Hollywood Unknowns: A History of Extras, Bit Players, and Stand-Ins

Chapter Eight: Celebrity Extras

141 ш Chapter Eight CELEBRITY EXTRAS It is true that a handful of stand-ins gained celebrity status—very much passing fame—as a result of articles in the fan magazines, although the emphasis was as much on the star for whom they worked as on the standin . Fan magazines also displayed an interest in extras with unusual backgrounds , unusual wardrobes, or unusual stories. An extra who literally steals the entire show is J. Jiquel Lanoe, who appeared in more than one hundred American Biograph films between 1910 and 1913. He was never the subject of any news story, and made no impact , except in Judith of Bethulia, D.W. Griffith’s first feature-length production , released in 1913. As the eunuch in the court of Holofernes, he gives an incredibly “camp” performance, guaranteed to have audiences riveted and sniggering from 1913 to the present. J. Jiquel Lanoe’s performance has certainly stayed in the memory of all those who saw it originally. In 1971, I was having lunch with the great Irish actor Micheál Mac Liammóir, and I mentioned that I knew the star of Judith of Bethulia, Blanche Sweet. Immediately, he leapt up from the table and asked, as only he could,“But do you remember the eunuch?”And preceded to give an impersonation of Lanoe. One of the first extras to be the subject of a profile in his own right in the pages of Photoplay, Colonel T.Waln-Morgan Draper is described as“the Mt. Everest of the supernumeraries.”1 He was a striking figure, with a large, bushy yet carefully trained beard whose very appearance suggested strength of character, a strong family background, and the military career that he had once led.“As a jurist, as soldier, as financier, surgeon or savant, he preserves the eternal fitness of things. He always registers. He is to the manor born.”2 Waln-Morgan Draper had begun his career on October 25, 1914, with an appearance in the serial The Perils of Pauline at the Pathé studios. Within a couple of years, he had worked for virtually every film company active on the East Coast. 142 / C E L E B R I T Y E X T R A S Waln-Morgan Draper was approaching sixty years of age when he made his screen debut. If anything, in the 1910s age was far from an issue when it came to extra work. Another extra featured in Photoplay3 was “Dad” Taylor, a favorite of director Edwin Carewe, who was born in Brownsville, Texas, on July 9, 1828.At the age of 101, with his long, flowing beard and long, flowing hair, Taylor was undoubtedly the oldest of working screen extras. If Taylor had not been hired for his age, he would undoubtedly have been hired for his facial hair, a physical commodity in heavy demand, particularly in films featuring juries or the aging members of gentlemen’s clubs. Billed as “Pop” Taylor, he receives screen credit—the only one in his life—for Metro’s As the Sun Went Down (1919). Taylor died in 1932 at the age of 104. But Hollywood had already found an extra to take his place in the person of John Mouster, a mere one hundred years of age. An infrequent extra from the 1920s onwards was a Hollywood eccentric by the name of Peter the Hermit, who lived somewhere in the Hollywood Hills. Sometimes laughingly described as a vagrant to the stars, Peter the Hermit was a gentleman by the name of Peter Howard. His life story is largely unknown, but he was apparently born in Knocklong, Ireland, on June 26, 1879, and had been a wealthy San Francisco businessman until deciding to renounce worldly wealth. He died in Los Angeles on March 14, 1969.“Thoughts of the world and the flesh concern Peter but little,” wrote Judith of Bethulia (1914): J. Jiquel Lanoe as the eunuch, with Henry B. Walthall and Blanche Sweet in the foreground. C E L E B R I T Y E X T R A S / 143 one fan magazine writer in the 1920s, “though occasionally when pressed for funds he works in mob scenes, preaching his beliefs in a loud voice as he does so, and quite frankly elated that his audience can not arise and leave him, as one man.”4 The 1928 Paramount film The Last Command features...