“I was born in Chicago and educated in a convent. But after graduation, I took a course at the American Conservatory and studied dramatic art under Hart Conway. I was determined to go on with a stage career because of my encouraging success in amateur theatricals. I obtained my first professional engagement with the Virginia Harned Stock Company in Chicago. For three years after that, I alternated between stock companies and vaudeville.” — Dorothy Dalton
Source: Hazel Simpson Naylor (1917)
From 1919.
“Yes, that is where I got my early training in acting. Playing leads with an organization which changes the bill every week and appearing as Juliet, Young Mrs. Winthrop, the heroine in ‘Paid in Full’ and Camille successively either teaches an actress her business or opens her eyes to the painful truth that she has mistaken her calling. I’m not going to say how long I acted in stock, but I did my bit and received an honorable discharge.” — Dorothy Dalton
Source: Edward Weitzel (1920)
“It isn’t how much you like a thing that counts. The important point is, how it affects you and your career. Now I consider vaudeville the finest school in the world for a would-be screen actor. The requirements for the two are practically the same. The emphasis is placed on action, telling your story in pantomime – with the lines of as much importance as photoplay subtitles. The audience won’t stand for any long-winded accounts but likes constant movement and variety. There is more real meat in a successful vaudeville sketch than there is in most full-length plays. Patrons made restless by the swift succession of trained seals, singers, acrobats and monologists haven’t the slightest interest in any but significant moments. It was a surprise to many of my friends that I had so little trouble adapting myself to screen demands, but that was exactly why.” — Dorothy Dalton
Source: Hazel Simpson Naylor (1917)
“I began photoplay acting with Thomas Ince in the summer of 1915. He knows – as he knows most things about the art of acting, in a way that is uncanny for a man who was in the profession for so short a time – just how vaudeville is the true sister of the movies; and so had little hesitation in entrusting me with roles a bit risky for the novice.” — Dorothy Dalton
Source: Hazel Simpson Naylor (1917)
“Moving picture stars are like good soldiers: they always obey orders….Always obey orders is the second Golden Rule of our profession; the first is always keep healthy.” — Dorothy Dalton
Source: Edward Weitzel (1920)
Photo: Aphrodite (1919)
“I think moving pictures are marvelous, as – they – are. When you watch the progress of a production, when you see what patience and art can accomplish in making actors and in making scenes, and how lavishly money is spent, and then when you see what modern photography can do, you are just overawed by it all. After coming face to face with the more or less practical side of the art, as I do, or as any performer does at the studio, I am always thrilled when I see the screened result. I don’t mean that pictures have reached their zenith. Perhaps we can’t estimate what they will attain. But there have been so many good pictures and a few really great ones, that we can afford to be exceedingly optimistic.” — Dorothy Dalton
Source: Mary Kelly (1920)
Photo: Aphrodite (1919)
“There is one thing in particular that I am waiting and hoping for. I’m not sure that it’s practical right now. It’s in regards to ‘screening’ a picture. I think the time will come when pictures will be rehearsed like dramas so that one scene follows another in logical sequence. It will mean an added amount of work and time, more tearing up and constructing of sets, and there will be more wear and tear on the performers, too. But the improvement, dramatically, would be wonderful. A picture would gain a better tempo and better characterizations. Just as in a stage drama, you would be able to gauge your emotions, you would build for a climax and know when to strike. You would not be forced to do a death scene, and then go back to a scene showing the cause of the death. Your characters would develop, naturally. You yourself would be more swayed by them, and your interpretation would be finer.” — Dorothy Dalton
Source: Mary Kelly (1920)
Photo: Aphrodite (1919)
“I like a scenario which has been taken from a novel. I like to familiarize myself with my character.” — Dorothy Dalton
Source: Mary Kelly (1920)
Behind Masks (1921)
