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Remembering
Walpole actor Charles Farrell More than a decade after his death, the last years of Walpole’s most famous native son remain a mystery. Born to a working class family in South Walpole at the turn of the last century, Charles Farrell rose from humble roots to become one of the most famous movie stars of the silent era. After his film career tailed off in the mid-1930s, Farrell resurrected himself not once but twice: first by spearheading the transformation of Palm Springs from desert outpost to resort town for the Hollywood elite, and then by becoming a successful sitcom star, playing the father on My Little Margie for three successful seasons during the early 1950s. By the time that he died in 1990, however, Farrell had all but closed himself off to the world, spending the last 22 years of his life in virtual solitude. It is still unclear why the once-outgoing actor became so intensely private in his final years. One of the leading researchers into Farrell’s life in recent years has been Warwick author Stephen O’Brien, who was not able to be located as of press time. O’Brien has published a detailed profile of Farrell on the Silents Majority website and has also worked with local historian Betty Cottrell to flesh out the details of the actor’s childhood years. The following history was culled from O’Brien’s profile, conversations with Cottrell and various other sources. (An Internet search will provide numerous sites that have information about Farrell’s life.) Born on Aug. 9, 1900 in the annex of the Fuller Tavern, Charles David Farrell spent the first six years of his life in South Walpole, where he was a student at the Boyden School. When he was six, Farrell and his family moved to the corner of Rhoades Avenue and Washington Street in East Walpole, where his father opened a cigar stand in the Bird triangle building and a restaurant on the street level of Bird Hall. The family transformed a large room above the restaurant into a movie theater, where they showed silent films in the evening. Farrell was put to work at a young age. Each day after school he would go straight to the family restaurant, where he would be greeted with a sink full of dishes to wash and several tubs of potatoes to peel. Once those two tasks were done, Farrell would head upstairs to the movie theater, where his duties included sweeping the floors, setting up the seats and getting the tickets ready for the night‘s performance. When the makeshift theater was ready Farrell would head back downstairs to the restaurant, where he would work as a waiter until shortly before show time. Dashing home quickly to change clothes and grab something to eat, Farrell would get back just in time to sell tickets for the evening’s show. Once he was finished with all of his jobs, Farrell would then have to start on his homework. The daily grind of work and school wore on Farrell, and he often dreamed of bigger and better things. "Even in those surroundings I knew that I was going to be a great motion picture actor. I never sold a ticket at the theater but what I looked the customer in the eye and said to myself ‘Some day that person will be going to the theater to see Charlie Farrell.’" After graduating from Walpole High School, Farrell left town to study business administration at Boston University. His family left Walpole soon after Farrell went to BU, moving to Onset Bay on Cape Cod to open their own full-fledged movie and vaudeville theater. Farrell lasted at BU for three years before having to drop out due to poor grades. Once he was out on his own, the lure of Hollywood proved to be too strong for Farrell to resist. He arrived in Los Angeles on Aug. 22, 1923. Farrell was 23 years old at the time and had practically no possessions, but he was eager to start his film career. After working as an extra and a bit player in a number of films, Farrell secured his first substantial role in the film Wings of Youth, opposite prolific silent film actress Madge Bellamy. Farrell did well enough in that role to be offered a contract at Fox Studios for $150 week, a decent amount of money at the time. According to O’Brien, Farrell had other plans. Thinking that he was worth more than what Fox was offering, Farrell refused the contract. With the Fox deal off the table, Farrell immediately fell on hard times. After scraping around for several months without any steady work he accepted another offer from the studio – this time for less money. Soon after signing Farrell was given the role of the Commodore in the seafaring epic Old Ironsides. The adventure film was a box office success, and the momentum that Farrell gained from his performance helped him to win the prize part of Chico in Seventh Heaven. Seventh Heaven was the first film to pair Farrell with actress Janet Gaynor, his "cinematic soul mate," as O’Brien calls her. Casual acquaintances before starting the picture, Farrell and Gaynor became the best of friends as soon as they started working together. While the duo’s off-screen relationship was strictly platonic, (both were involved with other