Viola Dana — The Girl Who Never Grew Up (1918) 🇺🇸

August 11, 2024

“Viola Dana,” said I to myself, “is a sister of Peter Pan — a girl who never grew up.”

by Arthur James

“Whadd’ye mean, never grew up?” demanded the Little Interior Man, who always checks up on my positive musings.

“Oh,” I returned. “I mean just that — Viola Dana never actually grew up; she worked up, she developed, she cultivated her natural talents. But after all the child, the little, appealing child part of her, never changed, and there is no sign at all that it will.”

“Tell me some more — tell me a lot of it,” said the Little Interior Man; “put it on paper and tell all the facts. There are a lot of folks who want to hear about Viola Dana.”

I concluded he must be right — he usually is — and so here it is, the story of the girl who can cry or laugh at an instant’s warning, who isn’t stagy, and who enjoys twenty- four hours every day in every year.

Viola Dana is one of three talented sisters. I might say she is the one of the sisters, because the charming Shirley Mason and the equally interesting Miss Flugrath, although delightful in the picture dramas, are perhaps not so well known as their sister Viola. Perhaps they will be after a while. At least, I hope so.

But to get back to Viola. When she was, oh, perhaps seven years old, she displayed certain definite and distinct abilities that made the grown-ups give her attention. She had a knack for mimicry. She would catch and hold the note of a song sparrow and repeat it — well, let us say verbatim. She could imitate Mrs. Grady, the washwoman, who cried when her boy Johnny skipped school, or the minister who patted her yellow head. Family discipline was relaxed when Viola entered the room, and she was permitted to stage in her own way the homemade entertainments, to which the neighborhood youngsters were asked in.

It was about this time that Viola Dana learned to dance, and to dance so well that it was regarded as a matter of course that some fine day or other she would be a premiere and dance at the Metropolitan Opera House, in New York. I mention these things sketchily, in order to show that, like most persons born to succeed, she had more than one talent. Her years of early childhood passed lightly and happily. She loved music and dancing, she read love stories and fairy stories, and gave no occasion for complaint from her teachers at school, but this was all incidental.

Her real career began when she was thirteen, for it was then that David Belasco, at that time at the pinnacle of his fame as a producer, heard of her, sought her out, and undertook her tutelage in the matter of acting. It was hard work. Even Belasco will admit that every one who came to him for teaching has to buckle down a n d dig, but the result showed when Viola Dana, comparatively unknown, rose to fame overnight as the star of the Poor Little Rich Girl.

It was a great play, one of the most whimsical and entirely fascinating treasures of mind and speech that ever has graced the American stage; and the tiniest, most natural of actresses was the star because she had earned the place. Viola Dana had no influence, no friend at court, no backing; she merely had talent which, after being brought to light, was alone responsible for her success.

It was inevitable that the Dana of the stage should become the Dana of the screen, but to be a success before she was out of her teens — that’s the thing she didn’t expect.

There is one question which everybody asks a successful person. They all want to know the secret, the reason, the why of it, and the recipe for the triumph.

In Viola Dana’s case the answer is this: She was born with exceptional dramatic talent. It amounted to an instinct. This talent was developed by persistent work. In addition, she was born with a big human heart that understood what was in other people’s hearts. There is also a certain gracefulness of body, a lightness of heart and mind, a simplicity and a humility which has never permitted her to become the darling. It is this child quality, the naïveté, this refusing to regard herself or her work as the final word in drama, that is so different from what one usually expects and usually finds.

In Chicago, at the picture exposition last summer, I had the pleasant responsibility of guarding Miss Dana against the intrusion of the crowds. Imagine my surprise when one day she came to me, and after waiting patiently for some time because I was busy, and hadn’t seen her, said almost timidly: “There is a newspaper woman here who wants to interview me — do you think it would be quite all right?” It was like a refreshing breath from the open fields to find a young and charming motion-picture star who was not so dizzy with ego that she was willing to seek advice.

On the trip back from Chicago, she was just like an excited little girl who has been away on a delightful trip, and is just bursting with things to tell. She was the life of the car in which the Metro family party traveled. The Drews and Edith Storey made much of her, and she in turn was as delighted as a child. She sat demurely in her parlor-car chair, eating chocolates and reading novels to her heart’s content. But every once in a while she would take a vote as to what John Collins, her director, who was back in New York, was doing at that particular minute.

Viola’s taste in clothes is most unexpected, for she far prefers gingham aprons to laces and finery, when her roles in pictures permit her to- wear them. Her directors never have to persuade her to put on clothes that many girls would regard as unflattering, and therefore unbecoming. For instance, in “Blue Jeans” she wore an enormous pair of overalls that completely enveloped her, and Viola almost wept when the play was over and she had to give them up.

The next morning, however, she appeared even earlier than usual, ready to put just as much enthusiasm into a new play of a totally different kind. But with all her enthusiasm she has a certain demureness. She always reminds me of a quaint, old-fashioned child who loves to sing and laugh, but who can, for art’s sake, cry “honest Injun” tears, and not get a red nose doing it.