Item Info

Publication Date: 4/29/1914
Media Type: House Organs
Source: Theatre Collection
Notes:

To have created five hundred characters in the course of a stage player’s career can only be the result of a lifetime’s service to the public, yet in the new art of photoplay a similar result may be achieved in one’s youth. Thus it is in the case of Miss Mae Hotely whose engagement with the Lubin Company has extended over a period of five years and who has appeared in perhaps a greater number of photoplays than anyone acting before the camera. 

When it is borne in mind that Miss Hotely’s specialty is eccentric farce comedy and that she has never duplicated a characterization — in makeup or action — it will be realized how inexhaustible are her resources of comedy portrayal. She has studied comedy from every angle and has explored the high road of literature, and delved inot its byways, to enrich her fund of comic lore. In a chapter of Balzac she will find a vivid bit of character drawing; likewise, a droll mannerism — a gesture, a peculiarity of costume. Likewise Miss Hotely is a student of the works of those artists whose sketches are rich in grotesque humor — Hogarth, Cruikshank, and Phil May, as well as the modern American cartoonists. From them all she gleans something which she holds in reserve until her own keen sense of the ludicrous tells her when to apply what she has learned. 

In spite of Miss Hotely’s study of books and pictures she finds her chief inspiration in people. On her travels she meets many, of course, and her Winters at the Florida studio of the Lubin Company, and Summers at Atlantic City bring Miss Hotely in contact with thousands. Her genial informality of manner and the never-failing zest with which she enters into practical jokes — as well as her ability to enjoy sport at her own expense — make her popular with her intimates. Miss Hotely is a real comedienne and when she makes her friends in front of the screen chuckle or yell with mirth, as the case may be, it is because of the fun within her. She is as jolly when the camera is not looking as when she is working only for its approval. In other words, Miss Hotely is not a sad-faced individual who saves all her smiles for the part she is to play.

As she trips along the boardwalk, a natty figure in white serge, she is always the center of a little cyclone of laughter, while her friends are convulsed by her witty observations and droll sallies. 

Miss Hotely speaks French fluently, being, in fact, a native of France, and is at present preparing an article for the Paris newspaper, Le Matin, on her career as a comedienne of five hundred disguises. This will doubtless be translated and will in time be read by Miss Hotely’s admirers all over the world. 

Call Number: Lubin - Bulletin I:11