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1-50 of 343
- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Silent film actor and director, son of Sidney Drew and his first wife, Mrs. Sidney Drew, and first cousin of actors John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, and Ethel Barrymore. Although his famous parents had hoped for him to choose another career than the theatre and sent him to military school, the draw of the family tradition was too strong. He toured in plays with his parents and his cousin Lionel, who encouraged him to enter motion pictures. He had a brief but prominent career as a film actor, followed by an equally brief but more prominent period as a director. In 1915, he volunteered for service with the Lafayette Escadrille flying corps, in which he served with future director William A. Wellman. He was shot down and killed by the Germans in the last year of the World War. His father never got over the tragedy and himself died less than a year later at the age of 54.- Cinematographer
- Director
- Producer
American-born English inventor and technician, a pioneer of early cinema design, photography, development, and patents. He was born to English parents in Richmond, Virginia, on July 23, 1854. His parents moved with young Birt to North Carolina and started a plantation there. However, the U.S. Civil War erupted and both parents died defending the plantation. Young Acres, orphaned at 10, went to live with his aunt in Virginia. She recognized his artistic and inventive talents and sent him to Paris to study at the Sorbonne Art Studios. He became enthralled with photography and began to study the science of cameras and the potential for moving pictures. Upon his return from France, he set out on a long journey through the American West. He worked as a lumberjack and studied and traded with Native American tribes. Eventually, his love of photography led him to move to England, where he opened a photography and painting studio in Ilfracombe, Devon. He applied himself to the study and development of photographic chemistry. He wrote scholarly articles on photography and chemical development and became rather well-known in the photographic community. He was invited to join the Royal Meteorological and Photographic Societies. In 1891, he was invited to take over the running of Elliott & Sons, the leading British maker of photographic plates and paper. He moved to London with his relatively new family. He was especially fond of nature photography and developed a slide projector which could crudely replicate, by shuffling rapidly through images, the motion of waves, clouds, and wind-blown trees, a precursor using the persistence of vision effect that would make motion pictures possible. In 1894, Acres met Robert W. Paul, who was interested in creating films that could be shown on Thomas A. Edison's new kinetoscope. Together they invented a camera that would make 35 mm films compatible with Edison's machine. Acres used it to create the first film to be shot in England, Clovelly Cottage, Barnet (1895) or "lncident in Clovelly Cottage," filmed at Acres's home. Acres and Paul began making films of various sporting events as well as human interest and comedy pieces. But the two men were incompatible partners and split up angrily in 1895. Each went his own way, and they became competitors in the business of projector manufacture and sales. Acres in January, 1896, presented the first public projection of motion picture film in Britain with screenings at the Lyonsdown Photographic Club and the Royal Photographic Society. He presented his films at a Royal Command Performance at Marlborough House that summer and was invited to photograph the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Cardiff Exhibition. With a prescient concept of a home-movie market, he invented a 17.5 mm camera called the Birtac that used half the normal amount of film and was small enough to be used by non-professional individuals. His original projector, the Kineopticon, or Kinetic Lantern, he continued to develop and improve. He founded a company, The Northern Photographic Works (later Whetstone Photographic Works), in London. He continued to invent and develop products for motion picture photography, but was reluctant to take part in the increasing entertainment market for films. Thus his business began to suffer, since he preferred to promote (and lecture about) scientific and nature-oriented cinema. He was twice bankrupted and by 1900 had abandoned the film business. He died from peritonitis following appendicitis on December 27, 1918, at 64, survived by his wife of 27 years, Annie, and their two children. He is buried in Walthamstow Cemetery in Greater London.- British stage actress who appeared in a few silent films. She had a stage career in England and the United States which last half a century. Among her performances on the London stage were "Becky Sharp," "Very Little Hamlet," "Outward Bound," and "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," in which she supported Mrs. Patrick Campbell. She played on Broadway in "The Ghost Train." She died in a London nursing home at the age of 70 from complications following a fall and a broken leg.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
