Long American Stage Experience Helped Ruth Chatterton in Talkies

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 916, 8 March 1930, Page 24

Long American Stage Experience Helped Ruth Chatterton in Talkies

Ruth Chatterton, whose latest film, is “The Laughing Lady,” had a career of twenty years on the stage before she took iip acting for the screca. She already hacl had five years' experience when she joined a "producer named Henry Miller in 1912 to play in “The Rainbow” in which she was an exquis ite , ethereal looking creature.

The producer has been troubled about the role, for it required someone who could act as well as look like the young girl. Then someone told him they had seen “a girl in a Rochester Stock company” that seemed to fill the requirements, and Miller made the trip to see her, was enraptured with Miss Chatterton! and her work, and forthwith engaged her for the play, in which she made a great success. ITer association with Miller lasted about fifteen years, during which Miss Chatterton played many parts, some of her finest performances being in “Daddy Loilg-Legs,” “Come Out of the Kitchen,” “A Marriage of Convenience,” “Moonlight and Honeysuckle” and “Mary Rose.” She has been living in Hollywood for about three years, but made no headway in pictures until the screen began to speak, since which time her services are in great demand, for her diction is perfect, and what is needed more than anything else in talking pictures, is diction.

Miss Chatterton made a great hit in Barrie’s “The Doctor’s Secret,” and followed this up with “Madame X.” There have been one or two pictures between that film and “The Laughing Lady,” which as a play was acted by Ethel Barrymore.