people), the sparks flew between them whenever they got in front of a camera. Seventh Heaven was a box office smash, and the film made Farrell and Gaynor overnight sensations. The pair’s first two follow-ups, 1928’s Street Angel and 1929’s Lucky Star were also hugely successful. Then sound came along. In 1927, a film called the Jazz Singer introduced audiences to a revolutionary new concept – films with sound that matched up to the action on the screen. Audiences were hooked, and from that moment on the so-called "talkies" began a box office Darwinism, weeding out the silent film stars who didn’t have the vocal talents to match their visual appeal. While Gaynor was able to make a smooth transition to sound, Farrell’s voice proved to be high and hard to modulate, which caused some laughter among audiences when the pair’s first talking picture came out in 1929. Although Farrell and Gaynor did make several successful sound pictures together, Farrell’s film career began losing momentum almost as soon as audiences starting hearing his voice. Farrell made his twelfth and final film with Gaynor in 1934, and from there his film career quickly disintegrated into a series of B movies and middling overseas productions. While some film historians point to Farrell as the textbook example of a silent star who couldn’t make the transition to sound, O’Brien disagrees. O’Brien believes that Farrell was instead a victim of studio politics. While the outspoken Gaynor fought for and gained better scripts, Farrell continued to do whatever the studio asked of him, O’Brien writes. His ready acquiescence often led to lesser roles of dubious quality. Whatever the reasons were for his decline, Farrell proved himself to be a survivor. By the time his last movie came out in 1941, he had already created a new role for himself: that of a successful resort owner. In the early 1930s, Farrell and fellow actor Ralph Bellamy were playing tennis at a Palm Springs hotel when they were bumped off the courts in favor of Marlene Dietrich. Vowing that they would never again be forced to leave in the middle of a game, the two men spent $7,000 to build their own world-class tennis facility, which they named the Palm Springs Racquet Club. In the late 1930s, 40s and 50s Farrell’s club (he bought out Bellamy’s share in the late 30s) was one of the most desirable places to be in Palm Springs. The stars of the golden age of Hollywood flocked to play tennis on the club courts, eat at the club’s famous Bamboo Lounge (where the Bloody Mary was said to be invented), and stay in the club’s hideaway bungalows. Among the names gracing the club’s guest list: Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Cary Grant, Spenser Tracy, Humphrey Bogart (who had been Farrell’s vocal coach prior to becoming famous himself), Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe. O’Brien writes that as Palm Springs exploded around Farrell, his name "once a symbol of silent screen romanticism, was now synonymous with the easy life: tennis, polo, sailing, partying, drinking and gambling." Farrell was so popular in Palm Springs that he even served as the city’s mayor for seven years. Farrell’s second chance at reinventing himself came in the early 1950s, when a television producer staying at the club offered him a role on a sitcom he had in production. In the show, called My Little Margie, Farrell played a widowed middle-aged man living with his adult daughter in a New York apartment. Both father and daughter are unable to resist meddling into each other’s romantic relationships, often leading to comic results. My Little Margie debuted in 1952 as a summer replacement for I Love Lucy and was an instant success, running for three seasons and 128 episodes. O’Brien believes that the three years Farrell spent on television were the happiest times of his life. "Close friends have stated that Charlie would have gladly abandoned his successful sports club empire for another stab at the Hollywood limelight. By luck or chance, he got a second shot at the brass ring - without having to relinquish his cherished desert empire." Farrell eventually sold his interest in the club for $1.2 million in 1959, freeing him and wife Virginia to travel extensively. It was after Virginia’s death in 1968 that Farrell began his withdrawal from the outside world. At first, Farrell would make an appearance every once in a while, most often with Janet Gaynor. By the 1980s, however, he had refused to see even his closest friends. When Farrell died in May of 1990 practically no one in Palm Springs knew that he was gone (not even the newspapers) until almost a week after his burial. But while his life ended in virtual anonymity, Farrell’s spirit continues to be visible in Palm Springs today. A statue of his likeness greets visitors to the city at the Palm Springs airport, and his star has been placed next to Bellamy’s on the city’s walk of fame. His club, previously credited
for helping to transform Palm Springs into what it is today, earned a new
distinction earlier this summer when it reopened as the first gay and lesbian
retirement community on the West Coast.
