The First Board (1933)

1926 brought the tall, brown-eyed actor a one-year silent film contract with Cecil B. DeMille’s company--and he left Broadway to take it. But the year's end saw him a young widower after the death of his wife, popular stage actress Lola Fisher (who'd played opposite Ralph Morgan in "Under Cover" in 1914.) A 1927 Variety reviewer wrote: “Kenneth Thomson...reminds of Wallace Reid and may be somebody’s ‘find’ along similar lines...” but although he played leads with popular actresses like Jetta Goudal, Bebe Daniels, Pola Negri, and Billie Dove, Ken never rose to stardom. Increasingly cast as a lascivious playboy in the talkies, the Los Angeles Times ran an interview with him in September 1929: “Smiling Villainy Pays.” In March 1928, he ran for the new West Coast advisory board of Actors’ Equity: against a large field of candidates, he was not chosen. At the time, he was rehearsing a play in Los Angeles called “The Captive,” which he knew ran the risk of being raided for “indecency,” once it opened. Ken and the cast were hauled off to jail several times, and the show closed. But actress Alden Gay agreed to marry lonely Ken two months later--and the two of them would provide a safe home base for starting the Screen Actors Guild, with Ken as its first Secretary.

Best-known to W.C. Fields fans for repeatedly demanding "I want my kumquats" in Fields' 1934 comedy It's a Gift. He never does get those kumquats. Wallace was born Meyer Weill in Lompoc, California, and was orphaned at an early age. His first stage appearance was in a college production, with the legendary French actress, Sarah Bernhardt. On October 17,1904, he made his Broadway debut in Romeo and Juliet with the E.H. Sothern-Julia Marlowe Company. He became lead juvenile for the Morosco Stock Company, and kept busy for years managing and performing in his own theatrical stock company and in vaudeville. From the early through mid 1920's, he appeared on both the stage and in silent films, even directing some Keystone Comedies. As the Marquis de Praille in D.W. Griffith's 1921 silent drama of the French Revolution, Orphans of the Storm he was no doubt hissed for his lustful aspersions towards Lillian Gish who played the virtuous Henriette. He began appearing in talking pictures in 1930, in supporting roles of varying size, including President James Monroe in Alexander Hamilton and as Prosecutor Black in Smart Money.

Perhaps Reggie was thinking “Here I go again” as he affixed his signature to the July 10, 1933 group application for membership in the new Screen Actors Guild. Had 20 years really passed since that May 26, 1913 meeting at the Pabst Grand Circle Hotel in New York when he joined 110 others in organizing the new Actors’ Equity Association? But, his signature looked a little “lonely” today, on this Guild application, joined by a mere 16 others. More would have signed, like Karloff, Madison, and Talbot, but couldn't make it that day. Reggie had extensive Broadway credits, and had worked with some of his fellow Guild-founders there too: "Becky Sharp" in 1911, with Ivan Simpson, and "The Fall of Eve" in 1925, with Claude King. The Theatre Guild’s 1926 revival of “Pygmalion” found him in the plum role of “Henry Higgins” to Lynn Fontanne’s “Eliza Doolittle. Since his recent arrival in Hollywood, he’d won a good-sized part as “Baron Philippe de La Tour-La Tour” in “Topaze” starring the legendary John Barrymore. But his film credits were few--under a dozen, and most of his roles modest-sized, like the Judge in director James Whale’s “The Kiss Before the Mirror.”

He was a renowned name in horror films by June 1933, and had just walked away from his Universal Studios contract after being informed his $1,000 a week salary would be lowered. Since his breakthrough performance in Frankenstein (1931), he’d continued in 1932 films like The Old Dark House (with Gloria Stuart), The Mask of Fu Manchu (with Charles Starrett), and The Mummy. One day filming Frankenstein, (September 28-29, 1931), he was worked 25 hours straight in his heavy costume and makeup—an unforgettable lesson in abuse without union rules and protections. Kenneth Thomson recruited Boris (an avid cricket-player) for the Guild at a May, 1933 Hollywood Cricket Club dance. Boris recalled it “...as the evening advanced and I was circumnavigating the floor in my customary slow and stately manner, Ken dropped anchor alongside me and muttered in my ear the magic words: ‘Would you be interested in an autonomous organization for film actors with an affiliation with Actors’ Equity?’ Hastily scrambling off my unfortunate partner’s foot, I practically yelled ‘How...when...where?’ At which he hissed ‘Next Thursday, 8:00 p.m. my house...don’t park too close to the house,’ and practically vanished in a puff of smoke...”

