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

Ralph Graves

RALPH GRAVES Ralph Graves's goofy face and grin did not exactly match his muscular. boxer's body. On screen. his clothes never seemed quite to fit. He was a likeable character but not a great actor. He never seemed to know what to do with his hands. As he admitted, "I was no actor," and so perhaps the progression to writing. directing, and producing was natural. a career change that coincided with the end of the silent era. In old age, Graves had a healthy contempt for a society that could relegate a great man such as D.W. Griffith to the gutter and that could denigrate a Rudolph Valentino because he was a foreigner. "We always look down on black people and uneducated people," fumed Graves. "Make yourself try and discount the Richard Nixons and the John Waynes. Just thinking about them makes me want to throw up." The alcohol that he had consumed during the course of our interview might also have forced a lesser man to throw up. We were talking at his Santa Barbara home in the summer of 1973. 1had arrived at 11 :00 A.M. to find Ralph already drinking heavily. By dinnertime. Iwas amazed that he could still stand. let alone continue our meandering conversation. The vodka certainly paved the way for an uninhibited discussion. With his current wife at his side. Graves spoke of a wedding night-"some other wife." insisted Mrs. Graves-when "this young. beautiful and wonderful girl found Mack Sennett. W.e. fields and Gene fowler all in bed with her. four of us on the bed with this chaste. lovely girl who had just been robbed of her virginity." Amazingly. Graves also revealed homosexual liaisons ('Td been in bed with a couple of fairies. no involvement"). intimate relationships with Noel Coward and Somerset Maugham. and. most extraordinary of all. a long-term gay affair in the 1920s with Mack Sennett: "I had an unholy relationship with Mack Sennett; two years of my life. every day. every night. were spent with Mack Sennett." Born in Cleveland on July 23. 1900. Ralph Graves came from a wealthy family-"a good father and a questionable mother"-but jumped a freight train to get away from his parents and soon found himself up in Chicago. Here. he entered a contest organized by Universal to find a new leading man for actress Violet Mersereau. "A fat-faced. good-looking kid." Graves won the contest but instead of coming to Hollywood was found a position with the Chicago-based Essanay Company by Louella Parsons. who was then a newspaperwoman in the city. His first major screen role was as leading man to Mary MacLane in Men Who Have Made Love to Me (1918). based on the lurid sexual adventures of its star. 160 Ralph Graves In 1919, Graves was signed by D.W. Griffith. "I was a good-looking man to Griffith," he recalled. "I was a little above the movies. My father left some money, I used to buy my clothes at Brooks Brothers, so I looked different to Griffith. He used to wear horrible clothes and murder the King's English, which I didn't. So he took an interest in me, and immediately signed me up to a contract at $200 to $300 a week." Griffith featured Graves in two 1919 productions , Scarlet Days and The Greatest Question, and starred him opposite Carol Dempster in the 1921 feature Dream Street. Certainly not a great film, Dream Street is primarily of interest because of the director's spoken introduction and the inclusion of a title song, recorded on a sound-on-disc process, Kellum's Talking Pictures. "I recorded the song-it wasn't a bad song-and they cut the film into it," Graves told me. "I was amazed at my beautiful voice; I have a gorgeous voice, but nobody else knows it." After Dream Street, Graves received a number of offers from other producers. The actor went to consult with Griffith and, as he had done with Blanche Sweet, Lillian Gish, and others, the director told him to go. "He kissed me and said, 'Go on, take it.' I wish I hadn't now." The features in which Ralph Graves appeared in the 1920s were not memorable, but they did provide him with the opportunity to play opposite Colleen Moore, Miriam Cooper, Marjorie Daw, Marguerite de laMotte...