“Buoyant Bobby”–A 1919 Interview With Robert Harron

Happy Friday, Silent-ology readers! As promised, I conducted the drawing for the hard copy of this year’s San Francisco Silent Film Festival program book (which also contains an article by yours truly!). These drawings are always conducted with the utmost rigor, otherwise known as me pulling a strip of paper from my 1920s-style cloche hat. And the winner is:

Congrats, Wally B.! Feel free to contact me on my “About” page so we can email each other. For my other readers, if you missed out on the hard copy, fear not–the SFSFF does have a free pdf on their website here.

Of the sensitive young actor Robert Harron, Lillian Gish remembered: “Something about him caught the heart.” As a fan of both Harron and great performances in general, I couldn’t agree more. His story of having risen to stardom after starting out as a simple errand boy for Biograph is certainly inspirational all by itself, seemingly “meant to be.” It’s harder to understand why his sudden death in 1920, from a purportedly accidental gunshot wound, was similarly “meant to be.” And yet, it occurred. And thus Harron remains an eternal star of the 1910s, his voice unrecorded, known primarily to fans of silent film…and the folks with a grim interest in Hollywood tragedies.

His iconic role in Intolerance (1916).

Personally, I always think about his talent above all, and especially his remarkable charisma with the camera. Recently I saw him in a supporting role in a Biograph two-reeler The School Teacher and the Waif (1912), starring Mary Pickford. Harron plays a schoolboy who teases Pickford, and since he’s quite a bit taller than the other young actors he does stand out. But I don’t think his height is the only reason he catches our eye. Even when the undeniably charismatic Pickford herself is onscreen, somehow my eye keeps wandering to Harron.

The School Teacher and the Waif (1912).

I’ve written a lengthy piece on Harron in the past, and recently was re-reading some of his old magazine interviews (he gave only a few). I thought I’d share this one from the September 1919 issue of Motion Picture Magazine, since it gives some nice insights into his temperament and really shows what a modest–and quite shy!–young man he was. I hope you enjoy it! (Note: Any unusual spellings/words are original to this Edwardian article.)

BUOYANT BOBBY
Several Reasons Why the Genial Mr. Harron is an Optimist
By Truman B. Handy

ROBERT HARRON is an optimist. He never doubted for a moment that the Allies would win the war. He is certain that motion pictures will improve at least one hundred per cent, in the next few years, that the art of cinema histrionism will attain Mansfieldian dignity, and — that he will be the champion swimmer of the Los Angeles Athletic Club. The latter of which is quite a feat, altho one isn’t in the least surprised when he reads the enthusiastic testimony of one Mr. Vance Veith, the natatorian instructor.

Interviewing Mr. Harron is perhaps almost as weighty a problem as extracting molars from a hen. He’s never at the studio when you want him, and when he is there, he is considerably occupied with the masterful Mr. Griffith. Originally, in the old days, when the picture industry was young, he had been occupied with the various plebeian duties in Mr. Griffith’s office, hoping all the time that Dame Fortune would crook her finger at him in such a fashion that he might realize his hopes of cinematic fame.

When I saw Bobby he was eating lunch under the shade of the only tree on the Griffith lot with Clarine Seymour and Kate Bruce — perfectly chaperoned, I assure you. Clarine had on a pretty little blue calico dress with a huge bow in the back, and Bobby wore the conventional gray. His hair was ruffled. Dorothy Gish had been teasing him, he said, and he wasn’t presentable. But I assured him that we’d always seen his bandolined coiffure on the screen, and that, negligée, he was insouciantly delightful.

Harron’s utter insouciance is his outstanding feature. You ask him a question and he throws you a funny little smile and says he really doesn’t know what to say. And then he commences to tell you about Mr. Griffith. You tell him that you admire Mr. Griffith, but that you have come to interview him. Whereupon he blushes a little, smiles pleasantly at you, and says that the weather is excellent for picture-making. You ask him what he likes best and he replies, “Everything”; something of his ideals and philosophy, and he says that he wants to do creditable work on the screen and lend a helping hand wherever he can, and you demand his past history and he rejoins that it is so very ancient that he can’t at all remember it.

And Bobby Harron is only in his early twenties.

On the set of Sunshine Alley (1917).

It took one of the studio employees, a man who fastens down the sets or fixes the Kliegs or something, but who is particularly a Harron enthusiast, to furnish me this copy. Mr. Harron won’t talk about himself. He’ll tell you about everybody on the lot and how much he enjoys the trudgeon stroke and the American crawl in the swimming pool, but you know by the look in his eyes that he wishes Mr. Griffith would call him onto the stage so that he can make a graceful exit. He is painfully diffident, but delightfully charming.