American stage actor, musical comedy star, and vaudevillian who was a legendary figure of his time and who fathered a family of performers who went on to notable careers in motion pictures. Born Edward Fitzgerald at 23 8th Avenue in New York City, March 9, 1856, to an Irish-immigrant tailor, Richard Fitzgerald, and his wife Mary, Eddie moved to Chicago with his family after his father's death in an insane asylum from syphilis in 1862. His mother reportedly cared for Mary Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's widow, during Mrs. Lincoln's mental illness. At the age of 8, Eddie began entertaining on the street for tips, doing acrobatic dances. He changed his name to Foy when he was 15, and he and partner Jack Finnigan went on the road, dancing for meals in bars. They got work as supernumeraries in dramatic productions and Foy claimed to have worked in such a capacity with the leading actor of his day, Edwin Booth. With another partner, Jim Thompson, Foy traveled for three years in a saloon/theatre circuit through the West, including an extended stay in Dodge City, Kansas, where he met Doc Holliday, 'William Barclay 'Bat' Masterson', and Wyatt Earp. Also on the circuit was a girl singer act, the Howland Sisters. Eddie fell for one of them, Rose Howland, and they married in 1879. In 1882, the four (Thompson had married another singer) returned East, joining the Carncross Minstrels in Philadelphia. Shortly thereafter, however, Rose Foy and her newborn died in childbirth. By 1887, Foy was back in the West, touring with David Henderson's troupe across the country. He met Lola Sefton in San Francisco and they were a couple for the next decade until her death. (Many sources described them as husband and wife, though no record of a marriage has been found.) After Sefton's death, Foy started his own company and two years later married one of his dancers, Madeline Morando. She gave him eleven children, the seven surviving ones becoming world-famous in their father's act as The Seven Little Foys. In 1903, while playing the Iroquois Theatre, Foy heroically attempted to calm the crowd after fire broke out. Six hundred people died. Foy escaped by crawling through a sewer. Three years after bringing his children into the act, Foy and his family appeared in a film for Mack Sennett, one of only a handful the senior Foy would do. However, his children, in particular Bryan Foy and Eddie Foy Jr., would enjoy substantial careers in the movies. Eddie Sr. continued to headline in vaudeville and musical theatre until his death from a heart attack in 1928 while performing in vaudeville in Kansas City, Missouri.- British author, journalist, and playwright. Before serving as drama critic for the London Daily Express, Hastings clerked in the British War Office and wrote stories and sketches for various newspapers and magazines including "The Bystander," for which he was assistant editor. He wrote a number of plays, including "The New Sin" and "The Angel in the House." He died at 47 in London following a long illness.
- American actor, long on the stage, who made a handful of film appearances. His 54-year career began in 1864 when he left his native Leicester, Massachusetts to join the Holman Opera Company. He progressed through juvenile roles to leading men and into character parts, in such plays as "David Harum," "The Henrietta," and "The Spenders." He appeared in a 1915 film version of "David Harum" as well. He retired in 1918 and lived in the Hollywood Hotel in Los Angeles. He died there in his room, at age 83, survived by his wife, the former Ella Chloe Myers.
- English-born American stage actor who appeared in a few films. Wise began acting with a stock company in Dixon, California, and spent the next 45 years onstage. In 1875, he joined the William Gillette company and toured for twelve years, having a resounding success particularly in "The Private Secretary." His New York stage debut in 1888 was in "Lost in New York." He had a very successful run (two years) on Broadway in "Are You a Mason?". He was known as one of the most successful Falstaffs of his time. During his run in "Behold the Dreamer" in Chicago, he was taken ill and left the show to return to New York, where he died a month later from complications of asthma and heart disease. A long-time member of the actors club The Lambs, he was Shepherd of that organization at the time of his death.
- American character actor of silent films. As a boy, Cassady sang aboard a passenger steamer, the Republic, as it sailed between Cape May and his native Philadelphia. Cassady began his adult career under the vaudeville management of Ed Harrigan, then toured in stock productions for twenty-five years with the Thomas Shea theatrical company. Shea transformed his theatrical troupe into a vaudeville company and Cassady remained with him in that arena for several years. He entered films in 1914 and appeared in nearly thirty roles before returning to the stage in 1916. He died of pneumonia while on tour with the Donald Kerr-Effie Watson company on the Schubert circuit, in Spokane, Washington, in 1928.
- British playwright, several of whose plays were adapted for the screen. He began his theatrical career as an actor in Shakespearean plays in London in 1875. His real success, however, came as a playwright. Initially he collaborated with Cecil Raleigh, but made his greatest accomplishments as a solo writer of light comedy. He died in London six weeks before the death of his wife, Kate Compton, who had appeared in virtually all of his plays onstage.
- American actress, newspaper reporter, song writer, and film scenarist of the silent period.
