supporting role to the male star) or a “feature player” (appearing with a troupe of three or four prominent actors and actresses, all of whom shared equal billing). She was earning exceptionally good money—upward of $750 each week, or just shy of $40,000 per year (equivalent in today’s money to an annual salary of $430,000).
At first, Colleen’s appeal was her innocence and youth. Her long, curly hair—which photographed black, even though it was closer to auburn—and wide eyes lent her a look of incorruptibility, as did her well-practiced facial expressions. “There was a stage melodrama ofmany years before my time in Hollywood,” she explained years later, “in which an innocent young thing turned to her father to ask in wonderment, ‘Papa, what is beer? 8 ’ That line carried over into vaudeville sketches and into the lingo of the silent film directors. The director would say to the girl playing the young, pure, innocent heroine, ‘Get that “Papa, what is beer?” look on your face.’ ”
Colleen admitted that “this look was on my face through a great many movies—too many movies—too many made long after I knew full well what a beer was, and a number of other things as well.”
Not that she had completely hit a rut. Colleen enjoyed opportunities to work with the motley assortment of characters who converged on Southern California just before and after World War I—men like Tom Mix, a marine veteran who was rumored to have fought in the Boxer Rebellion in China and the Boer War in South Africa, clocked time as a local sheriff in Oklahoma, and boldly escaped a firing squad in Mexico, where he fought with Francisco Madero’s rebel forces, who were then in a pitched battle to overthrow President Porfirio Díaz. 9
Actually, none of this was true. Mix was a native Pennsylvanian who joined the army during the Spanish-American War and went AWOL in 1902 without seeing any action. He didn’t escape a Mexican firing squad, but he did manage to elude both his first wife and the military police, who wanted him on charges of desertion.
Mix moved west to Oklahoma and reinvented himself as a sometime cowboy, cattle rancher, saloon keeper, and movie impresario. A veteran of the Miller Brothers 101 Real Wild West Ranch—a combination ranch and Wild West show—he proved such a skilled horseman, and so uncommonly nimble with a lasso, that he soon caught the attention of several filmmakers, who brought him to Hollywood to help invent the industry’s stock country-western hero. Decked out in ten-gallon hats, expensive leather cowboy boots, and embroidered shirts, he circled around the set on his prized horse, Tony, to the delight of his adoring co-stars.
Colleen, who was still a teenager, appeared opposite the thirty-nine-year-old Tom Mix in several films and developed a hopeless crush on him.
Then there was Al Jennings, a rehabilitated train robber whom the big movie moguls recruited, predictably, to play the stock part of the villainous, horse-riding train robber in a series of boilerplate westerns. Jennings had done hard time in prison, but by the time Colleen had the chance to work with him in the feature production Hands Up! , his reputation for dastardly deeds far exceeded any crimes he might have committed in real life. Like many of the other leading ladies, Colleen was captivated by the onetime outlaw and trailed him around the set for weeks.
If life was good—and, to be sure, it was—Colleen nevertheless understood by 1923 that it was make or break time for her career. The “Papa, what is beer?” routine had brought her a long way from Tampa, but the headliner roles still eluded her.
“I just wasn’t the accepted-and-acceptable model for a sweet young thing in the throes of her first love,” she admitted. “The necessary curls I could manage, the same way Mary Pickford and the others did, with time and effort. But no amount of either could make my five-foot-five boyish figure into a
At first, Colleen’s appeal was her innocence and youth. Her long, curly hair—which photographed black, even though it was closer to auburn—and wide eyes lent her a look of incorruptibility, as did her well-practiced facial expressions. “There was a stage melodrama ofmany years before my time in Hollywood,” she explained years later, “in which an innocent young thing turned to her father to ask in wonderment, ‘Papa, what is beer? 8 ’ That line carried over into vaudeville sketches and into the lingo of the silent film directors. The director would say to the girl playing the young, pure, innocent heroine, ‘Get that “Papa, what is beer?” look on your face.’ ”
Colleen admitted that “this look was on my face through a great many movies—too many movies—too many made long after I knew full well what a beer was, and a number of other things as well.”
Not that she had completely hit a rut. Colleen enjoyed opportunities to work with the motley assortment of characters who converged on Southern California just before and after World War I—men like Tom Mix, a marine veteran who was rumored to have fought in the Boxer Rebellion in China and the Boer War in South Africa, clocked time as a local sheriff in Oklahoma, and boldly escaped a firing squad in Mexico, where he fought with Francisco Madero’s rebel forces, who were then in a pitched battle to overthrow President Porfirio Díaz. 9
Actually, none of this was true. Mix was a native Pennsylvanian who joined the army during the Spanish-American War and went AWOL in 1902 without seeing any action. He didn’t escape a Mexican firing squad, but he did manage to elude both his first wife and the military police, who wanted him on charges of desertion.
Mix moved west to Oklahoma and reinvented himself as a sometime cowboy, cattle rancher, saloon keeper, and movie impresario. A veteran of the Miller Brothers 101 Real Wild West Ranch—a combination ranch and Wild West show—he proved such a skilled horseman, and so uncommonly nimble with a lasso, that he soon caught the attention of several filmmakers, who brought him to Hollywood to help invent the industry’s stock country-western hero. Decked out in ten-gallon hats, expensive leather cowboy boots, and embroidered shirts, he circled around the set on his prized horse, Tony, to the delight of his adoring co-stars.
Colleen, who was still a teenager, appeared opposite the thirty-nine-year-old Tom Mix in several films and developed a hopeless crush on him.
Then there was Al Jennings, a rehabilitated train robber whom the big movie moguls recruited, predictably, to play the stock part of the villainous, horse-riding train robber in a series of boilerplate westerns. Jennings had done hard time in prison, but by the time Colleen had the chance to work with him in the feature production Hands Up! , his reputation for dastardly deeds far exceeded any crimes he might have committed in real life. Like many of the other leading ladies, Colleen was captivated by the onetime outlaw and trailed him around the set for weeks.
If life was good—and, to be sure, it was—Colleen nevertheless understood by 1923 that it was make or break time for her career. The “Papa, what is beer?” routine had brought her a long way from Tampa, but the headliner roles still eluded her.
“I just wasn’t the accepted-and-acceptable model for a sweet young thing in the throes of her first love,” she admitted. “The necessary curls I could manage, the same way Mary Pickford and the others did, with time and effort. But no amount of either could make my five-foot-five boyish figure into a
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