If not for the path forged by Walpole native and silent film star Charles Farrell more than seven decades ago, a movie like “Mr. Mom” might never have been possible. Boiled down to its essence, this is one of the arguments made by author and film historian Stephen O’Brien, who has researched the life of the late actor and resort owner extensively over the past few years. Contacted by phone last week, O’Brien provided a number of fascinating insights into Farrell’s career, personality and his relationship to Walpole over the years. The portrait that emerged was one of a complex man who was driven by the pursuit of fame and the desire to be loved, yet often fell victim to his own poor decisions. O’Brien also makes a powerful argument that Farrell has been overlooked by film historians because of the unfair perception that he couldn’t survive the transition from silent to sound pictures. Born in the Fuller Tavern of South Walpole in 1900, Farrell was the only son of a working class family that ran several businesses in East Walpole, including a lunch counter, a newsstand and a silent movie theater. Arriving in Hollywood at the age of 23, Farrell worked his way up from a bit player to one of the biggest film stars of the silent era, only to see the bottom fall out of his film career in the early 1930s. After that first setback, Farrell resurrected himself twice, once as the owner of the Palm Springs Racquet Club, at one time the premier destination for the Hollywood elite, and then as a sitcom star in the television series “My Little Margie.” In examining Farrell’s life, one of O’Brien’s focal points has been trying to figure out why the actor’s film career burned out when it did. Many critics have dismissed Farrell as the textbook example of a silent actor who faltered after audiences discovered that his voice didn’t match his appearance. O’Brien doesn’t believe this to be the case. Farrell did have a strange voice that was disconcerting to hear at first, but he did manage to become an adequate sound actor with a little bit of practice, the author said. And while sound films may have limited Farrell’s acting ability, it didn’t seem to affect his drawing power, O’Brien said. In 1932 – three years after his first sound film came out – Farrell was still the fourth highest box office draw in the nation, and the highest overall male draw. And Farrell wasn’t the only actor who had problems making the transition to sound. Stage-trained actors, for instance, still thought that they had to shout out every line so that they could reach the back row of the theater, not understanding that the medium of film allowed for a greater degree of subtlety. So then why was Farrell’s film career over in little more than a decade? O’Brien thinks it was due to poor decision-making on Farrell’s part, not a lack of talent. “He didn’t play his cards right.” In whatever role he took in life – film star, resort owner, celebrity mayor or television star – Farrell hated to be the one responsible for making decisions, O’Brien said. The few times he did try to assert himself, it always backfired on him. The main reason that started to fade was that he was given a succession of poor roles from Fox (the studio he was contracted to) and didn’t know how to stick up for himself. Rather than follow the lead of frequent co-star Janet Gaynor, who used her leverage to fight within the system for better parts, Farrell trusted the studio to do the right thing by him until it was too late. When he finally realized what was happening to his career, his first belated reaction was to walk away from the studio, effectively destroying his chances of working in the Hollywood studio system ever again, O’Brien said. That decision wasn’t the only one to go sour, however. When Farrell was first establishing himself as an actor in the mid 1920s, he refused his first contract offer from Fox. Offers for actors were rare at that time due to the Depression, but Farrell passed on the deal because he thought he was worth more money. After floundering for a few months without any steady work, Farrell was forced to come back to the studio with his tail between his legs, accepting a contract for less than the original offer. Even Farrell’s decision to sell his Palm Springs Racquet Club in the late 1950s blew up in his face, O’Brien said. Since he and wife Virginia had sunk all their money into making improvements to the resort, finances were always a worry for the couple. Farrell thought that by selling off his stake and staying on as the manager, he could have all of the fun without any of the headaches. But once he was no longer calling the shots, he soon realized that he wasn’t as important as he used to be. He had become pretty much a figurehead, and by the mid-1960s, with his wife and many of his old friends dead, the club was no longer the same place for him. O’Brien said that conversations with Farrell’s former friends and family members seem to indicate that the actor’s aversion to decision-making was part of a larger struggle that went inside him. On the one hand, O’Brien said, many of those who knew Farrell describe him as a friendly, modest man who was self-effacing about his successes and always willing to make himself the butt of jokes. “He loved people to love him,” O’Brien said. Yet this need for public affirmation may have gone too far, O’Brien said. He got the sense that Farrell measured himself not by what was inside of him, but by what others thought of him. A nephew of Farrell’s wife remembers him as being a selfish and self-absorbed man, O’Brien said. O’Brien also got the sense that Farrell went into acting because he wanted to be loved by the public, not because he had any great affinity for the art. Farrell also disliked it when friends would bring their children along to visit