The youngest of the three acting Flugrath sisters (Edna Flugrath and Viola Dana also entered films), American silent screen actress Shirley Mason had created the role of Little Hal in the original Broadway production of The Squaw Man (filmed in 1914, 1918, and 1931) before making her screen debut with the old Edison company in 1910. She stayed with the pioneering film factory until 1918, but enjoyed her greatest success, for director Maurice Tourneur, as Jim Hawkins in a sumptuous production of Treasure Island (1920), with Lon Chaney as Pew and Charles Ogle as Long John Silver. Signing with Fox in 1920, she played a wretched little kitchen slave in Merely Mary Ann, becoming that studio's answer to Mary Pickford. There would be many more such roles to come, mostly in light programmers and including two directed by John Ford. Titles and locales changed, but little else. Often, Mason's Prince Charming would be fresh-faced Raymond McKee, who would arrive to save the day after scenes of much misery. Mason left Fox to freelance in 1925, but like her more famous sister Viola Dana, she chose to retire with the changeover to sound.
by Hans J. Wollstein
biography
