Photoplay/Volume 36/Issue 2/Young King Leer

AT the exact center of the talking picture hullabaloo sits a dazed and puzzled young actor named Chester Morris, the sensation of "Alibi."

Young Mr. Morris feels as though he had been struck smartly behind and below the left ear with a bung-starter.

Mr. Morris' sudden success is one of these overnight miracles produced by the over-a-couple-of-nights talkies. They make and break fast in these pinwheel days, and Mr. Morris was one of the fastest hits on record—one of those screaming grass-cutters right over third base that are always good for three bags if the runner is fast.

And now this thirty-year-old trouper, already a veteran, is one of the most sought after young men in pictures, on the strength of his superb leering and snarling in Roland West's all-talker of crime and copdom. It might be said that he has the world by the leers. In fact, it IS' said. I say it.

At this moment, Chester is a bit goofy around the edges.

Contracts explode in his face. Each bang on the door is just another wire from a producer.

Earnest lady interviewers prowl the hallways and peer over transoms, lunging at the boy with poised pencils whenever he pops out for the morning milk. A little maddening to a young actor who never called out the reserves before, but he is game and happy.

Though he did go up like a shot, Chester Morris' whole life had fitted him for success when the big break came and the fat part of Chick Williams' tumbled into his lap.

A son of a famous theatrical family, Chester was tossed on the stage almost before his voice had changed from an uncertain treble to a positive baritone.

His first job of work, as a kid, was with Lionel Barrymore in "The Copperhead," that Civil War play which Lionel later did for the screen. He went on in all sorts of rôles in all manner of plays—on Broadway, in stock and on the far-flung deserts of the road.

In 1926 he began to specialize in the crime rôles that finally prepared him to do Chick Williams', that nasty little snake of gangland.

IT really wasn't Morris' fault. He'd much rather play nice boys than cop-killers. Oddly enough, it was George M. Cohan who made a rat out of the lad—George M., who has always specialized in everything clean and American far into the per cents.

"I'm afraid it will type me, George," said Morris.

"No, it won't," said the silver-haired song and dance man. "And besides, I'll give you a nice, clean part in my next show."

But it did type him, and for three years he was the leading stage exponent of youthful skullduggery—of rodent-like boys with slit eyes and curling lips. He murdered and seduced and took dope—this handsome young fellow who loves his family, adores his mite of a wife, and thinks he has the finest mother-in-law on earth. (Her name is Cynthia Kilborn, and Morris is about right!) ​The talkie lightning smote Mr. Morris when he and the wifelet were swinging round the Western circle in a little vaudeville act.

Chester had made a few mild passes at pietures. Mr. De Mille had been pontifically kind. Mr. Griffith had even made a test of him.

Then Fate, in the person of Director Roland West, came up and tapped young Mr. Morris for Bones.

West went into the Griffith headquarters one day. "Alibi" was on the make, and the director was in the market for a Chick Williams', Grade A.

"How about letting father look at some of your rusty old tests?" Mr. West might have said. He was accommodated.

Suddenly Mr. Morris leered his best party leer from the screen. Mr. West leaped fully forty feet into the air and cracked his heels.

"There's my Chick'!" he cried. And darned if it wasn't!

A FEW days later, Morris was in the studio, learning and unlearning under the baton of Roland West.

His fourteen years of trouping stood by him. He learned fast and well, and West was teacher, boss and father confessor.

The last shot was fired. "Alibi," hot or cold, was finished, and a quaking young actor nerved himself for the preview.

"Alibi" was run off at Grauman's Chinese Theater.

There weren't many in the death watch. Among them were Chester Morris and the little woman. They held hands in the darkness.

As the picture unrolled, Morris' jaw fell until it rested on his wishbone. At last he could stand the ordeal no longer. Chester Morris found Chester Morris hard to take.

"Come on, darling," he whispered to Mrs. Morris. "Let's blow!" They blew.

So the little pair went back to the apartment. Once safe at home, a drop of some harmless restorative calmed the boy, and he tried his best not to twitch and frighten the girl wife.

The phone rang. It was Roland West.

​"Well, kid," asked the director "how are you?"

Chester came back with the theater's classic gag—the one that every actor is supposed to use when he hears the managerial fist pounding on his dressing room door.

"I'm packing."

"Don't be silly," said the boss. "Stick around!"

So Morris stuck around.

Words that bleated over the phone failed to buck him up much. Everybody seemed to be praising him with faint damns.

"Oh, you were all right."

"Don't worry—you seemned to be O.K. to me!"

All that kindly, patronizing stuff worried Morris more. He felt the folks were letting him down.

"We're going East," he said to the little partner.

And so, as the rattler rubled toward New York, Morris sat in his Pullman pew and fretted. He was certain that he had laid an enormous egg in the talkies. His trip was almost a retreat from Moscow. He wanted to Get Away From It All.

Then "Alibi" opened on Broadway, and that event is already in the history books.

The thundering at the picture's end was for King Leer, the kid who played Chick Williams'. He was a riot—he was a panic—he was a hit in all the 159 dialects of Times Square.

When the dawn came, it found Chester a little dazed. He still is. It isn't easy, this playing the role of a talkie miracle.

His screen lessons were no cinch, either.

There were the chalk marks on the floor that his feet must faithfully follow. There was this matter of registering before speaking. He learned with a shock that in the talkies an actor must really concentrate on his character before walking into the eye of the camera. An actor with fifteen years' experience had to learn again.

Well, he did.

Chester Morris has arrived—on both feet and in a very big way. He is one of the best talkie bets yet offered, and our screens will see and hear a lot of him.

One of these strange, almost casual miracles of talking pictures happened to Chester Morris. Perhaps it doesn't mean much in the wide scheme of things, but to Morris and the little helpmate it has been a colossal experience—the turning point in au earnest, hard-fought career.

So, go home and practice leering, young man. Chester Morris can't make faces forever!