She married Churchill Harvey-Elder, a member of a prominent family in Whittier, California, in approximately 1903.
She was an actress from at least September 13, 1908, when a San Francisco Call article said, "Leola Maye, who off the stage is Mrs. Churchill Harvey-Elder, is a member of the Kold and Dill company this season and will appear in the cast when the German comedians open at the Princess some time in November.
In 1915, she joined the Oliver Morosco stock company in Los Angeles, and later toured the east coast and worked with some frequency both as an actress and as a writer in pictures. She died at 37 in the Windsor Sanatarium in Glendale, California, survived by her second husband, Victor McLean. - American actor who entered pictures when ill health forced him to reduce his active stage career. He was raised in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where his father was a department chairman at Williams College. His mother was the well-known classical composer Mary Turner Salter. He spent many years in vaudeville and stock, and made his Broadway debut in 1912. During a 1926 tour in which he played one of the leading roles in "What Price Glory?" Salter was stricken with influenza and forced to leave the show. His health did not allow him to return to the stage as actively as before, but he did manage a play in Australia, before returning to America and making a few pictures, primarily Westerns. But his health had declined drastically since the 1926 influenza bout. He died at 42 from complications of influenza.
- American film critic who dabbled in screenwriting. A native of Troy, New York, she grew up in Passaic, New Jersey. She married at 16 and went on the stage, appearing on Broadway and on tour in productions ranging from Shakespeare to the "Floradora Sextette." Her career faltered, as did her marriage and a subsequent one, and she entered the newspaper business with the help of her father, Lorenzo Underhill, who owned the "New York Sportsman." She was hired by the "New York Tribune" in 1908 and wrote dramatic criticism, eventually becoming the now-rechristened "Herald-Tribune"'s film reviewer. An automobile accident in 1919 nearly ended her career and completely undermined her health permanently. She was forced to leave her position for some months while recuperating. She began writing film scenarios in the mid-Twenties, although films she was actually credited on are scant. She succumbed to her longtime health problems, dying in her apartment at the Whitby Hotel in New York City on May 18, 1928.
- American actress of silent films. A former beauty queen who had once been selected as "one of the seven most beautiful girls in the United States," she appeared briefly in films before retiring as a teenager to work as an artist. At the time of her death at 21 from pneumonia in 1928, she was working as a sketch artist for the Los Angeles Examiner. She was buried in Chicago, Illinois.
- Actor
- Writer
American stage actor and director who made numerous silent film appearances. Blinn was born and raised in San Francisco and attended nearby Stanford University. But his stage career had begun years before, when he made his acting debut at age six. Following his education, he resumed acting, eventually becoming a prominent figure on Broadway. He directed many of the plays he appeared in. In 1914, he made his first film and kept busy on screen and on stage for the remainder of his life. During the volatile strike of stage actors in 1919 that led to the formation of the actors' union, Actors Equity, Blinn was one of a minority of actors who sided with the opposition, the producers. He served as president of the Actors Fidelity League, which unsuccessfully fought the formation of the actors' union. During a vacation at Journey's End, his country home in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, Blinn was thrown from a horse. He appeared to be recuperating well, but the injury to his arm became infected and led to respiratory failure. He died on 24 June 1928 at 56.- American journalist, short-story writer, and film scenarist. Duffy was editor of Redbook magazine and a most prolific contributor of short stories to it and other serial magazines. He had written over 200 stories by the age of 23. His popularity as a writer led to employment by First National Studios as a scenario and title writer in 1919, and he wrote for dozens of films before dying suddenly at the studio while dictating a script. He was 32.
- Austro-Hungarian actor and playwright, long in America. The son of an Austrian nobleman and grandson of novelist Joseph Von Eltoos, Ditrichstein was born in Hungary but spent his early years in Berlin, where he made his stage debut. His reputation in Europe grew and he was coaxed into appearing in the United States. He learned English quickly and joined John Drew's theatrical company. He made great successes in "Trilby" and "Hedda Gabler" and appeared as well in successful plays he wrote or co-wrote, among them "The Great Lover," "Are You a Mason?" and "Gossip" (written with Clyde Fitch). He made a few film appearances, mainly in film versions of his own plays. He abandoned America in 1924, returning to Europe and living in Italy and Austria. He died in Vienna in 1928 at the age of 63.
