Tully Marshall — Our Best Protean Actor Reforms (1924) 🇺🇸
Tully Marshall ought to be a great success as a protean actor. A protean actor, you know, is one of those versatile chaps, who, in the space of a single vaudeville act, does every part from the wealthy old grandfather with the chin whiskers down to the little simpering soubrette. He skips in and out of the scene, changing his character with his make-up, and he generally receives an ovation.
When picture making was booming during the spring and summer, Marshall displayed a similar versatility. Hastening from studio to studio, for he was doing half a dozen different films simultaneously, he appeared successively as a French king during the heyday of the monarchy, an old Hebrew money lender, a smuggler of opium, a school superintendent, a hermit of the Middle Ages and the old scout in The Covered Wagon. Each was clearly and effectively portrayed, I have no doubt, although I did not see them all, with that something more than mere realism which is mayhap the mark of the Marshall talent. He did so many in quick sequence, however, and there was seemingly such a call for his services, that he finally had to break away and go on a vacation to obtain a rest. And now
“I’m not doubling any more,” he told me recently. “I don’t want to go through such a terrific strain as that again. It is too strenuous to permit one to enjoy life, and beside, it is too difficult to do justice to such a large number of parts.”
At the time, he had dropped all the surplus jobs off his list and was concentrating on a big rôle in “The Stranger,” which Famous Players-Lasky has been filming from a John Galsworthy story. In the beginning of the story he is a pitiful down-and-outer who captures your sympathy, and then through suffering amid sordid conditions, he arrives at the understanding of self-sacrifice and renunciation and brings into the lives of the various people this regenerating spiritual influence.
The high point among his other recent characterizations was the old scout in The Covered Wagon. This was in striking contrast to some of his more sinister portraits, like the Mad Monk in “Joan of Arc.” The scene where Ernest Torrence and he bibulously engaged in their game of shooting holes through tin cans on each other’s heads is as unforgettable a bit of comedy as has ever been seen on the silver sheet.
Marshall has no models for his varying portrayals. He doesn’t believe in them. “When I played a dope fiend on the stage in Clyde Fitch’s ‘The City,’” he declared, “I had never even seen such a type.
“It is the same with the majority of the characters that I have done on the screen. It would hardly be necessary to commit murder in order to be able to act out the pangs of the murderer. The actor should have sufficient imagination to feel his character, or else he can hardly qualify as an actor. That is, he should create rather than merely imitate a type.”
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Collection: Picture Play Magazine, March 1924