Mr. X, as we shall call the gentleman who tacks down the scenery, informed me that Bobby is a particularly wonderful dancer, and that he got a cup somewhere last week. That was no especial news to me, who had seen him in company with the Gishes, Constance Talmadge, the aforesaid Miss Seymour, Richard Barthelmess, Jack Pickford and David Butler numerous times in the Alexandria Hotel ballroom.

With Dorothy Gish in Hearts of the World (1918).

Mr. X also said that Bobby plays the violin with aplomb. And speaking of his violin reminds me. Not long ago it was stolen while he was dining at a downtown café. As it is a real Strad model, it is quite valuable, and while Harron was beside himself with grief, his diffidence made him refrain from informing the police. When at length he was persuaded to report his loss, he failed to tell the true worth of the instrument. The next morning an enterprising newspaper reporter made mention of the theft in his publication, with the result that the thief, desirous of the generous reward Harron offered, returned the instrument.

Harron is largely self-educated, and possesses a really extraordinary knowledge of literature. As I talked with him he made various references to literary passages, and showed himself particularly well versed in the contemporaries, of whom he seemingly prefers Hall Caine, Rex Beach and Dana Gatlin.

“She’s a deucedly clever girl,” he said, referring to the latter. “I never thought, until I read her, that a woman could really understand so thoroly [sic] a man’s way of thinking.”

Hearts of the World

A little look about the studio will reveal any number of Bobby’s pets. He takes particular interest in caring for them, and “Cuddles,” a large, rangy mongrel dog that he rescued from the pound, is the particular bête noir of the keeper of the Griffith eating-house, inasmuch as she persists in upsetting the garbage can.

When Harron speaks of his career, he gives a series of reminiscences of many of filmland’s brightest luminaries, a number of whom were making their bow to the camera in the old days at the Biograph in New York. He remembers Mary Pickford as a shy little girl from the Belasco forces, always accompanied to the studio by her mother. Blanche Sweet, with her ardent desire, ultimately realized, to play emotional parts; Mae Marsh, the little, snub-nosed, freckle-faced wisp of a girl who sat on a stump and squinted at the sun and was discovered by Griffith; Lillian and Dorothy Gish, the two Southern girls who attracted Griffith’s attention on the occasion of their visit at the studio to Mary Pickford; Henry Walthall and his “temperament,” unheard of in the early days of the screen; Donald Crisp’s reluctance to play “villain” parts; Mary Alden’s various complaints about not having a dressing-room of her own; Miriam Cooper, when she was wooed and won by Raoul Walsh, then an actor with the Griffith forces, and at length of Griffith himself and the way he worked into the small hours of the night perfecting new screen effects, are to Bobby a series of unforgotten memories.

Being directed by Griffith in The Escape (1914).

And when he speaks of Mr. Griffith he tells of how he conceived the idea for his greatest Western play, “The Battle of Elderbush Gulch,” thought by many to be the leading Western ever presented. Two kittens were wandering about the studio, deserted temporarily by their mother. They climbed into a basket and seemed unable to climb out. At length, after tipping it over, they emerged and went underneath one of the stages, from which point of disadvantage they could only be gotten by the greatest difficulty. Griffith was passing and watched the proceedings.

“A great idea,” he said. “I’ll write a story around it.” Result — “The Battle of Elderbush Gulch.”

Harron was introduced to a motion picture studio as an office-boy, whither he was sent from school by the teacher at the request of an assistant director, who needed such a helper. From there he progressed to the dignity of an “extra.”

When at length he was taken on a “guarantee” at the munificent sum of $25 a week, he acted at certain intervals, in addition to painting scenery, helping with the properties and assisting with the costuming.

“In those days we rushed from the paint pail to the make-up box,” he remarked.

A Child of the Paris Streets (1916).

Wallace MacDonald, Sr., was his first director at the Biograph studios — the man who needed an office-boy — and was the first to present him in a prominent part, that of the youngster in “Bobbie’s Kodak.” And in the one-reeler, by the way, the part of Bobbie’s father was taken by Eddie Dillon, who is only a year or so Harron’s senior and now a successful director of George Walsh productions.

Other old-time plays with Harron in the cast of principals were “Bobbie the Coward,” made when he was fourteen years old; “Kentucky Feud,” “Enoch Arden” and “Sands o’ Dee,” the picture in which Mae Marsh played her first important role.

“Those days eleven years ago were funnier than you would ever suppose,” said Harron. “We had the worst time getting the weather to suit our requirements. In one play, ‘The Last Drop of Water,’ Joseph Graybill, who is now dead, was required by the scenario to die of thirst, which he succeeded in doing before the camera while it was raining like mad outside the studio and the whole lot was flooded. They call those the happy days, but I failed to see the joy.”

Outside the studio a generous-looking limousine was waiting. A studio office boy — perhaps a second Robert Harron in the bud — had come in and announced that Bobby’s mother wanted him to go downtown with her while she did some shopping.

“Gee! but I like to go shopping, he farewelled, “because then I have an excuse to go swimming.”

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