On May 10th, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival will screen its new restoration of Herbert Brenon's The Street of Forgotten Men - Louise Brooks' little seen first film. More information about that special event can be found HERE.
This month, and ahead of that special event, I am running excerpts from my forthcoming book, The Street of Forgotten Men, from Story to Screen and Beyond, which I expect will be published later this year. This excerpt is the third of four focusing on some of the actors who had uncredited bit parts in The Street of Forgotten Men. Here, I profile Whitney Bolton, who played a bum in an early bar room scene. Although uncredited, I am sure Bolton appeared in the film. However, I am not 100% sure that I have correctly identified him. The still shown below pictures the individual I believe to be Bolton - the scruffy individual in a coat and hat standing alongside star Percy Marmont. (Notably, the individual I believe is Bolton is the youngest down-and-outer in the saloon, which lends some circumstantial evidence to my claim.)
Whitney Bolton (1900-1969) started out as a sports reporter in Spartanburg, South Carolina before moving to New York City in 1924, where he eventually found employment with the Herald Tribune and later Morning Telegraph. As a journalist, he became well known. In 1925, a wire service story noted in that addition to his newspaper work, Bolton also found time to take “minor roles on the silver screen,” including, according to his later claims, The Street of Forgotten Men.
Over the next few years, Bolton continued his association with the movie world. A 1927 bit in a Walter Winchell column mentioned Bolton had accompanied actress Josephine Dunn to a newspaper ball, and a 1929 article noted his presence among the illustrious of the stage and screen at a meeting of the Theatre Guild in New York City.
As a celebrated critic and “star reporter,” Bolton also took a stab at Hollywood, where he worked as an occasional screenwriter; his best-known efforts were contributions to If I Had a Million (1932), Apartment House Love (1932), 42nd Street (1933), and The Spirit of Culver (1939). Follow this LINK to read Bolton's IMDb page. Bolton also continued working as a journalist / syndicated columnist into the 1960s.
In four different syndicated columns dating from the 1950s and 1960s, Bolton recalled his entry into films, writing in 1963, “When I first came to New York and was trying to get a job on a newspaper, I paid the rent and put scoff on the table by being a movie actor in two films, The Unguarded Hour and The Street of Forgotten Men.” (The Unguarded Hour is a lost, 1925 American silent directed by Lambert Hillyer and starring Milton Sills and Doris Kenyon.)
In a 1958 remembrance of director Herbert Brenon, who had just recently died, Bolton detailed how the two met. “At a party given for Miss Negri, I was sitting out a waltz when this gentleman came along, sat alongside and we started to talk. He asked me what I did and I told him I was waiting for an opening on The Herald Tribune. He said it might be a long wait, and how about acting in a movie he was about to make for Paramount? I said, well, now, that was a nice thing to suggest but I was not an actor and didn’t know anything about acting. He said: I wish heartily some of the so-called actors were as candid.
And the next Monday morning, at 8 o’clock, I was at Astoria, Long Island, ready to act, no matter what. The picture, The Street of Forgotten Men, was an item about the Bowery, its professional beggars and fake cripples. The star was a Briton named Percy Marmont, I showed up hair-cutted, shaved and in the best suit I could get at Brooks Brothers, a new pair of Frank Brothers shoes, a knit tie, with a neat pearl pin in it, and a supply of bewilderment.
Herbert Brenon, the man I am talking about and at that time one-third of the Great Three: Griffith, DeMille, and Brenon, took one look and turned pale. His Irish face betrayed his concern.
‘My dear young man,’ he said. ‘Your clothes are impeccable, your mustache is waxed and you have shaved to the skin. You look like a junior member of the Union League Club. I had you down to play a besotted young bum in a sordid Bowery saloon. You were to share a table with two young ladies playing unfortunate girls in a distressing profession. You won’t do at all this way.’ I played it the Scott Fitzgerald way: cool, detached, casual.
‘That’s all right. Mr. Brenon,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t have been much help to you, anyway.’ ‘But you are going to be,’ he said. ‘I insist.’
He clapped his hands and people came running. He told a wardrobe man to get me a torn, soiled, bedraggled suit, dying shoes, a ragged cap. He told a makeup man to give me a three-day stubble of beard and to put some dirt on my face. He had the hair-man do things with scissors that gave me a look of not knowing even how to spell the word comb. I became, in 15 minutes, a bum, a filthy, furtive, no good bum. I also became an actor for five days at $25 a day. It was a princely income.
Marmont and I became friends in a lasting way and Brenon, seeing me around at parties in the following years, always spoke courteously and pleasantly – but he never asked me to act for him again.”
I wasn't able to find any images of Bolton from the 1920s with which I might compare his features with those of some of the background players in The Street of Forgotten Men. However, I did find this image from the 1950s, which was published in a movie magazine. Notably, the later day Bolton in this image has prominent cheeks, which somewhat matches the features of the actor seen in the second screen grab. If any descendants of Whitney Bolton could provide a picture of him from the 1920s, that would be great.
By the way, Whitney Bolton was married to a real star, radio, stage, and screen actress Nancy Coleman (1912-2000). Check out this bio of her HERE.
In the clipping below, from the 1930s, Whitney Bolton's name is listed among the "Famous Authors" included in the yellow box, along with Noel Coward, Tiffany Thayer, Max Brand and Zane Grey, etc.... That is pretty good company.
No comments:
Post a Comment