Chapter IV

_Beauty and the measure of looks upon the screen--_
_Expression most important--Tragedies of_
_doll-faces--Photographic “angles.”_

What follows happened during the National Convention of Motion Picture Producers in 1917 at Chicago. The convention was held at the Coliseum. There were jazz bands, gay and costly decorations, and motion picture celebrities from both Coasts. The carnival spirit ran high and thousands of motion picture fans squeezed into that huge old building.

The opening was called “Mae Marsh Day.” I shall not soon forget it. That night as our party entered the Coliseum through the manager’s private office I espied in the center of the building a newly erected platform draped with bunting and decorated with flowers.

“You will make a little speech,” the manager said.

I gasped. I think I almost fainted. I had never made a formal speech. The idea of it was as foreign to me as becoming Queen of the South Sea Islands.

“All right,” I gurgled weakly.

My voice has never been strong. As I walked to the platform the Coliseum was a bedlam of sound. I was introduced with difficulty. With sinking knees I stepped forward.

“Ladies and gentlemen I am sure I am pleased to--”

A jazz band, which seemed to be located somewhere immediately beneath my feet, began to loudly play. I didn’t know whether to dance or sing. It was a medley in which “The Star-Spangled Banner” was predominant. I blessed the band. I doubly blessed our national anthem. Looking about me I saw a small American flag. I grasped it and stood waving it to the strains of our national air. The convention was duly opened.

Afterward, when I stood upon a small table giving away carnations until my wrist ached--smiling like a chorus girl meantime--a woman informed my mother that she wished to see me on an important matter. In the press of those thousands of children and grown-ups I was virtually trapped.

“Tell her,” I suggested, “to call at the Blackstone Hotel tomorrow morning.”

She came. She was a plain woman with an honest eye. She brought along two small daughters aged, respectively, ten and twelve, I afterward ascertained.

“Miss Marsh,” she declared, leaning forward expectantly in her chair, “I think my two daughters should succeed in motion pictures. One of them is very beautiful, and the other looks like you.”

I told this honest lady, with as straight a face as I could command, that while her daughters were still too young to think of playing in motion pictures that some day, perhaps, I could do something for them, particularly the one that looked like me.

In approaching the matter of screen faces I am strongly reminded of that Chicago lady. I believe her logic was essentially sound. There is no measure of looks for the motion picture screen. If there is a yardstick it applies to expression, or animation, and not looks.

No one admires a beautiful face upon the screen more than I. If it so happens that this beauty is allied with ability then I am often given to the thought that they are not a congenial combination. For beauty, ever a queenly quality, is diverting and manages in this way and that to steal some of the thunder that rightfully belongs to ability.

If, as sometimes happens, I see mere beauty being exploited on the screen with no semblance of acting talent, I am ready to give up my seat to the next one along about the third reel. Nothing palls upon one more quickly.

Therefore, I am at odds with those who believe that beauty is necessary for the screen beginner. Say for beauty that it has the merit of more quickly attracting attention to the one who possesses it and you have done it full justice. But even then, if it is unaccompanied by ability, it is just another tragedy of a doll-face.

Acting is primarily the ability to express something. If the face that conveys that feeling is not disagreeable then it becomes a matter of not how much beauty is in the face but how much expression. That was certainly the case with Mme. Sarah Bernhardt. All of us know plain appearing persons whose faces, when they have something to say, become interesting and expressive.

They impress us as individuals whose beauty is inside or spiritual. That is a lovely quality for the screen. On the other hand we know, all of us, persons who are generally considered beautiful whose faces, under any circumstances, have no more animation than a mask. These people strike us as spiritually barren, lacking in humor, or something.

If my candidate for screen honors has simply an agreeable appearance and good eyes--which I consider most important of all facial features--I shall be satisfied provided his or her face, and particularly the eyes, are expressive.

It has been my observation that while beauty or good looks is largely a matter of opinion--which has furnished many lively debates--the quality of expression or animation is seldom denied those who possess it. For that reason my candidate, if he or she has an expressive face, will have a more valuable and certain stock-in-trade than mere good looks.

In spite of this logic most of us stars go on wishing to be thought beautiful, or to have it thought that we could be beautiful if we wanted to be. I recollect that it took time and courage for some of us to brave our publics in other than our pet make-ups.

There are, for instance, two stars who had always regarded their curls as indispensable. After many years of stardom one of them decided to take what she thought was a desperate chance. She skinned her hair back and played the part of a little English slavey. The result was that she turned out one of the most successful pictures in her career.

Another, a dear friend of mine, we used to call “The Primper.” She never appeared upon the set without her curls just so. I think at that time she thought they were the most important part of her career.

She has reformed. As her art developed she became less particular about her hair dress. One night in a little theater in Jamaica, Long Island, I dropped in to see one of her photoplays. It was an excellent picture. Her hair was drawn back tightly over her head into a knot. That night I wired her congratulations.

No; curls, Grecian noses, up-tilted chins and rose-tinted cheeks are not the measure of success upon the screen. It is something that goes deeper than that.

It is something that goes deep enough to over-ride facial defects. There is one excellent little star, for example, who, because of a nose unfortunately large, must always work full face when near the camera. I think she is charming. Another, for an odd reason, permits only a one-way profile to be taken. There are many such cases.

Indeed, the majority of us have our “angles.” By “angles” I mean the full, three-quarters, one-quarter or profile views in which we think we appear at our best. Each star has studied that point out for his or herself. And, since we are taking largely our own opinion for it, it is possible we are mistaken. But our vanity upholds us.

In my own case I was hauled into motion pictures while sitting rather forlornly on a soapbox waiting for my sister Marguerite. Since at that time I was without curls, having never had any before or since, and looked as I look, so to speak, it has never been necessary for me to expend any great amount of time in make-up. That has been satisfactory to me.