“You know, there are so many men who want to die for me, or about me, but when I give them the chance – they never do!” – Anita Stewart
“I have never been on the stage and don’t think I would like that, but I do like the pictures so much. I have been at it for only about a year – started just after leaving their Erasmus High School in Brooklyn.” — Anita Stewart in 1913
“No, and I can’t say did I like comedy, but I do like ‘Why I Am Here,’ and, do you know, I actually laughed when I saw myself in it. Don’t you think Mary Pickford a darling? Carlyle Blackwell is a fine player, isn’t he?…. Why, I’m only 18, born February 17, 1895. Parents both Americans. I don’t write much and don’t get much time to read. I adored Dickens and love Browning when I understand, but, you know, it’s so deep. Ambitious? Yes, I suppose you would call me ambitious, because I have two all odd -absorbing motives -one is to become a great photoplayer someday, and another is to feel that I have done some good in the world. It must be an awful feeling when you die to think that you haven’t made the world a little better for having lived in it and that you might just as well never have been born. Oh, I love the woods, the meadows, the fields, the water, the sea – all outdoor sports are so tempting that I fear I’d get selfish at times and think only of my own pleasures. Ralph is so good to me – I owe him everything. He helps me wonderfully. Yes, I like to be criticized even as much as I like to be praised. How can one improve if people don’t tell you the bad as well as the good?… Dear no, I’m not interested in politics and don’t want to vote. Home life is the great thing in this world. My mother is everything to me, and I love to look after her wants. Yes, I love music, and I took lessons for a long time. I sing and play some. I’ve played a in about 30 photoplays, I think. And I always think I might have done a little better, but you never can tell…. I love motoring, don’t you? Can you tell me why he they don’t have revivals of old photo plays? Seems so funny that all those beautiful plays we saw a year or two ago are not shown a gain. I think that theaters ought to show all their pictures for two or three days, instead of changing every day; don’t you?” — Anita Stewart in 1913
Photo: 1913
“I see so many pretty girls who come to the Vitagraph studio equipped with every sort of talent for success. They have beautiful faces and beautiful figures. Many of them have education and refinement; all of them have enthusiasm. And bye and bye most of them disappear, or drift away to other studios. Only the smallest percent of them achieve any distinction. Why? Just because most of them think it is easy. When they come, they are around me, bubbling, and they always call it ‘such fun?’ When the new wears off, and the work begins, the fun subsides and their enthusiasm dies. And when one’s enthusiasm dies, one is quite finished. I think that going into the pictures ‘just for fun’ has spoiled many a fine young actress.” — Anita Stewart
Source: Julian Johnson (1915)
“I don’t think I could ever marry an actor; too much attention makes them conceited and selfish. I’ve grown hard toward men – men with wonderful wives who’ve tried to make dates with me, whispering lies that were just hideously silly.” — Anita Stewart
“Being pretty isn’t any insurance.” — Anita Stewart
“Girls whom I see coming in now are either too lazy or too proud to play bits and maids and extras. I was maid to every one of the older Vitagraph leading women.” — Anita Stewart
On the cover of Photoplay Magazine, September 1915.
“I don’t like thin people, and I simply must take on weight.” — Anita Stewart
Source: Marjorie Gleyre Lachmund (1917)
Photo: 1914
With Earle Williams in 1915.
“I’m so pleased with the house. Of course I helped plan it as much as I was able, but after that I didn’t see it until it was finished. Mother wanted to surprise me with the decorations and furnishings. It’s just like a dollhouse and perfectly adorable. I’ve named it ‘The Wood Violet,’ after my first real star part. I did love that play so.” — Anita Stewart
Source: Marjorie Gleyre Lachmund (1917)
“I’m only 19 and they will call me 21. But, of course, it’s partly my own fault. I wanted to play in ‘A Million Bid,’ but I was too young; so I told them I was 18 instead of 16, and they let me do it! I didn’t mind, then; but now I’m getting older, and I do mind. The surest proof that I’m not 21 yet is the fact that my house and everything is in my mother’s name and not in mine.” — Anita Stewart, who was really 21 at the time she made this comment.
Source: Marjorie Gleyre Lachmund (1917)
“Oh, I don’t like to see myself at all. I always wish I were different.” — Anita Stewart
Source: Marjorie Gleyre Lachmund (1917)
Photo possibly from the lost 1919 silent film A Midnight Romance, starring Anita Stewart and Jack Holt. One of the film’s locations was the Alexandria Hotel in Los Angeles
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On the cover of Motion Picture Magazine in 1919
Circa 1920
Anita Stewart as the Indian princess Nateese in Baree, Son of Kazan (1925), which is based on the book by James Oliver Curwood. It appears as though this Vitagraph film is lost.
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