“I am quite sure that there is a dreadful mistake in the Book of Genesis. I feel positive that Adam and Eve were not put out of God’s park for eating the apple of knowledge, but for deliberately munching the persimmon of ignorance.” – silent film star Ethel Clayton in 1915.
“I was born in Champagne, Illinois, and grew up in the backwoods of Missouri. My father was a road builder and my mother and I accompanied him on all his trips. We had no permanent home, but just lived wherever my father’s work took him; and that was all through Missouri and Kentucky. One year, I remember, I changed schools eight times. My language was awful; it was that backwoods kind with a twang to it and was a positive disfigurement. We went to Chicago when I was about 11, and I started to the public schools there. Then for four years, I attended St. Xavier’s Academy and was leading lady or leading man in all the school plays. My ambition was to be an actress and when the nuns introduced E.H. Sothern to us my ambition became a determination.” — Ethel Clayton
Source: Mary Condon (1913)
“I played several short engagements in Chicago after leaving school and when with the Daniel Frawley Stock Company in Minneapolis, where I played leads for nine months….I was just 17 and after Minneapolis, went to Milwaukee and played 22 weeks of big summer stock. Then I was offered the part of a model in ‘The Devil’ and next was leading woman for Emmett Corrigan, from whom I learned more than from anybody else. Vaudeville, 22 weeks of it, followed, then the role of the chorus girl in ‘The Country Boy.’ Then pictures.” — Ethel Clayton
Source: Mary Condon (1913)
“Well, it all came about as an accident. It was in May, three years ago, that I had finished my season under the Henry B. Harris management, in ‘The Country Boy,’ and I was preparing to leave for home in Chicago. While stopping on Broadway, I met Mr. Barry O’Neil, who … suggested pictures to me, but as I had signed a contract for the following season with the Henry N. Harris management, I wasn’t very much interested. But he suggested that I come just for the summer. So I did, and liked it immensely. When the theatrical season opened, I returned to the stage, and the Harris management loaned me to William A. Brady, to play the lead in ‘The Brute.’ This play ran for only two weeks, and that night, after the notice went up, I was approached by a representative of Lubin, who offered me a contract with that company. And I signed it.”– Ethel Clayton
Source: Roberta Courtlandt (1914)
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“[Motion pictures] attracted me because of the out-of-door life, not because of the money they would mean. Air is food and drink to me. Really, I wouldn’t care for a lot of money and I have no desire to own a big house, where I’d feel that I’d have to stay most of the time. This is what I’d like – to have a shack at the ocean for the summer, even though the sea air makes me pale and washy looking, and in winter, to live just where I felt like it, in a house, an apartment or just a small suite. I have an accumulation of things I take with me wherever I go; usually, I unpack them and set them up wherever I stay, if it’s only for a month.” — Ethel Clayton
Source: Mary Condon (1913)
“I like roving too well to settle down in any one place even though it were a very beautiful one. So, you see, I really wouldn’t care for much money. I’m glad, though, I had enough to buy an automobile last summer; I drive it and never had as much pleasure out of anything. I’m proud of having paid for it myself and enjoy it so much more on that account. It furnishes lots of excitement for me and that’s what I like – to have a life fill up and things. Otherwise, I should get violently ill.” — Ethel Clayton
Source: Mary Condon (1913)
“I like pictures – indeed, I do! But the work of adapting myself to the screenplay, of almost building my ideas of art anew, was very hard. I don’t believe that one can really and truly succeed in pictures nowadays without stage experience. That’s the finishing school for the Motion Picture field, or for the legitimate, either.” — Ethel Clayton
Source: Roberta Courtlandt (1914)
Purchase your Fine Art America Print, Coffee Mug, T-Shirt, etc. of this image!
“When I came into Motion Pictures, I determined to be as well dressed as when I was on the stage, and I have made ‘dressing for the movies’ one of my deepest studies, for it is so different from dressing for the stage. I bought five evening gowns, three afternoon frocks, and ordered several suits on my last shopping raid on New York, a couple of days ago. And I shop every two or three weeks, so that I may keep my wardrobe right up to date.” — Ethel Clayton
Source: Roberta Courtlandt (1914)
“Books are my only hobby. My whole apartment is lined with them. They overflow into the hall, up the stairs, and even into the china closet. I haven’t any favorites. I like any good book, and I consider anything – except cheap, lurid fiction – a good book. I read everything from Shakespeare and Dickens, on down, and enjoy them all.” —
Ethel Clayton
Source: Roberta Courtlandt (1914)
