Wyndham Standing — Standing Room Only (1919) 🇺🇸
Wyndham Standing has no excuse for not being a good actor; in fact, he only followed the course of least resistance when he became one.
by Barbara Beach
Nevertheless, it required the combined efforts of two press-agents, one wife, a studio manager and a star for me to obtain an appointment that I might discover the reason for his dramatic existence.
When his star, Elsie Ferguson, providentially took it into her pretty head to steal a day’s vacation from finishing The Witness for the Defense, Mr. Standing’s wife dutifully repeated my plea that he give The Classic some recognition, and the studio manager said he could have the day off. The press-agent told him the office wanted him, the office publicity manager begged him to spend his holiday within the portals of their marble Manhattan office building ready to tell a ‘phone-worn reporter the story of his life, then, and not until then…
I found myself confronting a sleekly groomed but somewhat embarrassed giant.
He looked for all the world like a hale and hearty Englishman. His voice in greeting was resonant and firm, his hand large, vivid-gripping and welcoming. There was an amused twinkle in his pale blue eyes.
At once the thought came to me of an English squire standing before an open door thru which came the fragrant warmth of blazing logs, of a beckoning dining-room, whose table groaned with steaming roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.
The impression remained vividly, even as I mentally praised the Famous Players-Lasky Company for having furnished their offices with a huge, softly cushioned davenport. For Wyndham Standing is the comfortable sort of a person who belongs in big chairs. Altho he wears spats, a yellow overcoat and carries a cane, I have a suspicion that he cherishes a fondness for a pipe.
“You came originally from?” I began dutifully.
“England,” he said, thereby confirming my belief that at one time or another all actors hail from the British Isles.
I learnt that Papa Herbert Standing was one of the best known actors on the English stage, equally well-known was Uncle Sir Charles Wyndham and the six little brother Standings who, one after the other, sought the stage. Nevertheless, Wyndham, who made the seventh little Standing, tried to breast the tide of things as they are and studied law.
It wasn’t any use. Papa Standing and brothers Guy and Percy and Jack [Guy Standing | Percy Standing | Jack Standing] and the rest were all making good on the histrionic boards. As a tropic traveler is lured back to Southern lands, as the call of the sawdust ring is irresistible to the circus clown, so the call of the stage is to those that have it in their blood. The instinct is as strong as life itself.
So with young Wyndham. His first stage experience was obtained in the English provinces, as all good English actors obtain their training. His first big success was in The Chimes of Normandie.
Then came America and pictures. There also Papa Standing had gone before him and paved the way. It was, again, only according to the natural law of events that Wyndham should follow.
“My wife and I both became Americans — by adoption,” confided Wyndham proudly.
“A country that is good enough to live in should have your allegiance — dont you think?”
“I do — at intervals,” I confessed.
He laughed, a jolly, deep-dimpled laugh.
I was reminded of the comment of the woman who sat behind me during a showing of Paid in Full, in which Mr. Standing played the part of Jimsy opposite Pauline Frederick
“He has such a good face,” she enthused.
I repeated the remark to Mr. Standing. His face reddened boyishly up to the very roots of his finely brushed, light hair.
“That was good of her,” he said, “but Jimsy was a lovable character. In other roles I have played, people have shuddered — I was so brutal as the villain. Once I even heard a woman say, ‘Isn’t he a wretch? I’d hate to meet him on the street!’ “I never want to be considered a type. When one becomes a type, one ceases to advance. In spite of the progress the photoplay has made since its first inception, I believe that it is still only in an embryonic stage. One of the reasons for this is that directors depend too much on types. They should depend more on brains, on the ability of a person to feel his part, to project his thoughts across the silversheet, instead of being simply the photographic counterpart of a character.
