A Moment with May Collins

This is a footnotey sort of story but its subject is not without significance. The stage and screen career of May Collins (1903-55) was major for about a decade (1920-30) and was followed by a minor revival a decade later.

Collins started out in the New York stock companies of Mrs. August Belmont and William A. Brady. She made her Broadway in the play She Would and She Did (1919) starring Grace George. This was followed by The Outrageous Mrs. Palmer (1920) with Raymond Hackett, Henry E. Dixey, and Luis Alberni.

Collins’ rise in prominence from here was swift. She was cast opposite Frank Mayo in the Universal film The Shark Master in 1921, followed by the lead in the rom-com All’s Fair in Love with Richard Dix. That same year, she had an affair with Charlie Chaplin. I’m pretty sure this is how she came on to my radar. The two were engaged, but he called it off. (This was in the window between his marriages to Mildred Harris and Lita Grey, at a time when he was rolling out The Kid.)

Nothing daunted, Collins appeared in two more movies in 1922: Little Eva Descends, which as the title hints, was set in a Tom Show, and Red Hot Romance, directed by Victor Fleming, co-written by Anita Loos and John Emerson. These were among the top people in Hollywood, but at this juncture, Collins chose to return to Broadway, appearing the plays Clubs Are Trumps (1924), and The School for Scandal (1925), then touring with The Trial of Mary Dugan for two years in Australia, and returning to Broadway in House Afire (1930), and Ladies All (1930).

In 1930, Collins married and retired to raise her two sons. With the Depression on, the ’30s were the best possible time to be out of the theatre! In 1938 she returned to the stage to take a role in the original production of Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Tragically one year later she lost one of her sons to polio. After this she is known to have appeared in the play Kiss and Tell with Kirk Douglas (1943), and an early TV adaptation of Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1945). She died a decade later at the young age of 52.

For more on silent film and Charlie Chaplin please check out my book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube — now also available on audiobook.