The British Silent Film Star Malcolm Tod 1897-1968
 
‘A rising notability on British screens,’ Motion Picture Studio 2/6/23 Malcolm Tod was ‘blessed with plenty of push and go.’ Picturegoer February 1924
 
Quintessential English looking and with youth and good looks on his side, Tod became a rising star on the British screen, first in juvenile roles and then playing smart, slightly snobbish aristocrats and gentlemen. He became even more prominent in continental productions during the slump of the mid-1920s but faded from view by the early 1930s.
 

Malcolm Tod was born on 16th March 1897 in Burton-on-Trent, England to a Scottish father and American mother. His father Alexander Maxwell came from a well-to-do family who went to school at Winchester college before entering Trinity College Cambridge. Between 1876-1884 he was a merchant in India and Liverpool and was in the service of the East and West India Dock Company before becoming General Manager of Allsopp’s Brewery Company, Burton-on-Trent from 1889.  Alexander travelled extensively on the continent and to America and on one of his visits married Belle Perkins Pomeroy in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1882.
 
Malcolm was the youngest of the family with four older brothers (Quentin, Pomeroy, Gordon and Kenneth) and one sister: Muriel. Of these, Quentin Tod (born 1884) was hugely successful from 1911 as a dancer, actor and choreographer in New York, London and Paris in the legitimate stage and cabaret. Kenneth also became prominent as a musician also involved in the entertainment industry and married the dancer Iris Rowe in 1923. The family lived in Kensington, London until Malcolm was ten years old, and then, when his father retired, they moved to Paignton, in Devon.
 
The First World War interrupted his studies and in 1915 Malcolm Tod was admitted to the royal military college at Sandhurst and after his training was appointed as a 2nd Lieutenant, in the Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) in November 1916. He saw active service in the Somme but then joined the Air Force. He returned to England in September 1917 and married Margaret Evelyn Bates on 5th September 1917 in Norwood. He then became responsible for the training of aerial bombardment and was promoted to captain in April 1918 and took part in over thirty aerial battles. Of his military service he noted ‘It’s a pretty good preparation for a future artist of the cinema.’ At the end of the war he spent sometime in Glasgow with his former infantry regiment.

At the beginning of 1921, he had no idea what to do with himself but since some of his brothers and other relatives were involved in the performing arts he decided to turn to the cinema, which, as a spectator, he had always been keen. He had some experience in amateur concert work while in the army but no other stage experience and so began making a study of screen art and managed to get crowd work and walk on parts from several directors and studios.
 
Eventually, he gained a small parts in Sidney Morgan’s Moth and Rust (1921) alongside Sybil Thorndike, W. Courtenay Rowden’s Corinthian Jack (1921) for Masters, Sinclair Hill’s Expiation (1922) for Stoll with Ivy Close and John Stuart Blackton’s The Glorious Adventure (1922). He also appeared in six Inspector Haigh short films from Masters, all made in 1921.
 

However, in October 1921 his plans were waylaid, and with a friend, he spent three months exploring Brazil, but by January 1922, he was back in London. Immediately, he became involved in the newly opened Kinema Club in Great Newport Street in the West End. A member’s only club for people involved in the British Film industry it was designed to be more social than professional. Tod became a popular member and played drums on Saturday nights. He owned all sorts of instruments from a saxophone to a one-man jazz band and loved modern music.
 
He was immediately busy and his first break, in a more prominent role, came when he told a casting director that he was able to train any animal to do tricks and obey him. They thought he would be good to tackle an infant and so was cast in A.H. Rooke’s A Bachelor’s Baby (1922) for Granger-Davidson. This was ‘a perfect specimen of high-grade screen comedy’ concerning an irresponsible young naval officer who finds a baby deserted on the road on his bike. He used the infant to cement a romance between two elderly lovers and has his own love affair on the side amidst various complications and accusations of baby theft.

Filming took place in the spring of 1922 on the Devon coast near his home territory and Tod gave a brilliant performance full of ‘consummate skill’ looking after the baby. In one scene he had to ride eight-hundred metres on a motorcycle, behind the car operator, holding a baby of twelve months in his arms. He was the ideal juvenile lead in ‘a breezy happy go lucky sort of way’ and was ‘essentially boyish and attractive.’ Another cast member was a parrot who caused havoc by imitating the director’s voice and constantly calling ‘Cut’ before it was time.
 
In 1922 he gained more supporting roles including George Ridgewell’s The Crimson Circle (1922) for the Kinema Club and episode ten in The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes titled The Bruce Partington Plans (1922) for George Ridgwell at Stoll.
He also appeared in Quality Films, a series of simple and effective short features adapted from popular magazine stories, one of which was called The Thief and in Maurice Elvey’s Dick Turpin’s Ride to York (1922) for Stoll. Here he supported Matheson Lang and although he had little to do, he was thought to be  excellent when he did appear.
 
