Peter Clark Macfarlane: human interest talks

              PETER CLARK MACFARLANE human interest talks
Figure
America's noted lecturer, author and interviewer of great men




Figure

Will Rogers, the Star in the Goldwyn presentation of Macfarlane's Saturday Evening Post story, 
Guile of Woman,
 expounds his theories of the motion picture art to Macfarlane, in a moment of relaxation.

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Collier's sent Macfarlane to Texas, with instructions to hunt a bear, tree it, photograph it, kill it, and write the story.  He did the job to a nicety.


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Samuel G. Blythe, noted political writer, visits Peter Clark Macfarlane at Monterey, and a heart-to-heart confab between two old 
eronies
 is the result.


Figure

This shot riddled wall is all that stood of a town in the St. Mihiel sector.  Peter Clark Macfarlane went through with the Marine Brigade Headquarters in this drive.


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Macfarlane was once a barnstorming actor.  In this picture of twenty years ago, he is seen as Defarge in 
A Tale of Two Cities.


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The lure of the 
story
 called Peter Clarke Macfarlane to strange out-of-the-way corners.  Here he combines business with pleasure and takes a day off for big game.




S
TRANGELY varied has been the busy, interesting life of Peter Clark Macfarlane.  Digger of ditches, clerk, student, court reporter, private secretary, railroad clerk, teacher of elocution, actor, lecturer, preacher, journalist, war correspondent, and fictionist—such are a few of the high lights from which Mr. Macfarlane has garnered that most precious gift, the 
human touch.
  And it is this priceless asset which characterizes every sentence of Peter Clark Macfarlane, whether it be spoken or written.



Mine has been a spotted existence
 he confessed on the 
Who's Who
 page of the Saturday Evening Post some time ago.  
Life has jested with me—not to say joshed.
  For four years Peter Clark Macfarlane was an actor—and a good one, too.  Suddenly he became 
Rev.
 Macfarlane and found himself preaching in the little church within four miles of the cheap theatre that had staged his presentation of the king in 
Hamlet.
  Then the larger world drafted his abilities, first as national secretary of a Men's Brotherhood.  Later he took up the pen professionally and was definitely started upon the path where he now stands, as one of our leading correspondents and magazine writers.  Today the name of Peter Clark Macfarlane is a familiar one in the Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, The American, the Red Book and many others.  And the same 
human touch
 has won for him the affection of the American people and the intimate friendship of statesmen, generals, kings and presidents, of whom he has so vividly and fluently written.




Lectures Are Animated Conversations



The elements of Mr. Macfarlane's platform qualities are, fundamentally pleasing personality, commanding appearance, rich and pliant voice, and an enthusiasm that is infectious.  He likes people; people like him.  He likes audiences; audiences like him.  His lectures depart absolutely from the stereotyped form; rather they are animated conversations.  He speaks as he writes—with facility and power.





How He Found the Human Touch



Digger of Ditches Clerk Student Court Reporter Private Secretary Railroad Clerk Teacher of Elocution Actor Lecturer Preacher Journalist War Correspondent Fictionist






B
Y EVERY instinct and by training Mr. Macfarlane is an actor.  Every idea, every emotion is dramatized; every period is dramatic.  The spell of his magnetism alone is sufficient to weld and hold an audience, but with it goes a humor that is delicious—ever present, irresistible and irrepressible.  A laugh seems ever bubbling just beneath the surface flow of his thoughts.




Yet he is not without power to touch the more solemn and tender emotions.  Eyes become fixed or misted over and hearts grow mellow when he sweeps his hearers up to some mountain top vision or lifts the window in a human soul and lets his auditors peep in on that which melts their sympathy.  Again the 
human touch.
  It was this ability to capture his audiences that enabled Peter Clark Macfarlane to thrill 10,000 people with his wonderful platform gifts at Dreamland Rink in San Francisco on the closing night of the last campaign.




The call of the 
story
 has beckoned Peter Clark Macfarlane from strange corners of the world.  He obtained the subject matter for his 
Gob
 stories published in the Saturday Evening Post upon an American submarine destroyer in war time patrol work.  He was in action on the Vesle and at St. Mihiel.  He went into Germany with the 2nd Division, and from his war observations the Post and Cosmopolitan featured 
African Golf,
 
Cross and Double Cross,
 
The Last Patrol
 and 
In the Enemy's Country.
  He was in England, Italy and Mexico.





An Interviewer of Celebrities



Mr. Macfarlane has rare gifts as an interviewer.  It has been his privilege to know intimately, and to write about, many of the great characters of modern history and his estimates of public men have been surprisingly justified by elapsed time.  He 
wrote up
 McKinley, Taft, Roosevelt and President Wilson.  He obtained the first authentic interview from General Goethals.  He has interviewed the mysterious Col. House, the redoubtable Hiram Johnson, generals like Wood and admirals like Sims and Rodman, and all have honored him with their confidences.






Peter Clark Macfarlane


Noted in Fiction and Scenario World



P
ETER Clark Macfarlane has written innumerable short stories which have appeared in practically all the leading magazines of the country.  His novels 
Held to Answer
 and 
The Crack in the Bell
 have enjoyed wide circulation.  In the scenario world Mr. Macfarlane is known also.  Will Rogers of 
Illiterate Digest
 fame, a Goldwyn star, is taking the leading role in the dramatization of one of Mr. Macfarlane's stories entitled 
Guile of Woman.




Lecture Subjects



Politics and Personality


The Courage to Attack


Twenty-four Hours in the Battle Zone—Not the War Zone


The Reddest Menace


Door Knobs


The Yellow Peril


Thumb Nail Sketches of Men I Have Interviewed


The Next Front





What Others Think



It would require a 
Five-Foot Shelf
 to publish the commendations of Peter Clark Macfarlane's work as an interviewer, an observationalist and a writer.  The two following letters from big men tell something of his wonderful ability on the platform.  They are from Senator Hiram Johnson and David Prescott Barrows, President of the University of California.




Of Peter Clark Macfarlane, Senator Johnson said:




As a public speaker he has few equals and no superiors.  With rare oratorial power he unites real eloquence, and with these he has the happy faculty of describing and illustrating.  I have been with many of those who are considered orators and great speakers, there are none I would rather listen to than Peter Clark Macfarlane.




Dr. Barrows wrote of him:  
He has obvious power as a speaker and a thinker, his address was not only full of eloquence and appeal, but carried with it one of the finest lessons in sound public morality and devotions to duty that I have ever heard.




The thousand people listened to Peter Clark Macfarlane at St. Mark's M. E. Church, Detroit, on a Sunday evening in November, 1920.  The Detroit Dispatch commented, as follows:—




Mr. Macfarlane showed that he is not only a great writer, but that he is also a tremendous public speaker.  He swept the audience to heights of tears, laughter and thrills.  He told intimate stories of his interviews with great men of the land, and in an intensely dramatic delivery, a gift of his dramatic days, this great speaker and writer held spellbound an audience of more than 2,000 people.




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