- American playwright, many of whose plays were filmed. The leading light of early twentieth-century light comedy and farce and one of the most commercially successful playwrights of his era, Hopwood, a native of Cleveland, Ohio, graduated from the University of Michigan, which would later be the beneficiary of much of his substantial estate. He began a career as a journalist for a Cleveland newspaper as its New York correspondent, but within a year had one of his plays, "Clothes," produced on Broadway. Thereafter followed a string of hits written solely or in collaboration, among them "Getting Gertie's Garter," "The Bat," and "Seven Days." His plays were looked upon at the time as extremely risqué and one of them, "The Demi-Virgin," which featured suggestive subject matter and near-nude actresses, led to a Supreme Court determination over its alleged obscenity. (The court ruled in Hopwood's favor.) His Prohibition-era plays of flappers, bathtub gin, and jazz were iconic for his age, and his own life was reflected in aspects of his plays. He was a heavy drug and alcohol user, and he kept his homosexuality tightly concealed. Despite making millions of dollars a year in royalties, he was known as a tightwad. An inveterate proponent of night life, he died while vacationing on the Riviera under somewhat mysterious circumstances. Ultimately it was ruled that he had drowned, though bruises on his body and the simultaneous presence in the vicinity of an angry ex-lover who had reportedly threatened him have kept suspicion alive. The University of Michigan established the Hopwood Prize with his bequest, providing funds and education for many future leading lights of the American theatre.
- British actor, primarily in America. Owen directed theatre productions and served as a casting director for the stage as well as for Paramount Pictures. He was also a professional playreader for a production agency. Following a week's illness, he died of diphtheria at 55 in Rockville Center, New York, and was buried there.
- Director
- Writer
- Actor
American director and erstwhile actor. Originally a performer on the stock and vaudeville circuits, especially the Mittenthal Bros. circuit, he appeared with his wife Josephine Foy in a vaudeville show entitled "The Inspector." Noticed in this show by producer Thomas H. Ince, Sidney entered films in approximately 1913 as a performer and quickly was promoted to directing pictures. He involved himself in production as a minority owner of the Christie Film Company. He attempted retirement, but was coaxed back into directing by Syd Chaplin, whom he directed in Charley's Aunt (1925). While visiting London in 1928, he died at 56 of a heart attack.- Legendary British stage actress who made a few silent film appearances. The daughter of strolling players, she was born in Coventry into an almost exclusively theatrical family. Her grandparents were actors, as were all six of her siblings. But only her son, Edward Gordon Craig, would in any way approach her fame in the theatre, albeit as a designer rather than as an actor. She made her debut in 1856 at the age of 8 before an audience which included Queen Victoria. By age 11, she had played a dozen roles including Puck. At 16, after showing early brilliance, she played "An American Cousin" (a year before the famed American production clouded by Lincoln's assassination) and then retired. After six years, still only 22, she returned to the stage and in 1875 played a landmark Portia in "The Merchant of Venice." For the next three decades, she played every major Shakespearean role opposite the greatest British tragedians, in England and in America. Her long association with theatrical giant Henry Irving ended with his death, but a year later, in 1906, she began a long professional and personal relationship with George Bernard Shaw. After more than half a century onstage, she undertook a tour of England, America, and Australia, lecturing on the theatre and on Shakespeare. She was coaxed into a film appearance in 1916 and played in a handful of additional pictures through 1922. Created a Dame by George V in 1925, she was the recipient of virtually every honor available to a figure of the English-speaking stage. After a long illness, she died at 81 from a combination of stroke and heart attack at her home in Smallhythe Place, Tenterdon, Kent, England. Her long estranged husband, James Carew, survived her.
- American actor of silent films. A native of Albany, New York, the son of a railroad engineer, he began a career in government, serving as confidential stenographer and then secretary to Governor William Sulzer of New York. Sulzer's impeachment and removal from office left Crane without a job, and he obtained a commission in the U.S. Navy. While stationed at the Navy's San Diego, California submarine base, Crane met a number of visiting movie personalities including Allan Dwan, who suggested the handsome young officer try the movies. Following the war, he did so, making his debut in 1919. He gained work as a leading man, but more frequently played darker roles. An attack of pleurisy led him to a rest cure in the resort of Saranac Lake, New York. Pneumonia developed and he died three months later, aged 37.
