John Gilbert: The Last of the Silent Film Stars

Chapter Three

37 Chapter Three I stared at a woman sitting opposite me in my apartment. I discovered that she was my wife. —John Gilbert, 1928 Freelancing as a film actor was perilous in the late 1910s, but not as unusual as it would become later, when stars and bit players alike so often enjoyed being in the safe rut of a long-term studio contract. From 1918 through 1921, Jack had films produced and/or released through companies big and small, some still in business today, others long forgotten: the large, France-based Pathé, the once-mighty but now ailing Vitagraph, Paramount, Haworth Pictures Corporation, Universal, Tyrad Pictures, Jesse D. Hampton Productions, First National, and Metro—which would play a huge role in his future. Nearly all of his directors in those years have long since faded from history and can be named only by the most fanatic of film-history buffs (Reginald Barker, Ernest Warde, Kenean Buel, Thomas Heffron, Charles Sealing, William Worthington, Lynn Reynolds, Park Frame). Jack had a sizeable role in a Robert Brunton–produced project of early 1918: in More Trouble he played the clean-cut collegiate son of rich mill owner Frank Keenan, who is accused of wild spending sprees and embezzlement (turns out his college pal is to blame). But Jack must have hated this part: “Goody-goodies like Harvey [Jack’s character] may exist,” wrote Variety, “but no one has discovered them.” It was exactly the kind of role he spent a lifetime complaining about. 38 The Climb Through 1918 Jack was getting just enough work to keep him from quitting altogether but not enough to decently feed and clothe himself. He claimed he tried to enlist in the navy, “but they would have none of my five feet eleven and one hundred and fifteen pounds” (actually five feet nine by most accounts, though the 115 pounds looks right). He did not like the idea of the army (trenches) and the aviation section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps was closed to applicants. He moved from the Engstram on West Fifth Street to a less expensive boarding house (two meals a day and a small room for $7 a week) and was able to keep his little car running. It was here that Jack met the woman who would become his first wife. Twenty-year-old Olivia Burwell was living in the boarding house with her mother, a sister, a brother, and her brother’s wife—they had come to California from their native Mississippi after the elder Mr. Burwell had died and the brother got a job in a fruit-packing company. (Olivia was neither an actress nor the daughter of the boarding house owner, as has sometimes been written.) Down and out and with too much time on his hands, Jack found himself enchanted by the petite Olivia Burwell, her soft southern accent, and her ladylike, unactressy ways. What followed seems to have been a panic marriage: Jack got his draft notice and was to leave for Kelly Field in Texas in ten days. They married on August 26, in a Methodist church and moved into a tiny apartment. Troop movements were halted because of the Spanish flu epidemic , which unfortunately also slowed studio employment. Jack sold his car and wrote to his stepfather Walter Gilbert for financial help: the answer he got, Jack recalled, “was to pray and believe—and, in closing, [he] reprimanded me for not having saved my money.” He added bitterly (this was in 1928), “I have not wasted postage stamps on him since.” Jack’s annoyance did not last forever; he later remembered his stepfather in his will. Jack made four more films in the summer and fall of 1918 for Paralta Plays, distributed by W. W. Hodkinson’s eponymous company. He submitted a script to Hodkinson, for an underworld drama starring Henry B. Walthall; it was accepted, and director Howard Hickman put it into production with so many changes that it “bore no resemblance to Chapter Three 39 my scenario.” When he complained, Jack recalled, Hickman told him, “You got your money for your story, didn’t you? You’ve still got your job, haven’t you? All right—beat it!” Howard Hickman didn’t actually direct Walthall during this period, but perhaps Jack muddled the facts or the names for the sake of a good story. Jack continued working, slowly but steadily...