William Garwood — The Personal Side of the Pictures (1914) 🇺🇸

“Billy” Garwood, although he has starred with three different film companies, has always appeared in Mutual pictures. His only other dramatic experience was on the legitimate stage, where he scored many brilliant successes. He got his start in the Elitch Garden Stock Company in Denver, which led to an engagement with Virginia Harned. He next captured a part in Charles Frohman’s production of Mizpah, which he followed up rapidly with Just Out of College, in which Joe Wheelock was leading man; the Brigadier General with Kyrle Bellew, and Raffles with S. Miller Kent. He played in the famous Auditorium Stock in Los Angeles, and in the Alcazar, San Francisco. Dustin Farnum invited him into Cameo Kirby — and this was his last appearance on the stage before his debut at Thanhouser, New Rochelle, in motion pictures.

For a year and a half Garwood acted before the camera. Then a queer hankering for the footlights got the better of him. But only for a season. He was with stock in Columbus, Ohio, for a few months — which permanently cured him. He came back to the studios, and has been playing for the screen ever since.

His renewal of picture connections took him to the Majestic company in California where he played leading roles and won immediate distinction. His country-wide popularity was built up, indeed, during these months, and when, in April, 1914, he left the Reliance and Majestic plant to join the American Company a few miles away at Santa Barbara, he took with him not only a wealth of experience but a reputation already a fortune in itself.

The circumstances which attended his transfer to the American were particularly propitious for both actor and company. Sydney Ayres, leading man with Vivian Rich, had recently been appointed to directorship, and Mr. Garwood stepped into his position. Popular as Mr. Ayres had been, it was a wise policy on the part of the American management to replace him with such a universal favorite as Mr. Garwood. His first appearance with the Flying A was in Beyond the City, written and produced by Mr. Ayres.

In this drama of the wilderness, Mr. Garwood was seen in a typical role of the sort he thoroughly enjoys. He represented the Mountaineer lover of Vivian Rich, a romantic, impulsive girl of the hills. In strong contrast with the villain of the piece, the city man who misleads his unsophisticated sweetheart, is this virile young woodsman, with his stern, high ideals, and his reverence for womanhood.

Mr. Garwood and Miss Rich make an especially harmonious team in leading roles. Their temperaments are sympathetic, each is naturally responsive to the other, and both have fine looks combined with exceptional talent, refinement and intellectual qualities. Miss Rich is a beautiful brunette with a thoughtful, sensitive face when in repose. In action she is bewitching, and her laugh is infectious. Garwood, on the other hand, is of much lighter complexion, and may well be described as the genuine American type. He is handsome, strongly built, earnest and versatile.

The American leading man off the screen is quiet and rather reserved. He resents people trying to “pick acquaintance” with him merely from curiosity, and is noted for the dry humor with which he disconcerts such persons and turns them down. He looks the gentleman— and is one, every inch. On one occasion his aristocratic appearance and somewhat nonchalant air put him in an amusing situation. He was sitting on the porch of the Arlington Hotel at Santa Barbara, when a well dressed man bustled up, forced a big cigar on him, and began: “Now don’t be foolish, my boy. I’ve been hunting you high and low, everywhere between here and Denver. Of course, fathers and sons can’t always agree, and when there’s a young lady in the case — well, young blood will resent a thing or two. But if you will go back home with me, your father promises that he will overlook everything — yes, everything, sir —”

By this time Garwood had sufficiently recovered himself to hand the man a card. The stranger took one glance at it.

“Oh, aren’t you Charlie Van K___!” he said, naming the son of a San Francisco millionaire. “Pardon a thousand times! Here, take another cigar.”

Mr. Garwood’s [William Garwood] favorite diversion is farming. He has a six-room bungalow at Whittier, California, nine miles from Los Angeles. Three acres are given over to crops raised by irrigation, and its owner’s pet crop is onions. In the East, they say, Mr. Garwood didn’t know a turnip from a carrot. But shortly after he joined the Majestic, he played the part of a working man sentenced to jail on false pretenses. He actually worked in the prison garden and passed vegetables to his supposed starving family through the fence. This is the legend of how he became an onion fancier.

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“Billy” Garwood as he looks when off the screen

As he appeared recently with Vivian Rich in “The Taming of Sunnybrook Nell”

Collection: Reel Life Magazine, September 1914

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