- Director
- Cinematographer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
American director, cinematographer, and assistant director of silent films. A native of Chicago, Urson was the nephew of E.J. Hite of the Thanhauser Film Co. With his uncle's help, Urson was trained as a cameraman and eventually relocated to California as a camera operator for Fine Arts Productions. Director Marshall Neilan hired him as an assistant director, which led to work as cinematographer for James Cruze on several films. From 1920 on, Urson worked closely as an assistant director with Cecil B. DeMille on most of the latter's films, simultaneously directing his own for DeMille and others. Urson drowned while on a visit to Michigan, at 41.- Writer
- Additional Crew
Hungarian journalist who became a war correspondent for American newspapers before turning to Hollywood, where he worked for several film studios as a writer and story supervisor. Following service in the First World War as a correspondent for the New York Sun, he signed with M-G-M as a writer. Later he was employed by Universal Pictures and, at the time of his death following a brief illness, was story supervisor for First National Pictures. His cremated remains were returned to Hungary.- American playwright, author, and stage director who acted in a few silent films. He was the twin brother of actor J. Edwin Brown, who with sister Alice Brown survived him. He was buried at Hollywood Cemetery, Hollywood, California.
- Canadian vaudevillian and stage actor who appeared in several silent films. As a dramatic actor, he appeared in such plays as "The Pearl of Pekin," "The Hole in the Ground," and "Dear House of Ireland." Later he entered vaudeville with a sketch show, "The Race Tout's Dream," which occupied him for many years. He made occasional appearances in films and lived in Hollywood, but continued on the vaudeville circuit until his death from a heart attack in his sleep, at age 54.
- Italian actor who was brought to America as a young leading man, but died before living up to his promise. Born Lido Manetti, he studied civil engineering in his native Italy, but entered the theatre and then films subsequent to his schooling. After a number of Italian films, he was noticed by a Universal studio talent scout and brought to Hollywood. After a brief stay at Universal, where he was renamed Arnold Kent, he signed a contract with Paramount. He was playing a prominent role in The Four Feathers (1929) at the time of his death, which resulted from his being struck one evening on a Hollywood street by a car driven, coincidentally, by a film extra. He was replaced in the film and his scenes reshot. He was 28.
- American newspaperman who briefly wrote titles for silent films. A native of New York State, Conway was raised by his mother, a schoolteacher, in The Bronx, New York. As a boy, he worked as a streetcar conductor. He had a short career in baseball, playing with the Brooklyn Federals. A friend who worked as an office boy for the entertainment trade paper Variety got Conway a job. A failure in his first position as advertising salesman, Conway was given an opportunity to review vaudeville shows. He seemed destined to fail in this as well, until he turned in a review written almost entirely in slang. The notion caught on and Conway used slang for all his future reviews in the paper, which became famous for its Variety-ese. Conway became a beloved figure on Broadway and in sports circles, writing not only reviews but features and columns on nightlife, baseball, and boxing. His reputation as a humorist and slang-artist was unsurpassed on the Great White Way. He was lured to Hollywood briefly to liven up the titles for a number of silent films, and it was there that he first developed indications of heart trouble. He returned to New York for treatment and was ordered by his doctor to take a trip to Bermuda for rest, on the theory that the absence of telephones in Bermuda would force Conway to forget his normal activities and concentrate on recovery. Four days after his arrival in Bermuda, Conway died, aged 40. His wife of one year survived him. He was buried in his family plot in Albany, New York.
- Actor
- Writer
- Director
American actor-director-writer-producer of silent pictures, formerly a singer and vaudevillian. A native of San Francisco's Telegraph Hill, he was one of four sons born to Rocco Beban, a Dalmatian immigrant, and Johanna Dugan, from County Cork, Ireland.
He exhibited singing talent at an early age and was known in San Francisco theater circles as "The Boy Baritone." By age 8, according to a 1920 newspaper interview, "[his] first professional job was singing at $8 a week at the Vienna Garden on Stockton Street. Then came boy parts with the McGuire, Rial and Osborne stock company at the Grand Opera house and the McKee Rankin stock company at the old California, where I used the name of George Dinks."
After his father continued to block his career choice, getting him fired from every one of those jobs, he ran away from home at the age of 14. He appeared in light opera and on stage with vaudevillians Weber & Fields. He recalled in the same 1920 interview that, "Marie Cahill offered me my first chance on Broadway, when I was about 22, in her first starring vehicle, the musical comedy 'Nancy Brown,' at the Bijou."