Another film made in late 1922 and shot around the southern edge of the Cairngorms national park around Dalnaspidalm and Glen Tilt was F. Martin Thompson’s The Romany (1923) for Welsh Pearson. A thin gypsy story about a runaway Scottish girl befriended by a Romany chief played by Victor McLaglan was mostly a vehicle for racy glimpses of gypsy life with Tod giving a good representation of a poor farmer.
 
Tall and slender with dark grey eyes, brown hair and boyish good looks, Tod concealed a very determined personality. An eager fellow, he was also a true athlete practicing all sorts of sports. He was regarded as being essentially and unmistakably English in personality and appearance and his youth and good looks were also part of his desirability.

1923 was promising with more solid roles. In the spring of 1923 he joined a unit from Ideal Pictures filming two features with the American stunt artist Charles Hutchinson. The first was Hutch Stirs ’em Up (1923) with Hutchinson being dramatically deposited in a sleepy Devon village and falling foul to a brutal landowner providing numerous thrills and action.
 
The second film was The Typhoon, eventually released as Hurricane Hutch in Many Adventures (1924). It was a popular dramatic story about a missing heir, extortion, kidnap and mistaken identity. It was a showcase for the intrepid feats of Hutchinson and Tod played the part of the missing heir in ‘an attractive juvenile lead manner.’
 
Exteriors were filmed in and around Torquay in March 1923 and included the re-creation of a shipwreck in the rather stormy and cold seas with the two leads as sole survivors clinging to wreckage. Tod enjoyed all the stunts but prepared for every eventuality with several complete changes of apparel, a life insurance policy, a sealed letter to his relatives, a note to the coroner and in case of extreme emergency, a rum ration. Back in the more secure environment of the Ideal studios at Boreham Wood they re-created the shipwreck with a large reproduction of the side of a schooner fitted on rockers with rigging, with a howling hurricane (supplied by an aeroplane propeller).  A boom attached to the main mast fell and struck Tod on the head knocking him overboard into the angry sea.
 
Following these pictures Tod appeared in the crime comedy The Audacious Mr. Squire (1923) for B&C supporting Jack Buchanan and Valia. Despite having few chances he made the most of them as the husband in hiding.

However, it was at this point, as production stalled in the UK, that the continent beckoned and he went to work for the director Jacques Feyder at Granger-Vita for two pictures starring alongside Arlette Marchal, one of the most beautiful of contintental actresses. For La Cabane d’Amour or Cabin of Love (1923) he spent four months filming on the sunny shores of the Riviera and after a quick trip home for Christmas went to Vienna to film Das Bildnis (L’Image,

1924). During production there was a police chase through the streets with the police-men dressed as French gendarmes. To add to the sensation blank cartridges were used but they were so overcharged that he succeeded in wounding one of his adversaries. Tod’s absence abroad was noted with regret ‘It is in one way a pity that our promising leading juveniles are snapped up for work on the Continent.’

After spending many months on the continent Tod returned home to Devon in September 1924 via Monte Carlo and Venice, but by October he was off to Berlin to appear in Walter Neibuhr’s City of Temptation (Die Stadt der Versuchung, 1925) with the glamorous Julanne Johnston, who had been the beautiful princess alongside Douglas Fairbanks in The Thief of Bagdad (1924). The story of a pretty Russian refugee in Constantinople, it was conceived as an international film with universal appeal. Attempting to film in Constantinople in the summer was tough and not so easy in the immense studio in Berlin in the winter. It was impossible to heat the space properly and so attendants supplied hot water bags and fur coats to the performers when they were not before the camera in their summery costumes. When released it was described as being artistic and entertaining, the characterisation clever and the adaptation met with the author’s full approval.

In the Spring of 1925, Malcolm was cast in perhaps the most prestigious role to date – the male lead opposite the celebrated American actress Betty Blythe in the romantic drama A Daughter of Israel (Le puits de Jacob or Jacobs Well. 1925). He left early April to begin exteriors in Palestine, Cairo and Constantinople followed by some interiors at the Belleville studio in the apache quarter of Paris. They certainly lived it up with lavish dining, cocktails, liqueurs and wine as bills from the Hotel Tokatlian in Constantinople attested.  Based upon a novel by Pierre Benoit, Jacobs Well was the story of Agar, a child of the ghetto who becomes a famous cabaret-dancing girl in Haifa, Constantinople and other places in the East. She marries a crippled Jew to free herself from a distasteful profession but meets a man she truly loves. It was sadly slammed by the critics being described as terrible, outdated, disjointed and ‘a hopeless mess’ and Tod as the hero was ‘uninspiring.’
 
