What ever became of Conway Tearle? (1933) 🇺🇸

September 21, 2024

The amazing story of a man who admits he was “kicked out of Hollywood”

by Katherine Albert

I didn’t leave pictures. I was kicked out!

“I don’t feel bitter about Hollywood — I hate it and feel contempt for it and all the stupid people in it!

“For three and a half years I could get no work. I literally did not have enough money to feed my dog — and once I had been paid $3500 a week.”

Thus Conway Tearle, whose sudden disappearance from the screen you’ve probably wondered about! Thus Conway Tearle, who for nine years (“I gave pictures the nine best years of my life,” he says) was a top notch leading man and star!

And now suddenly after you have been asking occasionally “I wonder what ever became of Conway Tearle?” he bobs up in the hit show of Broadway, Dinner at Eight in a part that makes your hair stand on end. I don’t mean that the role is Boris Karloff-ish. It has another — and more ironic — sort of ghoulishness. In Dinner at Eight Conway Tearle plays — and plays magnificently too — the role of a broken-down motion picture actor, not young any more, absolutely without money but still desperately hanging on. The part is so much like Tearle’s own life (except for the fact that the play character is a drunkard and Tearle was never that) that when, upon the stage, he carefully puts coats and rugs around the doors and windows preparatory to taking gas and committing suicide you have the feeling that here before you is not a fine actor playing a part but Conway Tearle himself — Conway, once a matinee idol — Conway, adored by hundred of fans — that here is Conway Tearle committing suicide before your very eyes and from your seat in the theatre you want to leap up and stop him. He plays it just that well and the part is written just that well. But in this part, which took no little courage for him to attempt, since it is so close a parallel to his own life, he is the hit of Broadway!

So now you know what has become of Conway Tearle. But there’s more to the story than that. What happened to him between the time he dropped out of pictures — “kicked out” as he prefers to say — and now, when he is again the great actor?

You must understand a little of the mechanics of Hollywood to know what happened to Tearle. He was never under contract — always a free lance player. Conway was paid for every week he worked, unlike the “stock” actors under contract, and since this was so he objected to working on Sundays, late at nights, etc. He voiced his objections. Added to this he thought he had the right to make suggestions about the playing of a part. After all, he figured, there were ten generations of trouper tradition behind him. Thus — because he did not always say “yes” in Hollywood (his own version again) — he acquired the reputation of being an outlaw, a radical and a trouble maker. And, after nine years of picture making, discovered that he was no longer wanted in the studios.

When he found that no parts were forthcoming he asked the reason and was told that if he would wait around for awhile he would be given work. He waited — three and a half years. And in that time his money dwindled, his hate grew and his contempt became greater. “Give me anything to do,” he begged, “so that I can have a living wage. I haven’t the money to buy a piece of cheap meat for my dog.”

For three and a half years he waited. And then came the talkies. “Ah,” thought Conway, “here is my chance again. Talkies will demand stage actors — people who know how to read lines.” And still there was no demand for Tearle.

“They’ve forgotten you,” the producers told him. The public has forgotten you.”

He declared himself willing to do anything. He had to, to eat and, at a salary so small that he is ashamed to tell it, he made serials and “quickies.” hating every single minute of it.

“If I hadn’t felt such fine scorn and contempt — mixed with an ironic sense of humor,” Conway says now, “I should have done what the character in Dinner At Eight does — turned on the gas.”

But instead, he managed to get to London and there made a hit on the stage. He was, of course, well known in England and they had not forgotten him. Fresh from the London success, his morale much improved, he went to Hollywood again. And still there was no work for him, but he did get stage offers and among them was this part in Dinner At Eight. It was a role close to his heart and he plays it with the intensity of a man who has lived through it. And now he has more than enough to feed his dog. Now he is on top of the world again and offers from other stage producers are coming to him.

But he won’t — he says with vigor — go back to Hollywood.

“And it’s not just because I’ve made this so-called hit on Broadway that I talk this way. I hated Hollywood when I was there and begging for jobs — and I said so.

“Go back — go through what I’ve been through again? Pawn my effects again? Play in serials? Play minor roles? Listen to them talk? No indeed! Guns are too cheap for that!”