Though she is not talked about the way she should be today, actress Alice Joyce was a Hollywood legend. With a career dating back to 1910 and hundreds of films to her name, Alice surely left her mark on movies.
The following is an article from The Modern Screen Magazine from 1930, the same year as her last movie,
Song o' My Heart. It was written by Thyra Samter Winslow (a popular author of the time).
"She has a quality which makes her an amazing paradox. Alice Joyce is a product of the movies -of Hollywood - and she is a lady.
"I'm sure there must be other ladies of Hollywood. Unfortunately I have met few of them. I have met delightful gamins, charming schemers, amusing gold diggers, amazing exhibitionists, interesting psychopathic cases that would interest my friends, Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe and Dr. A. A. Brill. But these fascinating girls after you've seen them do their tricks and have heard them constantly talk about their own little world in which they are God and chief votary, rather pall. Alice Joyce is a human, understanding and understandable person. She seems to me to be unusually free from neuroses and delusions. She looks at life calmly, with mild amusement, with a nice sense of balance. She is a delightful person. A like to think she is my friend.
"When I told Alice Joyce that I wanted to do a story about her she smiled with an uplifted eyebrow. We had talked over a hundred small topics of the day. I had been amused and interested in her view of life. She and her younger daughter, little Peggy Regan, going on nine, had come out for a swim and for tea. I looked at Alice at ease in one of those low wicker chairs in my sun room. I knew she had been in movies since the old Biograph days and yet, a sort of miracle, there is the about her the same youthfulness that there is about Peggy. Her hazel eyes are wide apart, beautifully spaced. Her brown hair is bobbed but it isn't one of the long mussed-looking bobs that so many Hollywood stars think necessary for their 'parts' nor is it one of the close-cropped bizarre effects or the shaving like curls other screen actresses have achieved. Usually it is rather straight and Alice has a distracting way of pushing her hat back with a gesture that would make anyone else look hideous, but which successeds in making her look naïve and young. For that matter the line under her chin has the softness of youth - the fullness which disappears under too many messages and is always gone after a facelift or a 'restoration' which women resort to in vain clutchings for youth. Alice Joyce's face is pale and she uses no make-up except vivid scarlet lip rouge - you know her mouth's sensuous quality. She is restless always underneath. And outwardly she has the lovely calm of a person who nothing seems to disturb.
"'How did you get started?' I asked. And waited to hear one of those usual romantic stories that stars tell about grand old ancestral homes and money loses.
"'I got a job as a telephone operator. Gramercy. I went from there to the old hotel Oxford. And made thirty dollars a month. After work I went home to the Bronx -my stepfather could have a house with room enough for his dogs there.'
"Even that job didn't last. Alice was laid off. Then at a dance an artist asked her to pose.
"'That was better.' She smiled reminiscently. 'Five dollars a day and I could stop at 5 o clock. Even now I think a good director is one who stops sharp at five.'
"It was interesting, posing. She was sixteen now. She posed for Coles Phillips, C. D. Williams, Orson Lowell.
"A girl told Alice about the old Biograph company. You could make ten dollars a day and extra for overtime. Alice went to Biograph - got a job. D.W. Griffith was directing She was in pictures with Mary Pickford and Arthur Johnson and Willette Kershaw. And she did get ten dollars a day! When she worked.
"But there where too many days when even a lovely, slim extra girl wasn't needed. Alice went back to posing. If you weren't at the studio when the artist wanted you, he got another model.
"She grew restless. She wanted more than posing. She rehearsed with Lew Fields in 'The Summer Widowers.' That was fun and then she was late. The director's temper uncertain. She was fired. Three weeks of rehearsals gone for nothing.
"She got a job posing for song slides. A man with whom she had posed went into pictures. His company was having trouble finding a girl who could ride. Alice had ridden a horse, once, on a farm.
"'I can ride' she said.
"She fell off the horse was bruised black and blue. But she made ten dollars. And riding got her a regular job.
"Kalem had made her an offer and asked what salary she wanted. Friends said 'Don't be cheap!' She knew that Gene Gaither got thirty five dollars a week for writing and acting. Alice trembling a little asked for fifty dollars. And got it!
