William A. Williams — Sans Grease Paint and Wig (1914) 🇺🇸
“Waw-Waw.” the name that William A. Williams answers to, on occasions.
by Mabel Condon
Because of his initials, you see; and as he gave himself that nick-name, he can’t possibly object to your knowing that he has it. “William A. Williams — ‘Waw-Waw sauce,’ y’ know,” was how he bequeathed himself the name and during the giving he swung his maple walking-stick and doffed his straw hat so that the breeze that came down the Hudson and met the good ship George Washington as it went up, could blow through his brown locks and prove that they waved of their own accord.
It was the day of the Pathé excursion a year ago. Since then there have been changes that affected both the Williams’ fortune and the Williams’ hair. The former has prospered, the latter has thinned. But the wave is still there, and it is still natural. So also is William A. Williams; so much so that he tells one about how thin his hair is getting before one has a chance to tell him, and then he changes the topic to that of Lake Placid, N. Y., and invites one to go up there and have a three-days look, if one doubts any of the nice things he (William A. Williams) tells about it. One doesn’t doubt but accepts the invitation, anyhow.
For that is where the Excelsior studio is located and it is where William A. Williams and others of the Excelsior company are working when they’re not motor-boating or autoing or fishing or in some other nice way speeding away the hot weather.
And that’s where a year has placed William A. Williams. Just previous to that he played in the film “Checkers,” and a few other features, and just previous to that he did a circuit of eastern picture houses telling interested audiences of actual incidents connected with picture-making.
“I got together some real money during that talk-trip,” explained Mr. Williams just the other day, “and Harry Handworth and I got chummy on the subject of making pictures and while the Excelsior company is by no means my property, it really is the outcome.” And William A. Williams can be seen in any release the Excelsior people put out.
It was just before he left the Pathé company last summer that he related, with gestures, the events of his life up to that time. It was the same day I disobeyed the sign “Keep out of the hall” and advanced to the dressing-room of Ned Burton that I learned that William A. Williams can sing and can trill his voice like some variety of bird (I don’t know just what variety), and not only that, but he yodels. It was while Mr. Burton was telling me that somebody said he looks like John Bunny that a voice from the dressing-room next door burst forth in halting and high-voiced acclaim of “O’La-idee! O’ —”
“Shut up, Williams!” Mr. Burton ordered, and continued his story.
Five minutes was the limit of silence for the voice, for at the expiration of that time it caroled forth — “Listen to the mocking bird! Listen to the mocking birrr-rr-rd!”
I said good bye to Mr. Burton and tapped on the door of the songster. The pass-word was “Waw-Waw sauce,” and the duplicate W. A. W. bowed me into a chair with one hand while he held on a gray mustache with the other.
“The ‘stick’ is just fresh on it,” he explained opening his mouth ever so little so as to discourage any attempt the mustache might make to fall off. But the little gray dab stayed on and after exercising the muscles of his mouth in various ludicrous ways to determine if it intended to stay on, Mr. Williams decided it did, and smiled broadly.
“Singing, you see, came quite natural to me, and I came to the stage by way of singing,” Mr. Williams confided, in explanation of the vocal acrobatics that had interrupted Mr. Burton. “It was in Buffalo — I was born in Buffalo — that I began my stage work as a quartet. Yes, a quartet. You see, there had been four of us and we signed with Joe Gates on a singing tour. None of us had ever been on the stage and we had tried for over a year to get somebody to sign us. Joe Gates did, finally, and then the other three fellows all backed out. One couldn’t leave his business, another had a girl chum who wouldn’t let him leave, and the third was nowhere to be found when it came to going. So I went myself. The man to whom we were to report met me and asked, ‘Where’s the quartet? I thought there was to be a quartet!’ I replied, ‘There is — I’m the quartet.’
“Well,” he went on, powdering the hair at his temples, “they kept me and I sang myself out of vaudeville into a straight part in Checkers. Then the show became stranded in Maine and I had an awful time getting back to Broadway. I haunted the agencies, but it was summer and there was nothing to be had. Then one day I met Pat Powers on the street —”
“The Pat Powers?” I interrupted, and he answered: “The same! I asked, ‘How are bicycles?’ He had been in the bicycle business when I had known him previously. But he said he was interested in motion pictures just then, and asked me how I’d like a job in them. It suited me, I told him. But when I saw my first efforts on the screen I sneaked away. Disgusted? I was the homeliest looking person I ever saw; I acted foolish and I felt ashamed and it was a couple of weeks before I dared try another.
“But that was better. I put on a tramp make-up and it became me so well that I decided I’d better stick to tramps. But I didn’t. I tried every other variety of role, and when I left Mr. Power’s company I came here. That was about a year ago.” He paused while he brushed some yellow powder off his gray trousers, then crossed a gray silk ankle over his knee, and continued:
“One of the first things I worked in was a Postum picture. It was made for the Postum company as an ad and showed a broken down young man develop into a full-of-life-and-energy chap, by the simple interior appliance of Postum. I was both young men and I was so full of Postum by the time I was through I made up my mind if there were any retakes they’d have to give me something else to drink. And what do you think happened?” I refused to think. “The picture didn’t suit and we were asked to make the whole thing over. But we haven’t — not yet.