He played in vaudeville and legit theater for a number of years, primarily doing caricatured Frenchmen, before making his film debut in 1915. In his play (later film) "Sign of the Rose," (A.K.A. "The Alien") and in Thomas Ince's "The Italian," he sought to change the stereotype of Italian immigrants as all being members of The Black Hand (mafioso).
He told the San Francisco Examiner in 1910 that he "learned how to imitate Italian speech and talk Italian dialect with a proper accent," from his childhood days spent teasing and stealing fruit from local Italian gardeners and grape growers. "Also that was where I first learned to appreciate Italian character, to recognize that honesty and industry and gentleness of spirit are its attributes."
He wrote and/or directed many of his later films, few of which survive.
He retired in late 1926 following the death of his wife, the stage actress Edith Ethel MacBride, and by midsummer, 1928, completed work on his dream home on a bluff overlooking the Pacific in Playa del Rey, California. His August 19 housewarming became international news when two guests, the Western star Tom Mix and the vaudevillian William Morrissey, duked it out over Morrissey's comment that Mix's horse, Tony, would have a career in the talkies, because at least he could snort, but what could Mix do?
Five weeks later, while vacationing at June Lodge Dude Ranch at Big Pine, California, Beban was thrown from a horse and seriously injured on September 29, 1928. He died in Los Angeles several days later, from the effects of the fall and from uremic poisoning. His remains were cremated.
He was survived by his 14-year-old son, George Beban Jr., who had appeared with his father (using the stage name Bob White) in a few films, and who would have a short career in the 1940's playing supporting roles.
George Beban, Sr. was the grandfather of the cinematographer Richard Beban, and great-granduncle of the screen and TV writer Richard W. Beban.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Slapstick comedian known for his charming, white-painted face and clownish smile, mugged his way to being a very highly paid and popular actor. His career was marred by personal problems, and his fortune was lost to high spending. By the time he died, he'd already been hospitalized for a nervous breakdown and was penniless. He was 39 years old.- American stage actor who appeared in some films. As a boy, he traveled with circuses as an elephant tender, before embarking on an acting career at 17. He appeared on Broadway and in touring companies in such plays as "Graustark," "A Cure for Curables," and "Tiger Rose." His son, James Lewis Jr., was also an actor, but predeceased his father by twenty years. The senior Lewis devoted his later years to charitable causes and teaching acting. He died suddenly while preparing for a charity event.
- American character actor of silent films, Edward Connelly, a native New Yorker, was a newspaperman before he became an actor, being a reporter for the New York Sunl. At 25 he joined a theatrical stock company in Kansas City and appeared subsequently on Broadway in such plays as "Shore Acres," "The Belle of New York," "Babbitt," "The Wild Duck," and his own production of "Marse Covington," which he later filmed (Marse Covington (1915)). Moving to Hollywood, he became a contract player at MGM, where he remained until his death from influenza in 1928.
- Writer
- Production Manager
British-born playwright J. Hartley Manners, of Irish extraction, spent many years in the United States. In his twenties, in Australia, he began a relatively successful acting career and made his debut in London's West End in 1898. Joining the company of famed actor-manager Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, he toured the provinces as an actor. For famed actress Lily Langtry, with whom he was acting, he wrote the play "The Crossways" in 1902, which he produced and co-starred in. At the end of that year Manners, Langtry and the play traveled to America, where it had a brief Broadway run. Manners acted for only another two years, but devoted himself from 1902 to playwrighting, managing to write or collaborate on more than 30 plays in the next twenty-six years. In 1909 his play "The Great John Ganton" introduced one of the century's great theatrical stars, Laurette Taylor, to Broadway. Manners married Taylor and wrote and produced ten plays for her over the next decade. One of these, "Peg o' My Heart," was a huge success, spawning eight road companies during its Broadway run, playing more than 11,000 collective performances in its first nine years. It was filmed several times. An unproduced play was the posthumous source of the musical "The Gay Divorce," a Broadway hit for Fred Astaire and Cole Porter (later filmed as The Gay Divorcee (1934)). Manners had surgery to treat esophageal cancer in November, 1928, and died three weeks later.- Actor
- Producer
American leading man of silent pictures who specialized in Westerns. His mother and father were, respectively, a singer and an actor, and he and his younger brother William Farnum were introduced to the theatre at an early age. Raised in Maine, Dustin attended the East Maine Conference Seminary, but left school to go on the stage at the age of fifteen. With his brother, he formed a vaudeville act consisting largely of tumbling and wrestling. He spent several years touring in stock companies before making a great success in the play "Arizona" in New York. After a number of Broadway hits, he went to Cuba in 1913 to star in a film, Soldiers of Fortune (1914). Soon thereafter, Cecil B. DeMille gave Farnum the leading role in the film version of one of Farnum's Broadway hits, "The Squaw Man." He followed this smash hit with a number of film versions of plays he had starred in on Broadway. His brother William had himself become a big star in pictures, and the two of them signed contracts with the Fox Film Corporation. Although Dustin Farnum played a wide variety of roles, he tended toward Westerns and became one of the biggest stars of the genre. At the age of fifty-two, Farnum retired from films and, but for a few stage roles, lived quietly with his third wife, actress Winifred Kingston for three years, until his death in 1929 from kidney failure.- Writer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