Perhaps encouraged by Betty Blythe, his co-star and companion of several months, Tod must have thought of visiting America and it was mentioned in November 1924 that he was threatening to desert the UK for America. At some point in 1925, after the completion of Jacob’s Well, it looks like he did visit America and perhaps spent sometime in New York, and then, Hollywood perhaps attempting to network and gain a suitable film contract. Remarkably, given his track record, nothing happened and by mid-October 1925 he returned to London empty handed and no doubt rather disappointed.
 
But in early 1926 he was lucky to find some work in two pictures for Stoll: The Chinese Bungalow (1926) with Matheson Lang filmed partly on the Riviera and in the Stoll London studio) and Maurice Elvey’s The Woman Tempted (1926).  The latter, was an exotic production set in Cairo and British stately homes but with an ordinary story concerning the unmasking of the machinations of an evil society woman. Tod’s performance was ‘natural and sincere’ and although he had little to do, he did it well.
 
Once again Tod ventured over to the continent and in the summer of 1926 was engaged to play the lead in Henri Diamant-Berger’s La Rue de La Paix (1926) with Andree Lafayette filmed at Natan’s studios in Montmartre, Paris and Fred LeRoy’s Le Berceau de Dieu (1926, The Cradle of God).  
 
He was also due to appear in a new picture from the famed French director Leonce Perret which seemingly did not materialise. However, he must have spent a pleasant winter of 1926 and spring of 1927 on the Riviera where he appeared in the leading role in the tense and moving drama André Cornélis (1927, Sins of Desire) for Jean Kemm, with a story revolving around love, jealousy and revenge. Tod’s ‘exceedingly competent’ performance was admired for its display of ‘real power,’ in the dual role as the Hamlet like hero and his father.
 
In a brief visit to the UK in mid 1927 he was filmed in another supporting role in Poppies of Flanders (1927) for Arthur Maude at BIP. A strong story about the rehabilitation and ultimate self sacrifice of a waster, Tod was effective as the lover of the heroine played by Eve Gray.

Afterward he went to Italy to take a more leading part in a Pittalaga film called Carnival of Venice (1928) filmed in Turin, and Aix le Bains and with exteriors on the Lido in Venice. A romantic drama about a bored millionaire (Tod) and the daughter of an improverished Italian nobleman it had a masked ball sequence in colour.  He was described as having a ‘pleasing personality’ and played his part with ‘ease and distinction.’

Thereafter, he appeared in several other continental productions filmed in France, Germany and Italy including Saxophone Susie (1928), Mon Paris (1928), The Hour of Decision (1928, The Woman Disputed), Sins of Fashion (1928), Die Selige Exzellenz (1929), The Midnight Waltz (1929, Der Mitternachtswalzer), Napoli che canta (1930) and another film for the Italian company Pittaluga entitled The Double Adventure (1931). Of these Tod’s performance in Sins of Fashion, a tale of love and treachery set in Parisian cabarets and couture, was thought to be ‘excellent’ and he displayed ‘real passion.’
 

He was also in the first British International Film Distributors (BIFD) film After the Verdict (1929), a drama about a young aristocratic (Warwick Ward) who is charged with murdering a woman infatuated with him with Tod playing the faithful friend. It was thought that he acted ‘with complete understanding of a none too appealing part.’
 
Tod was in great demand on the continent because there were ‘few young men who look or are typically British’ and yet, in focusing his attention in Europe he lost touch with British producers. After marrying the actress Vera Jane Wood in early 1931, a marriage that clearly did not last long, he made two British pictures Love’s Old Sweet Song (1933) and the thriller Nine Forty-Five (1934) but then faded from view entirely.
 
He became active again in the air force during World War 2 and was made a squadron leader. In July 1939 he married Ruth Pam Burrows and had two daughters Felicity and April.
 
Tod’s family on his father’s side had Scottish roots and at some point, before 1937, his brother Kenneth moved to Wellbank, near Dundee. Here he became well known for making rugs using traditional Scottish methods. During the war his mother Belle and another brother Quentin also lived in Wellbank, presumably with Kenneth. Belle died there in 1944 and Quentin died in London in 1947. When his brother Kenneth married in September 1948 in Scotland, Malcolm attended the wedding and it was stated he had travelled from Austria to attend. According to his daughter April he was at the time stationed in occupied Austria looking after the British troops stationed in Carinthia.
 
 What he did in later life is not known and according to the Internet Movie Database he died on 1st July 1968 at Pitlochry in Scotland.

All images (unless specified in the caption) and text © copyright Gary Chapman / Jazz Age Club and must not be re-used without prior consent
Sources
 
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Documents relating to A Daughter of Israel sold on ebay.com