“I believe that a time is coming when a good many of these types are going to be weeded out. There will remain individuals who can so live their characterizations that they are felt across the screen. Norma Talmadge is an example of what I mean. The player is going to be able to express every little mood, every varied thought, because his intellect is capable of feeling the part. There will be no need of the subtitle. I tell you it is not the wild gestures, the hair-tearing acting, the tricks of the trade, nay the Olga Nethersoling [Olga Nethersole] that is going to lift the art of the screen out of its embryonic age. It is the thinking, here” — he lightly tapped his forehead — “and the feeling here,” he placed his hand over his heart.
“At the present time there is also an overuse of the close-up. The more closeups, the less possibilities of a dramatic, smooth-flowing story.”
Personally, I am very interested in the art of the photoplay, but I found Mr. Standing so vitally absorbed by it that I had great difficulty in switching the conversation back to personalities.
Like a writer discussing his latest story; a painter, his most recent portrait; a mother, her only child, was Wyndham Standing with his theories on photoplay acting.
It is his hobby, and if he were not such a jolly soul and could he have an aversion for anything, it would be for the type actor. And could one imagine Wyndham Standing and anything as uncomfortable as catastrophe, it would be that some one might somehow make the mistake of calling him a type actor.
In time, however, I found that Mr. Standing has refreshing views on many other subjects. For instance, he is that hitherto unmet individual, a leading man who is not extravagant. He bewails the fact that so many actors forget that their $600 a week engagements do not last forever. He believes that while the sun is shining one should prepare for rain.
In other words, instead of investing his salary in fast motor-cars, in summer homes and unnecessary fads, he puts it in the bank, for even highly paid picture engagements do not last forever.
He does not believe in being so ambitious that one does not take time to live. As Shakespeare says, “Vaulting ambition, which overleaps itself.”
He thinks that a woman who wants a career should not marry, and especially not a man in the same profession. He says that a woman who requires the applause of her creative powers, of her charms or her personality, outside of her own home, will do well to remain single.
Many women, he says, mistake their longing for praise for a sign of great genius, and throw aside the love of a good man. Possessing no more than mediocre ability, they seek that will-o’the-wisp — worldly fame.
Mr. Standing believes that most men want their wives to be fully occupied taking care of them, and where a husband and wife follow the same profession, jealousy of one another’s success is bound to creep in and cause friction.
Wyndham Standing has played in pictures both in California and New York, and wherever he goes his wife accompanies him. Mr. Standing considers New York more ideal to work in than California, that state being too enervating, too conducive to dreaming and not doing.
In farewell, I repeated several compliments I had heard of late concerning Mr. Standing’s acting as leading man to Elsie Ferguson and Pauline Frederick.
The tall, well-groomed actor agitatedly mapped out some hieroglyphics with his cane on the Famous Players-Lasky Company’s immaculate Persian rug.
It was plain that he was seeking that proverbial grain of salt.
“That’s awfully good of them, mighty good,” he said. An embarrassed pause, and then, “My wife is the only person that tells me the truth. It is refreshing!”
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Above, Mr. Standing in Rose of the World with Elsie Ferguson; upper left, an off-screen glimpse during the filming of Eyes of the World; center, a snapshot during the making of The Witness for the Defense; and, below, talking with Warner Richmond at the Fort Lee, N. J. ferry
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Wyndham Standing looks for all the world like a hale and hearty Englishman. His voice in greeting is resonant and firm, his hand large, vivid gripping and welcoming. You catch the impression of an English squire standing before an open door thru which comes the glimpse of a beckoning dining-room with tables groaning with steaming roast beef and Yorkshire pudding
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The Frohman Amusement Corporation is launching a new series of comedies, to be called Poppy Comedies. Mack Swain, the famous Ambrose of Keystone days, is featured.
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Fred Warren is now vice-president of the W. W. Hodkinson Corporation, retiring as vice-president of the Goldwyn Distributing Corporation.
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Charles Pathé, head of the house of Pathé, is visiting in this country.
Collection: Motion Picture Classic Magazine, June 1919