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

Blanche Sweet

BLANCHE SWEET Blanche Sweet was the first silent star whom I got to know well. someone with whom I remained close throughout her life. My correspondence file on her contains over seventy items. dating from 1969 until shortly before her death. in New York. on September 6. 1986. The first letter enclosed a handwritten essay on her and D.W. Griffith's first feature. Judith ofBethulia which I published that same year in The Silent Picture. She angrily denounced my original title for my second book. The Griffith Girls-"It sounds like a trained line of high kickers...surely we deserve better than that"-and had me change the title to The Griffith Actresses. Aside from correspondence. Blanche proved quite devoted in her insistence that I escort her to various events. I was at her side when she opened the D.W. Griffith Theatre in New York on february 20. 1975. and on November 13. 1976. I was her escort to the 50th anniversary celebration of New York Local 644 of IATSE. We attended many screenings together at the Museum of Modern Art. as well as numerous dinner engagements. A typical dinner with Blanche took place on May 29. 1978. The setting was a small. neighborhood Italian restaurant a couple of blocks from her Lexington Avenue. New York. apartment. Very loudly. she is arguing that Darwin's Theory of the Origin of the Species is wrong. She has also decided not to permit NBC to film her flying her kite in Central Park. You cannot just expect someone to go and fly a kite. Kite flying is serious business. demanding the correct climatical condition and the right temperament in the flyer. She is now quite drunk. indeed "as tight as a tick." "How tight does a tick get?" she asks. Two days later. we are seated in a conservative lunchroom. where Blanche informs me that revolutionaries are dear to her heart and hopes that the fire that has just occurred at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House has destroyed her film The Warrens of Virginia (1915). Blanche generally prefers that we should lunch at the Museum of Modern Art. adding to the terror of the meal in that there will doubtless be someone who recognizes her and will strike up a conversation. At one memorable lunch. on March 22. the service was so bad that Blanche was literally screaming for butter and physically grabbing hold of a waitress. who threatened to have her evicted from the room. At the end of meal. Blanche informs me that. being a movie star. she will have to leave a tip. regardless of the service or the quality of the food. I was determined to film a tribute to Blanche Sweet in the form of 30minute . 16mm documentary. Portrait of Blanche Sweet. It takes a long time to save the necessary money to hire a film crew and an even longer time 358 Blanche Sweet before I am eventually able to put the footage together. But on Wednesday. September 19. 1979. we are all set to shoot in Blanche's one-room apartment. She has discovered that construction work is going on in the property behind her apartment building, but the day before. she goes around and orders the men to cease work on the day of the shoot. They agree. While we are setting up the lights and the camera. Blanche takes the bus up to Bloomingdale's to have the department store staff help with her false eyelashes and makeup. Blanche is very fond of her false eyelashes. She will not be photographed without them. After the filming is over, she tells me she will keep them on until she goes to bed. Then, she will slowly peel them off and look at them with pleasure. Portrait of Blanche Sweet. which I describe as a one-sided conversation with the actress, is finally completed in 1982. and Blanche insists that it be the first film screened at the new Mary Pickford Theatre of the Library of Congress on May 11 of that year. Blanche, who has now strangely taken to referring to herself in correspondence as "me. myself only" is very pleased with the film, which she describes as "my biography." Thanks to the efforts of Henry Hart. the first and longtime editor of Films in Review. Blanche was a member of the National Board of Review...