"Fifty dollars a week! Seventy Five! And there was never a nickel left over. Funny as you make more money your expenses seem to go up. For a year and a half Alice did Indian and Western pictures. 'The Engineers Sweetheart!' Then came recognition.
"Of all her pictures Alice Joyce likes 'Stella Dallas,' 'The Little French Girl,' and the picture she finished only last April, 'He Knew Women.' This was adapted from the Theatre Guild's success, 'The Second Man' and she played opposite Lowell Sherman. She did not like as well 'Song o My Heart' with McCormack. Last year she was especially pleased because George Arliss chose her for the second time to play in 'The Green Goddess.' And the day I am writing this she is completing her plans to go to California for another picture.
"I don't believe Alice Joyce ever gave a wild party in her life. She doesn't like them. She has a charmingly appointed apartment in New York, a beach bungalow in Hollywood. She keeps her servants for years and they adore her. She is interested in the things that interest other civilized people. She has no weird fads. Her clothes are conservative. In spite of a a lot of rumors all stars must contend with, I believe she is in love with Jack Regan, her own husband. She treats him with the amused but tolerant air that a woman learns to take towards her husband after years of marriage, especially if that husband is Irish and a bit prone to jealousy and is humorous and fond. She was married once before, to Tom Moore. They are still good friends.
"'The business of staying together for the children's sake is nonsense' she said. 'Children are less happy in a home without harmony than with one parent in a pleasant home.'
"Alice has two children. Wisely she has kept them away from public life. Young is Alice Moore is calm-eyed, dignified and altogether charming. Little Peggy Regan is about the nicest child I know. She is gay, generous, frank, without a trace of self consciousness, delighted with the simplest pleasures, good company.
"An interview isn't complete without favorites. I found the A.E. Matthews is Alice Joyce's favorite actor. Jane Cowl and Mrs. Fiske her favorite actresses. Brown is her favorite color. Her favorite author is Somerset Maugham - he gave her three of his autographed books. She likes 'The Moon and Sixpence' best of all. She enjoys a good mystery story and just finished Edgar Wallace's 'Red Circle.'
"She prefers living in New York - is a city person - doesn't like the country a great deal. She like England too. And China - Hong Kong still holds romance."
"I asked her who she'd like to be if she wasn't herself."
"'Any little girl of eight to eleven.' She said. 'Any little girl know that is. Children seem to have better times these days than when I was a youngster.'
"She is not a demanding mother - she wants her daughter to be individuals - to get what they want most out of life. If they want to go on the stage or into the movies she will help them all she can though she thinks the work is hard. Alice at fourteen has already shown a talent for writing - is on the school paper. Alice is too busy being happy to think about careers.
"Nor is an interview with an actress complete with talking about beauty secrets. Alice still looks younger than most of the new stars. And she doesn't seem to have any secrets at all! She hardly ever takes time for a massage. She uses cold cream when she thinks of it which isn't very often. Her life is that of hundreds of other sophisticated New York Women. She likes good things to eat, an occasional drink, little parties and the theatre.
"At eight she has coffee usually with warm milk. Or hot water and lemon juice. When she feels the need of it she takes bending exercise, which suffice to keep her trim.
"Her favorite luncheon dish is a steak sandwich. Sometimes she has a poached egg on spinach, or a baked potato and buttermilk and white rock. She never snacks during the day. Tea is at five, a social hour, and Alice usually has only a nibble of a sandwich. Her dinner is simple; soup, meat, green vegetables, a salad, crackers, cheese, coffee. No sweets - though she likes candy and perhaps, once a month, goes on a candy bat and devours a whole box of fudge.
"Alice is five feet five and three quarter inches in height and she weighs one hundred and twenty two pounds. She has a very simple way of losing.
"'On my way to Hollywood I live on buttermilk. I'm never much overweight. When I get there I usually find I reduced enough. I weigh a little more when I play with a tall man.'
"No sensation - no lurid past or crimson future. A little telephone girl who become a gracious and lovely little lady. If that can happen, maybe, after all, there's something pretty fine about the movies."
-Michael J. Ruhland