“It’s great work, though, this picture business,” Mr. Williams declared. “Compared to stock — I forgot to tell you I was in stock. Yes; I was in stock. And I played lead in Quincy Adam Sawyer for three years. But you can be more people in pictures than you could think of being in stock. Hence the variety — not that variety’s always acceptable. For instance, when I left on that singing trip with Joe Gates I had to change from a Yiddish comedian to a coon, a wench and a juvenile. I felt like a spotted leper half the time; I’d wash but I’d never feel clean. In the next turn my cue was, ‘By jove! the cat’s out of the bag!’ I was the cat.”
“Impossible!” I doubted William A. Williams, the tall, the athletic, the cheery, the debonair William A. Williams! You, too, would have wondered how any manager could have cast him in any but the ever-in-time hero.
“But quite true,” Mr. Williams contradicted. “I dread to think what would have happened had I followed the vocation my mother picked out for me.”
“And that?” I asked, acting upon the thought to leave for one of those Jersey cars before they stopped running for the night.
“A minister,” replied Mr. Williams.
His dread, then, was quite natural. I didn’t mind sharing in it.
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Take away the toupee and you have W. A. Williams, “natural.”
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Pathé Player A Sculptor
Distinguished not alone as an actor of unusual dramatic ability, M. O. Penn, Pathé leading man, is a sculptor, painter and singer of very exceptional talent. While he excels perhaps, with the brush and palette — his landscapes and portraits being now on exhibition both in America and abroad — it is in sculpturing, his hobby, that he finds his greatest delight. Particularly striking samples of his marked genius are two splendid casts which he has just completed of the officers of the American Pathé — Mr. A. Roussel and Paul Bonvillain. Prior to these he made casts of the celebrated Pathé star, Crane Wilbur, and the well known Pathé directors, Louis Gasnier [Louis J. Gasnier] and Frank Powell.
But it was in Paris, where many of his casts are now on exhibition, that he achieved his success as a sculptor. He was born in the United States in the year 1870. While still a youngster his highly artistic temperament began to assert itself, and at the tender age of ten years he was sent to Paris under the guardianship of an uncle to get his elementary schooling and commence his studies in painting. Under the tutorship of Trupheme and Besnard at the Julian Academy he progressed rapidly, and later took up sculpturing.
At the age of twenty he found it necessary to provide his own livelihood, and having an opportunity to do cabaret work at the Chat-Noir, spent his evenings there in the midst of a brilliant sparkling atmosphere, while his days he applied to the more sober pursuance of his studies. It was not long before frequenters of the celebrated restaurant noting the rapidly developing dramatic possibilities of the cabaret singer, began to call for him continually. The jolly old proprietor looked with approval upon the aspiring young student-artist, and chuckled. But at the end of the winter, Penn, longing for excitement which he could not find in Paris, joined the French army and spent the next three years in Africa. When at last he came back to the French capital he at once took up dramatic studies in the Paris Conservatory under Sylvain, and returned to the bright lights and music of the Chat-Noir where he made the acquaintance of Oscar Metenier, who, appreciating his dramatic and artistic possibilities, asked him to take part in a new political play which he was producing at the Grand Guignol. It was the beginning of Penn’s dramatic career.
At the end of two years he had become so accomplished that he organized a touring company, and traveled through France, Belgium, and Germany for about twelve years. Returning to Paris, he played in the Theatres Athénée, Geinier, Sarah Bernhardt, Apollo and Olympia. During this time moving pictures had been pushing farther and farther to the front, and with the demand increasing for first class talent, Penn took up work in the silent drama. The great French house of Pathé saw in him a screen artist of unusual ability, and so it came about that he played with them for several years. The desire to see America again, which had been with him since boyhood, then came upon him stronger than ever, and at his request he was transferred to the American branch of Pathé in Jersey City. He has been in New York and vicinity now for a little over two years.
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Players Die in Quicksands
Miss Grace McHugh, leading lady of the Colorado Motion Picture Company, and Owen Carter, a camera-man of the same company, lost their lives on July 1 during the taking of a river scene for the production “Across the Border.”
While fording the Royal Gorge of the Arkansas River, Miss McHugh became nervous and pulled on the horse’s reins so that the animal was forced under water and she was thrown into the river. Mr. Carter leaped into the water and swam with her to a sand bar, which was supposed to be safe, but it proved to be of quicksand, and in a few moments both were engulfed and drowned. Other members of the company who had seen them on the sandbar started for them through the underbrush, but they sunk before the rescuers could reach them.
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New Director-Writer for Vitagraph
The Vitagraph Company recently secured the services of Donald I. Buchanan, a feature writer of note, to act as special writer of scenarios and to assist in the direction of features. His first picture is a five-part drama, “Four Thirteen,” which he is now assisting Ralph Ince in staging.
Collection: Motography Magazine, July 1914