Scottish-born "Simmy" was no slacker! His theatrical career began in England, with Henry Irving, touring the provinces in "melodramas and Shakespearean repertoire," before coming to America in 1905. Decades of work followed, often with the British-born star of stage and screen, George Arliss. Simmy attended the March 10, 1933 mass meeting at the Writers Club of Hollywood, called to discuss the proposed, temporary "50 percent cut" in studio workers' salaries (the catalyst for founding the Screen Actors Guild). He was NOT silent: in "Actors in Heated Meeting Fail to Approve the Cut" The Hollywood Reporter praised him thus: "Some enthusiasm was aroused by Ivan Simpson, who declared that the 50 per cent plan was unfair and advocated a sliding scale of cuts so the little fellow wouldn't be hurt so badly." And he was full of "firsts" for the Guild in 1933: writing the first dues check, on July 10; designing our first "logo" (a torch topped with a laurel wreath and the "S.A.G." initials); creating our first, and only motto: "He best serves himself who serves others"; and then, with Kenneth Thomson, devising the first "Statement of Aims and Purposes of the Screen Actors Guild."

By 1933, he'd spent 2 years in Hollywood as a young leading man in small to medium-sized roles under his birth name of Leon Waycoff. In Universal's "Murders in the Rue Morgue"(1932) with Bela Lugosi, he played the handsome young medical student, Pierre Dupin, who exposes the diabolical scheme of Lugosi's character, Dr. Mirakle! That same year, he would film a fight scene in "The Famous Ferguson Case" opposite an actor named Kenneth Thomson. The next year, 1933, Thomson would lure Leon into what would become the Guild--enticing him one night at Masquers Club club with the ol "Come to my house" invitation he'd use on Boris Karloff and others. Leon recalled in later years: "The meetings we had at Ken Thomson's house were secret meetings. I remember one night taking a girl out on a date in the open-topped car of mine. I said 'I have to drop by this address up here for a very important reason. I won't be but a minute'...and she said 'That's all right.' I came out three hours later. She was asleep and very skeptical of what was going on in that house!"

Unlike his fellow Guild-founder, Ralph Morgan, who abandoned a law practice for acting, young Robertson did the reverse: he left professional acting for over six years to become a lawyer. In 1907, at 21 years of age, he landed a small role in David Belasco's huge Broadway hit The Warrens of Virginia, with future film director Cecil B. De Mille, starring future movie star Mary Pickford. Robertson remained in the theatre through 1912, then left to study law in Washington, D.C., passed the bar exam, and began practicing as a criminal lawyer for the government. The short-lived career proved invaluable training for his future screen appearances as lawyers, politicians, and various law enforcement agents. By 1920, he was back in the theatre, and would remain until 1930 as actor, playwright, and silent screenwriter – four of his plays were produced on Broadway over that decade, one of which he directed. The Pasadena Playhouse presented his play Desire in 1925. His Hollywood film career commenced in 1930 and he had appeared in supporting roles in three-dozen films by 1933, most noticeably as child star Jackie Cooper's father in the 1931 films Skippy and Sooky.

Lyle Talbot was the first Warner Bros. contract player to join the Screen Actors Guild. James Cagney, Bette Davis, William Powell, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson and Loretta Young were among his fellow Warners contract players who would join in later months! Like James Gleason and Clay Clement (who recruited him to join the Guild), Lyle was a "child of the theatre." His father and step-mother were actors, and Lyle's father convinced him early of "...the principle of having unions, some way to back you if a manager was going to skip out and not pay your salary." Lyle began as a magician, but turned to acting and established his own company in Memphis, the Talbot Players. In 1928, he made an early 2-reeler "talkie" at Warner Bros. studio in Brooklyn with Pat O'Brien. In 1930, Warner Bros. signed him to a seven-year contract, beginning at $300 a week. Appreciating the salary and security of a contract player, but suffering first-hand the long, exhausting hours and work-week it entailed, this young leading man (who'd already played opposite Ginger Rogers, Carole Lombard, Thelma Todd, and Loretta Young) needed little convincing from Clay Clement to join the small group of Guild founders.