Wallace Reid — The Mash Note King (1921) 🇺🇸

(A chat with Wallace Reid on letters from Fans)

Millions of young girls — and old girls, too — see Wallace Reid each week in pictures. And, it seems every blessed one of them is moved to take her pen in hand and write to him to tell him her hopes, her problems and especially how much she admires him.

And what does Wallace Reid think of these tons of letters and these millions of fair correspondents? Here’s what he says — “While I am naturally gratified to receive letters telling me what a wonderful person I am — who wouldn’t be? — at the same time I always realize that, whether they know it or not, it is really the hero of the picture and not me whom the writers admire. I usually play sympathetic roles, personifying young men who do the sort of things girls like to see young men do. However, as none of these young people know me in real life, I never let myself develop the idea that it is anybody else but the characters I play that they worship.

“Aside from the admiration which the letters frequently express, they also contain a great deal of helpful advice. You may be sure I make the most of it, too!

“But the best thing I like about fan letters is that they bring a personal touch between player and public, which, otherwise the screen would lack. The actor in stage plays can see and hear his audience; but we of the screen do our work far away from the public. If it were not for letters from our friends among the public this gulf would never be bridged.

“Moreover, I count every one of the people who write me letters among my personal friends. For, after all, if a person never having seen me in real life, is sufficiently interested in me to write, that person is a friend. And a friend is worth having, whether he lives next door, or “on the other side of the world.”

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Collection: Pantomime Magazine, September 1921