Eric Mayne

Biography

A son of Dublin, Eric Mayne crossed the Irish Sea to read the classics at Westminster and Durham, then spent three decades declaiming iambic pentameter from Dublin’s Abbey to London’s West End. By the time he sailed for America, Shakespeare’s rhythms were in his bloodstream; later he would formalize the habit, teaching the Bard to sun-drenched undergraduates at Los Angeles University College. Six feet of tweed, beard, and baritone, Mayne looked as though he had stepped out of a history book, so silent-era casting offices handed him swords, scowls, or punchlines. He hit the ground running in 1919 as the villain opposite Evelyn Greeley in Oscar Apfel’s swashbuckler The Oakdale Affair, then traded up to Victor Grandet, second only to Rudolph Valentino, in The Conquering Power (1921). Audiences remember him best as the grandiose medico Dr. Saulsbourg, sent flying by Harold Lloyd’s slapstick in Dr. Jack (1922)—a template later polished by Sig Ruman. John Ford hoisted Mayne’s name high again in Cameo Kirby (1923), billing him as the courtly Colonel Randall, and the assignments kept tumbling in. Talkies trimmed his stature but not his stamina: he slipped into white coats for East Lynne (1931) and Rackety Rax (1932), lingered in crowd scenes, and never stopped clocking studio hours. When the final call came in February 1947, he was still on a Hollywood lot, a lifelong trouper working until the lights went out.