Varied Roles

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 774, 21 September 1929, Page 31

Varied Roles

I I film stars played many ! PARTS BEFORE JOINING I SCREEN I I !•

FEW ACTORS BY BIRTH The film stars of today have not always been on the silver screen. Diverting research discloses that in the days before Hollywood welcomed them they occupied very different roles. For instance, Roland Drew, known as Walter Goss, was an advertisement canvasser for a New York newspaper. Alex. B. Francis shocked corn in lowa, and was a section hand on a Minnesota railroad, while Donald Reed replenished his coffers by the sale of adding machines. Lives of film stars remind us that the desire to act is common to the butcher, the baker and their traditional intimate, the candlestickmaker. Gilbert Roland, as Luis Antonio Damaso de Alonso, was trained by his father, a Mexican matador of some note, in the gentle are of bullfighting. Camilla Horn deserted the needle and a prosperous pyjama-mak-ing business for the music-halls and film studios in Berlin. While Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Norma Talmadge, Lillian Gish and others took to the boards while their feet were tiny, many others turned to the art of Thespis as a belated vocation. Colman a Book-keeper Ronald Colman was a book-keeper for a London shipping house. Richard Dix an assistant teller in a bank, Ernest Torrence a piano teacher with a background of general education at Edinburgh University and musical study at Stuttgart. Ivan Petrovitch studied architecture in Serbia, and Shayle Gardner did likewise in New Zealand. Eric von Stroheim was clerk in a department store, deckhand and writer of vaudeville sketches. Rex Ingram worked as a railroad tallyman, studied art at Yale and was a sculptor of some note. Samuel Goldwyn sold gloves and Douglas Fairbanks sold soap. D. W. Griffith was night police court reporter for the Louisville “CourierJournal,” was liftman in Ste Wart’s Bry Goods Emporium in that city, and later was a puddler in a foundry at Tonawanda, New York. Fatty Arbuckle was a janitor, John Mack Brown toached the freshman football team of the University of Alabama during the 1926 season, Paul Leni was an artist, Ernst Lutitsch was a clerk in his father’s Berlin clothing establishment, Gloria Swanson studied at the Chicago Art Institute, and Warner Oland studied for grand opera. John Barrymore began as an artist. He studied under George Bridgman of the Art Students’ League in York, illustrated the editorials °5 Ella Wheeler Wilcox in the “New' Journal,” and worked for 20 minutes as cartoonist for the “Morn* mg Telegraph.” Director George Jitzmaurice also studied art in Paris and was a professional artist. Jean Hersholt studied at the Academy of Arts in his native Copenhagen, received a Master of Arts degree, and Wa ® a professional portrait painter. Lewis Stone fought in the SpanishAmerican War, and during the World War was an instructor at the Plattsmvg Camp. Gary Cooper studied at • rinnell College and rode the ranges °f Montana. George Bancroft, the mighty killer 01 the screen, was a song-and-dance man. Norman Kerry sold typewriters. Villiam Boyd was a grocery clerk in Grange, California, and also drilled ? . umd sold motor-cars. Louis Wolueim. who has an M.E. from Cornell, au ßht mathematics there before he lured to the stage. Mary Nolan, a ter winning her board in an orphan asylum in St. Joseph, Mo., by washing umhes, became a model for Charles tv, Da Harrison Fisher and °ther artists. Joseph M. Schenck was a clerk in a pharmacy and Don Alvarauo was a professional boxer.