American songwriter who composed hundreds of songs, many of them now standards. The daughter of a journalist, Whitson was born in Hickman County, Tennessee, where she collaborated with her sister Alice on lyrics. She also wrote poetry and was widely published as a poet and fiction writer. In 1909, she had a hit with her song "Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland," repopularized years later in the film In the Good Old Summertime (1949). Her most enduring song came in 1910: "Let Me Call You Sweetheart." She died at 51 in Nashville and was buried there.- Actor
- Writer
- Editor
American leading man of silent pictures. Born into affluence in Chicago, he attended the University of Chicago on scholarship and remained there as a professor of psychology and philosophy. A chance visit to the school by actor- manager Donald Robertson led to Sills abandoning his career and joining Robertson's stock company as an actor in 1905. Three years later he went to New York and was an immediate Broadway success. After nearly twenty productions, he was wooed into films by producer William A. Brady. Sills debuted in The Pit (1914) and was just as immediately a success in movies. His stalwart personality and handsome looks brought him a following, and his talent extended to a wide variety of roles in an equally wide variety of genres. Although he free-lanced for many years, working at almost every studio, he signed with First National in 1924 and made a couple dozen films there. Still popular at the advent of sound, he seemed assured of a continued career, but physical, emotional, and financial difficulties disrupted his life in the late 1920s. He died suddenly of a heart attack while playing tennis in 1930 at the age of 48. He was survived by his second wife, actress Doris Kenyon, and his two children.- Alma Rubens was born Alma Genevieve Reubens in San Francisco, California. She was interested in entertaining at an early age. Like most young girls, she enjoyed fantasy play acting and by the time she was 19 had become a full-fledged star. She didn't have to wait long like some of the starlets who haunted casting offices continually. Her break came in 1916 in the film Reggie Mixes In (1916). Six more films followed that year, and she won critical acclaim in The Half-Breed (1916). In 1917 she again starred in a box-office smash, The Firefly of Tough Luck (1917). She became a busy young actress with role after role and hit after hit. In 1924, as Mildred Gower, she performed magnificently in The Price She Paid (1924). After a busy 1925, Alma suddenly found it difficult to obtain work, but it was not because her star had suddenly dimmed--it was because of her addiction to heroin. The money she made dwindled away in search of the next high. She was in and out of mental asylums, but it didn't really help much because she was still dabbling in drugs. Weakened by her habit, she died in Los Angeles in 1931, of pneumonia. She was less than a month away from her 34th birthday. Her final two films were two years earlier, Show Boat (1929) and She Goes to War (1929).
- Actor
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American leading man and character actor of the silent period. Born in Crystal City, Missouri(though a number of popular reference works list Switzerland and Kokomo, Indiana). He is listed in the 1880 census as living in Kokomo at the age of two years. This means his date of birth must have been 1878. His father, Paul Santschi was born in Sigriswill, Switzerland and came to the U.S. as a child. Tom Santschi promoted the myth that he was born in Switzerland since it seemed much more exciting than being born in Crystal City or Kokomo. After performing as an amateur actor, he made his professional stage debut at age 19, and worked for the next decade in the theatre. He landed a small role in a film produced by Selig Polyscope, and over the next few years rose from bit player to leading man. He directed and wrote a few of his films. Following the First World War, he became more frequently seen in supporting roles, often as villains. He worked consistently until his death in 1931.- Frederick Tyrone Power was born in London, England, the son of concert pianist Harold Littledale Power and stage actress Ethel Lavenu, and the grandson of famed Irish actor Tyrone Power (1795-1841). He was educated at Dulwich College. His family emigrated to the U.S. and he was sent to Florida to work as a citrus farmer. However, he hated farming, having always wanted to be an actor, so he abandoned the citrus ranch and made his stage debut in 'The Private Secretary' in 1886. He toured the U.S., Britain, and Australia in theatrical tours, becoming a famed matinee idol and calling himself Tyrone Power II and Tyrone Power the Younger. In 1912, he was acclaimed for his Brutus in 'Julius Caesar'. In 1914, he entered films and played leading roles until age moved him into often villainous character roles. At home one night after shooting on the film 'The Miracle Man' in 1931, Power suffered a massive heart attack and died literally in the arms of his 17-year-old son, Tyrone Power (Tyrone Edmund Power Jr., as he was legally named).