him, because the children take attention away from him. This need for continual affirmation meant that Farrell was genuinely hurt when his film career faltered, O’Brien said. It also meant that the happiest times of Farrell’s life might well have been the early 1950s, when he regained national attention with a starring role in the television sitcom “My Little Margie.” By the mid-1960s, when Farrell found himself out of favor at the Racquet Club and out of options in the world of film and television, his personality began to change. Without the public affection and affirmation that he craved, he became moody and withdrawn. When he died a virtual recluse in 1990, his parting instructions were that no one should know that he was dead until after his body was buried, hardly the celebration that one who was so drawn to the spotlight would have once wanted. Because of the strange nature of Farrell’s career and the misconceptions over why it ended, film historians have paid little attention to him over the years. O’Brien is one of only a few film writers to devote any significant time to Farrell’s film career. A short biography that he created in 1997 for a website celebrating silent film remains the definitive documentation of Farrell’s life on the Internet, and the 300-page manuscript he has written could one day be the first definitive biography of Farrell’s life. O’Brien, who is also writing a book on 1950s screen siren Veronica Lake, said that his interest in Farrell began primarily with the actor’s voice and the difficulty he had translating his talents to sound films. It also didn’t hurt that Farrell was originally from Walpole, a short ride from O’Brien’s Warwick, R.I. home. A lot of the information about Farrell’s early years came from sifting through town records and microfilm copies of the Walpole Times on file at the Walpole Public Library. Using real estate listings, advertisements and the gossip column, Farrell used the old newspapers to compile the first accurate account of the Farrell’s Walpole origins. The research was tedious and tough on the eyes, but it paid big dividends, helping to resolve much of the misleading information about Farrell that is still circulating. O’Brien said that much of the misinformation is due to the fact that studio press releases routinely played with the facts during the silent era to make actors more suited to the roles they were playing. For instance, during the release of Farrell’s breakthrough film “Old Ironsides” – a seafaring epic – the studio changed Farrell’s place of birth from Walpole to Onset Bay on Cape Cod. Farrell’s family didn’t move to Onset Bay until he was in his late teens. Farrell’s birthplace was changed back to Walpole, yet the false information lingers. Some informational websites, including the normally reliable Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) still lists Farrell’s birth as Onset Bay. This confusion may have created some lingering resentment in Walpole, where there was a sense among residents that Farrell had turned his back on them once he became famous, O’Brien said. That resentment, which surfaced in 1955 when Farrell returned to town in a chauffer-driven limousine to visit an old family friend, may not have been justified, O’Brien said. It was the studio, not Farrell, who changed his place of birth on the press release. Farrell usually gave pretty reliable information during interviews. It’s true that Farrell didn’t spend much time in Walpole after he became famous, O’Brien said, but in fairness to him he only visited the East Coast a few times, and when he did he usually spent his time with his sister, who had settled on the Cape. So what then does Farrell have to do with “Mr. Mom,” the 1983 movie that starred Michael Keaton as a stay-at-home dad? According to O’Brien, it has to do with the part Farrell played in redefining the role of the male in cinema. In two of his most popular films, 1927’s “Seventh Heaven” and 1929’s “Lucky Star” (both collaborations with frequent co-star Janet Gaynor), Farrell plays male characters that display traditionally female traits such as caring and nurturing, yet still maintain their virility. Farrell’s depiction of the male as sensitive and masculine was a marked departure from the traditional portrayal of the male as macho and aggressive. In “Heaven,” for instance, Farrell’s character takes in a young waif (Gaynor) to keep her from being sent to prison. When the war starts later on in the film (it’s a WWI piece) Farrell’s character starts to cry, and it’s Gaynor who has to help him regain his composure. In “Lucky Star,” Farrell plays a WWI veteran who returns home from combat crippled from the waist down. He again takes in a street girl (again played by Gaynor) to save her from the law. This time, however, Gaynor is rough and uncouth, and Farrell has to make her respectable by teaching her manners and brushing out her hair – tasks that would usually fall to a mother. It is only after he realizes that he’s in love with Gaynor that he resumes the traditional role of the male and finds the strength to walk again. The reason that Farrell played so consistently against type in “Heaven” and “Star” was due in large part to the artistic inclinations of director Frank Borzage. But it took an actor with Farrell’s particular talents to succeed in making the portrayal work, O’Brien said. Farrell was very convincing when playing shy and inexperienced characters, and his rugged physical appearance was masculine enough that he could show his feminine side without being subjected to ridicule. With his work in these
films, Farrell paved the way for other male actors to take on more
traditionally female traits, O’Brien said, a trend that received
perhaps its most obvious treatment with Michael Keaton’s homemaking
dad in “Mr. Mom.” |
