File:Clarine Seymour Motion Picture Classic.jpg

DescriptionClarine Seymour Motion Picture Classic.jpg	Publicity photo of Clarine Seymour from Motion Picture Classic
Date	July 1919
Source	http://silentladies.com/BSeymour.html
Author	Unknown authorUnknown author
Permission (Reusing this file)	Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse This media file is in the public domain in the United States. This applies to U.S. works where the copyright has expired, often because its first publication occurred prior to January 1, 1929, and if not then due to lack of notice or renewal. See this page for further explanation. This image might not be in the public domain outside of the United States; this especially applies in the countries and areas that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works, such as Canada, Mainland China (not Hong Kong or Macao), Germany, Mexico, and Switzerland. The creator and year of publication are essential information and must be provided. See Wikipedia:Public domain and Wikipedia:Copyrights for more details.

Note: Clarine Seymour, a rising ingenue in D.W. Griffith's company of players during the late teens, had becaome a major silent star with the release of "The Idol Dancer" in early 1920. Regrettably, Miss Seymour died shortly after the film's release. Because of the brevity of her stardom, Clarine was not included in any of the period photo books. We therefore are including this period magazine article about Clarine, courtesy of William M. Drew:

"Introducing Cutie Beautiful"

by Elizabeth Peltret

Why not be lucky?

Why not indeed!

The real secret of success appears to be in trusting your luck, or providence, or destiny, and then in going ahead and doing whatever you want to do. Just like that; no worry about it at all! However, I am ahead of my story.

"The luckiest thing that ever happened to me," said Clarine Seymore, the beautiful brunette "cabaret girl" in D. W. Griffith's picture, "The Girl Who Stayed at Home," was in having the Rolin Film Company break a contract with me. If they had not said that I was incapable as an actress, I would still be in slapstick comedy, and I hate slapstick comedy! I sued them, though, and won my suit, and was given a part by Mr. Griffith immediately afterward." All of which goes to show that if you don't want to go some place, you aren't so very likely to get there, and the reverse; in this case it was especially the reverse.

Clarine Seymore lives in a bungalow on Fountain Avenue in Hollywood with her parents and a little four-year-old brother who is the only other child.

But I did not see her at her home. I saw her at the Griffith studio on Sunset Boulevard, one of the most historic spots in Los Angeles. It has been called the "star factory," because almost every great star of today started there. It is in a group of buildings painted a dark and, some players believe, a "lucky" green. (Luck or fate or coincidence, call it what you will, has played a large part in the life of Clarine Seymore.)

"I wanted to be an actress, but my father objected, so we compromised on my attempting to get into moving pictures," she said, innocently. (Of course, she didn't mean it that way! I don't know of any actress who respects her work more highly than Clarine.)

"This was when we were living at New Rochelle--you know, Cohan's 'Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway,'" she went on.

"I had no friends in the profession and there were no influences from outside to help me. I was just one of the girls who sit around on the benches outside every studio and wait. Speaking of waiting, I waited all day long and every day for two weeks before I got any work at all!" (You can't discourage a girl who is destined to become an actress!)

Here is where "luck" came into play. She had just finished work as Mollie King's "girl friend" in the Pathé serial, "The (Mystery of the) Double Cross," when Mr. Roach came East from Los Angeles looking for a girl small enough and unique enough to work with Toto, the clown. He had great difficulty in finding a girl of the type he needed. At the Pathé studio they ran off bits of film for him to help him in his quest, and in one of these bits of film he saw the girl. They didn't know who she was, (no record is kept of the extras), but she was Johnny-on-the-spot in the extras' waiting-room outside.

It was just luck? But she was there!

As a result she came to Los Angeles.

When her work with Toto ended, she was given a contract with the Rolin Film Company.

What seemed to impress her most about that experience was the size of her dressing-room. It was as big as a house, she said, and had high ceilings and depressing, dark-colored walls. This studio is in a house of the old Los Angeles, built before there was such a thing as a California bungalow. It stands on top of a hill on the edge of Little Mexico. Her dressing-room was furnished with just one little dressing-table and nothing else. It oppressed her horribly--made her feel like an imprisoned maiden in an ogre's castle, it was so big and bare and she is so small. One day, in defiance of all moving picture superstition, she decided to fix it up herself. She dolled it all up in cretonne and then, on top of that, fell down and broke a looking-glass! After all this it is not to be wondered at that, in vulgar parlance, she "got the can."

Her mother and little brother were out here from the East, while her father remained at home. She had expected them to be her guests. She was in despair. She brought suit against the company and once more began at the beginning, making the rounds of the studios, and here again luck stepped in.

She had bought tickets for San Diego, and they were all packed up and ready to leave for a visit to some friends, an army officer and his wife, stationed there, when a telephone call came from the Griffith studio. Had it come an hour later it would not have caught her. When she arrived she was interviewed by Griffith himself and, within twenty-four hours after the head of a film company had declared in court that she was incapable as an actress, she was informed that she had been engaged by "D. W." to play an important part! The part assigned to her was not at first a very large one, but all through the filming "D. W.," pleased with her work, kept adding to it, until one morning she awoke to find herself famous as "D. W."'s latest discovery.

When I saw her at the studio, the first impression I got of her was her extreme slightness. Her eyes are very, very large and dark; in fact, she looked almost all eyes. Her hair is black and very heavy. She looks to be an almost two-dimensional girl; that is, you hardly notice any physical thickness. I doubt whether she weighs eighty pounds. When I saw her, her slightness was emphasized by a suit of some striped material in blue and white, built on absolutely straight lines and finished at the neck with a little Peter Pan collar.

"I think," she said, concluding this historic interview, historic because it is the very first she has ever given, "I think that what people call luck is, in reality, destiny. I don't think that there is such a thing as unpurposeful 'luck' in the world!"