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

Alice Joyce

ALICE JOYCE Gracious and charming the way young matrons should be in silent films. with a reserve that is not condescending but rather indicative of good breeding and good manners. Alice Joyce (Kansas City. Missouri. October 1. 1890-Los Angeles. October 9. 1955) was also a pioneering actress. She was a New York hotel switchboard operator when she joined the Kalem Company in 1911. after twice being rejected by D.W. Griffith. Asked to explain her placid disposition . she would joke that it was because Griffith remarked that she reminded him ofa cow. Joyce was often partnered with Carlyle Blackwell orTom Moore (who became her first husband). and her films at Kalem. many of which were action dramas and Westerns. give little hint of the quiet. patrician beauty that she was to become. She left Kalem in 1915 and the following year embarked on a five-year residency with the Vitagraph Company. slowly but surely developing an appealing screen persona. At Vitagraph. Alice Joyce's leading man in four films-The \Mnchester Woman (1919). The Vengeance ofDurand(1919). Slaves ofPride (1920). and The Sporting Duchess (1920)-was Percy Marmont (with whom she also costarred in Zoe Akins's Daddys Gone a-Hunting at MGM in 1925). Marmont had fond memories of her: "Talking of sweet women. when I first met Alice Joyce. actually before rd even been introduced to her. I played a scene in which I kissed her about ten times. We kept taking and retaking. and I remember saying to her. Tm awfully sorry to introduce myself in this manner: and she said. 'Oh. I rather like it.' When I went home in the evening I said to my wife. 'I've been kissing the most lovely woman all morning.' They finished up being the greatest of friends. they were terrific pals." In 1920. Joyce married wealthy New Yorker James Regan Jr. and made fewer film appearances as she devoted her time to her two daughters and to the life of a wealthy socialite. She and Regan divorced in 1932. and the following year the actress married MGM director Clarence Brown. They divorced in 1945. Perhaps it was because she knew she did not have to work or perhaps it was good common sense. but in the 1920s. Alice Joyce made a remarkably intelligent choice of films to which to lend her talent. She was Lucilla Crespin in both the 1923 silent and 1930 sound versions of the popular stage melodrama The Green Goddess. an English major's wife captured by the Rajah of Rukh. played in undemonstrative and charmingly villainous style by George Arliss. You believed her as an English lady. and. not surprisingly. the actress came to the United Kingdom to star in two features. The Passionate Adventure (1924) and The Rising Generation (1928). 190 Alice Joyce There were starring roles in prominent features. including Stella Dallas (1925). Beau Geste (1926). Sos Your Old Man (1926). and Sorrell and Son (1927). but the two films that stand out most are King Baggot's The Home Maker (1925) and Herbert Brenon's Dancing Mothers (1926). both of which are prominent and little discussed feminist dramas from an age not noted for such fare. In the latter. she is a housewife who hates housework. When her husband. Clive Brook. is unable to work. confined to a wheelchair as the result of an accident. the conventional marriage roles are reversed. He enjoys staying at home and taking care of the three children. while she finds satisfying employment in the department store where he had worked. A surprising plot twist has the husband discover that he is once again able to walk and work. but choosing not to let his wife know and thus spoil her newfound happiness. Obviously. credit for the storyline belongs to the author of the original novel. Dorothy Canfield. and the screenwriter Mary O'Hara. but credit should also go to Alice Joyce for yet another understated performance that manages to emphasize the characterization so well. Dancing Mothers is better known and very "modern" as Joyce plays a commanding yet singularly unobtrusive role as the wife whose husband is having an affair and who falls in love with her daughter's boyfriend. The conventional silent film ending would have wife and husband reconciled. but here she goes off to Paris. deserting both her husband and potential lover for a new life. Both of these...