The Versatile Dorothy Devore (1925) 🇺🇸
The one great attribute an actress can have and the only thing that can make her live and hold her fan’s adoration indefinitely is versatility — that is, a clever portrayal of many different types of characters.
by Doris Denbo
This, I believe, is Dorothy Devore’s greatest claim to stardom. Though she has played much the same type of character so far in her screen career, the many sides of her nature must be given expression and when they are the screen will herald a combination something like Norma [Norma Talmadge] and Constance Talmadge in one: the saucy, delightful humor of Constance with the soft, sweet winsomeness of Norma. This, I admit, is merely the personal prophesy of an interviewer but wait and see if I’m not correct.
She has the soft demureness of sweet sixteen in curls and the cold sophistication of a worldly-wise, slick-haired modern movie vampire when her hair is drawn severely off her face — that is, in appearance. She herself is democratic, unaffected and sincere. She wears wigs for the curly hair, for her own hair is straight and black, cut in a boyish bob.
Snappy black eyes shining through a heavy fringe of curl lashes — conveying the thought in their owner’s mind before she can voice it — that’s Dorothy Devore. I have often heard the expression “eyes that speak” but seldom had I been the actual witness to the fact until I met this little star at Warner Brothers. If she is about to say something sweet and sunny the light in her eyes is tender and gentle, if something funny they sparkle and dance and you feel like laughing too before a word has been spoken. You look straight into them and you think of all the poetic drivel you have ever read — “Her soul was reflected in her eyes,” “Her eyes sparkled like diamonds,” “Dark as midnight were her orbs,” and all such romantic expressions commonly used to describe the beautiful heroine of any modern paper-backed novel. The most striking thing about Dorothy Devore is her eyes but after you recover sufficiently from their spell, you find their setting quite as lovely if not so striking. In fact, she is one hundred and six pounds of loveliness to look upon.
When on the stage in vaudeville she was given the opportunity to become leading lady for the old comedy team of Lyons and Moran at Universal City, which afterwards led to three years in Christie Comedies. Christie [Al Christie] offered her a wonderful contract but Dorothy wanted to get away from comedies, so she signed with Warner Brothers. Here she made “The Narrow Street,” with Matt Moore, “A Broadway Butterfly,” and “Hero Stuff.”
We had lunch at The Writers’ Club and she told me then how unhappy she was in her roles. “Why just think,” she said, “here I am seriously playing just the sort of ingenue roles that I used to burlesque. I have no sympathy with such characters and yet I must play them with sympathy! I do not believe they could choose a harder role for me to play for I truly dislike the type of girl I am forced to play so constantly and to have to idealize her!”
As she talked I found myself going back many years to my first screen idol, Marie Doro. How like her she is! I firmly believe she could play the sort of clever dramatic roles that Marie Doro used to play so successfully. She greatly resembles her in looks and her personality is much the same. I frankly confess I had expected a rather giggly, eye-rolling, pretty little doll with, as she expressed it, a B. V. D. — Beautiful (but) Very Dumb — attitude toward life. Instead of this I found her trying to be patient, doing the best she can with the roles she gets — always hoping they will soon realize that she is capable of bigger and more dramatic parts.
One man to see her dramatic possibilities was Von Stroheim [Erich Von Stroheim], who tried his best to make her up as Trina. He took test after test of her and tried various make-ups on her himself, but in spite of everything she was too pretty and could not be made to look old enough. So Dorothy thought she lost one big chance. Now, however, she says she is really glad she did not suit, for Von Stroheim’s Trina and her Trina would have been utterly different. She is so familiar with the book “McTeague” from every angle that it would have been practically impossible for to have enacted the part as he saw it, and “so everything happens for the best even though we do not know it at the time,” she said.
When I was comfortably seated in her dressing room once more and she was repairing damages to her makeup preparatory to returning to the set, I asked her if she thought she would ever go back on the stage. She said, “Oh, yes. I am studying for the stage now. I want to go back some day, though. I had a most frightful experience on my last stage appearance. It was a new play written for Frances White. She was taken very ill just four days before the play opened and they asked me to substitute. I had but four days to learn all the lines, which were many. Everything went fine until I sang my first song and my glance strayed toward the box where sat the entire member-ship of a little girls’ club I belonged to. They were all sitting forward in their seats registering, “Ain’t she grand! That’s our Dorothy!” all over their countenances. That I was the only member of the club that had ever been on the stage was the reason for the excitement. At once I thought, ‘Oh, they all think I’m wonderful, and I mustn’t fail them.’ Well, I didn’t, but the words of the song failed me utterly! Some way I stumbled along, but for two whole acts I kept forgetting my lines and having to improvise others when the right ones failed me. That was an experience!”
”Miss Devore,” came the call at the foot of the stairs. She answered and we arose to go back to the set. Every one we passed she greeted with a cheery little word or pat of friendship. Eyes followed her everywhere, adoring eyes, loving eyes, admiring eyes, all friendly eyes wishing her luck, success, happiness, all that life could bring her. This was not because she is a star, but just because she is Dorothy Devore.
As I left I found myself smilingly wishing her all the luck in the world too. And I wish I could see her in dramatic roles demanding depth of characterization deserving of her real talent.
She vehemently says she is not an ingenue, doesn’t want to be one and just can’t be a convincing one — but they insist she is and keep casting her for those parts. She said, “I detest ingénues!” and she evidently meant it. If given a chance in real drama the fans will have a new screen idol. I would be willing to wager my new spring bonnet on that.
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Photo by: Melbourne Spurr (1888–1964)
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, August 1925