“When I was eight years old I started in business. It was a newspaper route, and I was on the job at four a.m., disseminating daily knowledge to the areaways of Toronto. In those days, bicycles were all the rage, and it was my greatest ambition to possess one. So I gave up the newspaper route and became an apprentice in a bicycle repair shop. The hours were very long – we had bicycle joyrides, too, you know – and I sometimes worked till early in the morning, mending damaged wheels. I earned my two-wheeled Pegasus all right, and, seated in the saddle of my prize, a sudden distaste came over me for further tinkering. Candy has always been a weakness of mine….I took a job in a candy store, thereby coaxing my livelihood and my sweet tooth to the bedfellows. When the down began to bloom on my upper lip, my great ambition was to own a department store, and soon I became a clerk in the stockroom of one – the tail that wagged the dog, as it were. I was lost in the shuffle – one among 500 other cogs in the great institution – and settled for life with the magnificent salary of three dollars per week. But you see, while I had been considerable of a rolling stone, it was ambition, as well as inclination, that made me roll, and I felt that I could gather no moss on three dollars per. At an auspicious moment I approached the superintendent of the department store and suggested three dollars and twenty-five cents. Upon that slender coin we split, and I put on my coat, determined to let the department store go to ruination without me. At this critical period in my career, I was eighteen years of age, grown to manhood, a clean five feet nine, and tingling with resolve to better myself. The Valentine Stock Company was then forming in Toronto, and my eyes turned to the stage. About the easiest way to kill off a ‘tenderfoot of the footlights’ is to give him utility parts, especially in stock. Our hours were from nine in the morning to twelve at night, rehearsing our next week’s performance and putting on our daily matinee and evening show. Then, too, there were the constant changes of costume and makeup that a utility man is heir to. At the end of an overcrowded month I found six dollars in my weekly envelope and a large, though superficial, knowledge of the stock stage in my cranium.” — Edward Earle
Source: Peter Wade (1917)
“I managed to scrape together some twelve dollars and decided to strike out for New York, hit or miss. I reached the Grand Central Station on a balmy morning, with a carpetbag in one hand and fifty cents change hard-fisted in the other. I was about the best example of a ‘heck’ actor that had struck the white lights in many moons. But, with the ‘blind virtue’ of a utility man, I made the circuit of theaters, ready to pry loose an opening. At last, ‘way out on the outskirts of Brooklyn, I landed in ‘The Dairy Farm,’ a one-horse road show, and, seeing that I was young, husky, and innocent, its manager understudied me for every part in the cast, including the colored mammy, and, not strange to say, in the course of time I played each and every one of the roles.” — Edward Earle
Source: Peter Wade (1917)
“Let’s see! I played with Mary Mannering, Henrietta Crosman, James Powers, De Wolf Hopper, Marie Cahill – stock companies and musical comedies. Then two years ago I started working before the camera – Famous Players first; then Pathe; then, eighteen months ago, Edison, and here I be!” — Edward Earle
Source: Dorothy Donnell (1915)
“Moving Pictures were still in their dramatic infancy. I knew little or nothing about them, but what was more natural than that, after my burst of song, I should seek the silent drama? I made my introduction to the Motion Pictures, strange to say, through my voice. About three years ago the Edison Company were all worked up over their talking pictures, which, you no doubt remember, were a synchronization of the phonograph with the camera. I ‘read my lines’ and acted for Edison at night, and in the daytime, to gain an insight into the real silent drama, I acted for the Pathe Company. Thereafter I joined the Edison players as leading man. The photoplays that I most enjoyed, as I remember them, and in which I think I did myself the most injustice, were ‘Ransom’s Folly,’ with Mabel Trunnelle; ‘The working of a Miracle,’ with Gladys Hulette, and ‘The Innocence of Ruth,’ with Viola Dana.” — Edward Earle
Source: Peter Wade (1917)
“I like this work. It’s so much more inspiring than the stage. Oh, I know there are people that don’t agree, but it works that way with me. Every Wednesday we Edisons have a private showing of the week’s work, you know, and I tell you, the criticisms fly! Then I go to picture shows and watch the audience watch me – tell you, it keeps a man keyed up to his highest pitch. And that’s the only way good work can be done. But the first time I ever saw myself, it was certainly weird, and I found out one thing then and there…You see, I’d always supposed I was a comedian, and when I saw myself on the screen, I found I wasn’t one at all. I’ve preferred emotional parts since.” — Edward Earle
Source: Dorothy Donnell (1915)
“You see, I never plan out what I’m going to do beforehand. I have a theory. In a nutshell it’s this: If a man thinks himself into his part he needn’t worry about what he does – it’s the psychological attitude that counts, not the gestures. I get my scenarios two or three days before they’re put on and think them over; then I just go on and do as I naturally would under the circumstances.” — Edward Earle
Source: Dorothy Donnell (1915)
“I’m a Scotchman by ancestry; a Canadian by birth, and an American by preference – long may she wave! I was born in Toronto, and I hope to live and die in the Bronx. That’s another thing about the screen I like – the stationary part of it. Why, I’ve been a wanderer and lived in a wardrobe trunk most of my life, and now I can walk along the street and feel like a taxpayer and voter and a real citizen.” —Edward Earle
Source: Dorothy Donnell (1915)
“I am afraid you won’t find me a very interesting person. As you see, I am a distressingly ‘home man.’ Balzac or Stevenson is to me what ‘a night out’ would be to some men. I work so hard during the day at the studio here – and acting, real, earnest, intellectually-inspired acting is a strain – that I welcome my books and pipe like a child deprived of his story book. And I’ve got the finest collection of pipes. Some from every part of the country, others, gifts to me….Well, I’m as much at home cooking as at smoking. Nothing I like better – in the kitchen when I can’t get away to the woods and out of doors. And I can cook some corking good dishes. But I guess my greatest dissipation is skating. But, really, one doesn’t get much time for his own recreation when he is a photo-player and a favorite. I believe that if a man attempts to play leading roles, he should take very seriously the obligations, in a way, placed upon him. For this reason, I answer every night, religiously and personally, all letters sent to me – and it’s ‘some job’ – and give them my views and advice according to whether they query me on women suffrage or ‘how to break into the movies.’ But I must confess that some problems put up to me are rather delicate to handle. Such as the other day when I received a glowing letter of admiration from a young girl fan and in the next mail, a similar letter from her mother, telling me not to ‘mind daughter’ as she, the mother, was much more worthy of my attention.” — Edward Earle
Source: J. de Ronalf (PhotoPlay /1915)
“Things grow old, die, and pass away quicker in the theatrical world than anywhere else.” — Edward Earle
Source: John Dolber (1918)
“We work and work and work, and if we stop for breath, we discover that we are just where we were when we started. If we wish to advance, we have to work twice as hard, so I have worked twice as hard and I have been rewarded by a fair amount of success.” — Edward Earle
Source: John Dolber (1918)
