used.

She isn't playing in any more pictures. She is simply playing a leading role in another one of those sensational stories. William Taylor never directed such a melodrama nor did Louis Sherwin ever invent such a scenario.

Hokum, Love and Passion

She talks glibly of Hokum and love drama and deathless passion. She rattles off all the ingredients of a scenario.

As for the tangible issues at stake between her and her mother, they include an interest in a laundry in Hollywood md a house, now converted into apartnents, where the family once lived.

Mary has been hiding in Altadena with Mr. and Mrs. Philip Hurn. Mabel Normand, another figure in the Taylor case, also lives in Altadena. Mabel has never said what she thinks of Mary. Mrs. Hurn is a granddaughter of Gertrude Atherton and Mr. Hurn is a friend of Mr. Sherwin. Also around he premises is Hunter Kimbrough, brother-in-law of Upton Sinclair.

Waiting somewhere for Mary are her mother, her sister, who couldn't be turned into a movie star, and an elderly grandma who probably wonders what it is all about.

Nearly Did "The Covered Wagon"

Meanwhile, to make things harder for Mary, a picture called The Covered Wagon is making a tremendous hit. It was originally purchased for Mary Miles Minter. But Mr. Lasky decided it would be too expensive to produce with such a high-salaried star. He offered Mary a chance to appear in it, with a reduction in salary, it is said.

But, so the story goes, Mary refused the reduction. Or her mother refused it. Anyway, The Covered Wagon went on to glory without her.

If Mary had ever been an honest-to-goodness actress with a scrap of real feeling for her work, the loss of The Covered Wagon would have been the biggest tragedy of all.

The press agents helped to build the wall about Miss Minter. They painted her as a child still playing with dolls. Just a pink and white and gold little girl. Just a carefully guarded little rich girl, with plenty of chaperones and private tutors.

Mary Miles Winter is talking now in terms of a scenario — with its hokum love and melodrama.

Mary Miles Minter, according to her, father, is thirty. She tried to make the step from rose and gold doll roles after the Taylor murder case had startled the public and she even tried something of the vamp character. But she slipped from the screen.

One of the last pictures taken of Mary Miles Minter and her mother, who have been separated by a bitter quarrel.

Collection: Screenland Magazine, November 1923