Silent Players: A Biographical and Autobiographical Study of 100 Silent Film Actors and Actresses

Ruth Clifford

RUTH CLIFFORD Ruth Clifford enjoyed two very distinct film careers, the first as a silent star and the second, in later years, as a member of John Ford's stock company. Her innocent, slightly worried looks coupled with a pretty, natural beauty made her an ideal silent ingenue. Ruth's primary credentials for membership in the John Ford stock company were an Irish accent and Irish ancestry. The Irish connection was a little weak in that she was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, on February 17, 1900, and both her parents were born in England. "Mine is not an Irish accent-I'm accused of being a Bostonian," she once told me, but her accent was sufficiently Irish for her to be a member of the Abbey Theatre Company when it toured the United States in the 1940s and for her to play leads in classic Irish plays. After she had appeared, as an extra, in two 1914 Edison films, starring Viola Dana, Ruth was introduced to films at Universal in 1916 by an aunt, actress Catherine Wallace: her first credited role is in Behind the Lines, directed by Henry McRae, a longtime, unremarkable filmmaker: "I had stood and watched many, many times Henry McRae shooting the films. I had watched the people put the green shadow and the blue shadow over their eyes. Iwas fascinated. In fact Iwas terribly, terribly stage-struck. He asked me, 'Would you like to playa scene?' Needless to say, I was breathless. The scene was a hospital room, and foreground of the camera was a bed with a very lovely, young girl lying in it. She is my oldest sister and she has been very ill. At the foot of her bed was her sweetheart Harry Carey, a very dear man. He had his hand under his left arm, which was his habit, standing looking at the girl. The director would direct you as you worked. He told me to open the door, which was background, enter the scene. My knees were shaking . The director whispered, 'She has been very, very ill. Call her name, Anna' So I said, 'Anna." He said, 'Call it again." 'Anna." There was silence. There was no motion. The director said, 'She's dead." It affected me so that I knelt down by the bed and I started to cry and I couldn't stop crying. "Those tears gave me a contract. I was sixteen, and I had a contract for $75 a week, going up to $150. It was worth the tears." Ruth Clifford remained under contract to Universal through 1919 and had vivid memories of the company and the original studio tour at Universal City: "They charged for people to come in, and they would sit on tiers, like you do at a football stadium. They would watch, because the stages were open. They would have canvas sheets at the top to kill the direct sunlight, but it was all in daylight with the additional foreground light." Artificial light was provided by carbon arc lamps, manufactured by the 64 Ruth Clifford Kliegl Bros. and known as Klieg lights: "The Klieg lights were wicked. It was a square metal frame. I don't know if you'd call them prongs or not, but there were two that met in the middle. and the minute they hit. it formed an ice blue. ice-cold. but very hot light. That Klieg light could burn your eyes. even if you were not looking directly at it. And in the silent days. they used a lot of those. because the lighting was flat and mostly straight on. Carmel Myers showed me how to use tea bags to put on your eyes. to soothe your eyes when they were burned. It was pretty mean. but a cameraman said to me one time when I told him that they hurt. 'Well the more they hurt Ruth. the better you're going to look...· The director with whom Ruth Clifford was most associated at Universal was Rupert Julian. who made twelve of her early films and also co-starred in four of them. The most prominent of these is The ffaiser. The Beast ofBerlin . an anti-German propaganda film. released in March 1918. which took advantage of Julian's remarkable likeness to the Kaiser. (Julian also played the Kaiser in a number of later films.) Julian's wife. Elsie Jane Wilson. also directed...