- Born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1886 (some sources say 1887 or 1888, but U.S. Census records confirm 1886), he taught school. He became active in the theatre and was eventually signed by William Fox. Appearing in films for Fox as well as Samuel Goldwyn, Roscoe became best known as leading man opposite Theda Bara, with whom he starred in at least seven films. Initially known as Albert Roscoe, in the latter part of his career he appeared more frequently as Alan Roscoe.
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Entering films as an actor in 1910, John G. Adolfi soon switched careers and became a director. He turned out numerous, mostly low-budget films for minor companies, but every so often got a chance to work at a big studio like Fox. His big break came in the sound era, when he formed a partnership with actor George Arliss and directed several of Arliss' most successful films.- Director
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French director and actor of American and French films. He began his career as a stage actor at the Odeon in Paris, then at the Eclair, where he became artistic director and chief director of the theatre school in 1910. Five years later he traveled to America and began a successful career as a film director for a variety of American film companies. After more than a decade as a director, he returned abruptly to acting and appeared in a wide range of roles in a number of films before his death at 53.- Actress
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Pretty-as-a-picture Marjorie White was a charming comedienne, and although she was never the star, she stole many scenes from stars. She co-starred with some of the leading comedians of the day, such as Wheeler and Woolsey, the Three Stooges, and Joe E. Brown, and brought smiles to the faces of moviegoers and theatergoers alike. It's easy to tell she was a favorite in the 1930s.
In addition to having acting talent and screen presence, she could sing and dance, which made her fantastic in musical comedies on stage and screen. In her early career, she was teamed up with Thelma White, another popular performer and actress, and together they became a popular singing and dancing duo known as the "White Sisters".- Actor
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This elegant actor of the golden age of German cinema appeared in several masterpieces, before the cameras of such inspired geniuses as Lang, Lubitsch and Murnau. Vocation had come rather late in his life, though. Abel was indeed already 33 when he made his first film. Beforehand, he had been a forester, a gardener and a shopkeeper. But one day, while watching a film with Asta Nielsen, he was struck by revelation. He decided at once to become an actor and with the help of Nielsen in person he started a fruitful screen career. He also wrote and directed a few films. He died too soon aged only 57, but having honored the German screen with his noble, dignified figure in more than a hundred pictures.- Born on her father's farm in Green Ridge, Missouri, the youngest of five children. Moved with her family to Springfield, Missouri, where she grew up. Joined the Diemer Theatre Company during her second year of high school, and went on the road with a touring stock company at age 18, in 1907. Signed by the Powers Film Co. in New York in 1910, and proceeded to work thereafter for many companies in starring roles. In 1914, she starred in Pathe's The Perils of Pauline, the fifth serial chapter play ever made. She became an international star therein and was the leading heroine of serial films for the next several years. Following an unsuccessful attempt to achieve the same success in feature films, and with her health deteriorating, she retired in 1923, living in France until her death in 1938.
- Prolific "heavy" in American films of the silent and early talkie eras. A native of Kansas City, Missouri, Kohler left home as a teenager, working various jobs while trying to establish a career in vaudeville. During this time, according to his son, actor Fred Kohler Jr., Kohler worked in a mine and lost part of his right hand in a dynamite accident. Eventually he fell in with a touring theatrical company and worked onstage around the U.S. for several years. In his mid-twenties, he ended up in California and found roles in silent films. He quickly found a niche as a villain, by virtue of his imposing size and his fearsome features, typically and most memorably in The Iron Horse (1924). He worked primarily in Westerns, but films of all sorts benefited from his skill at screen nastiness. In a series of silent Paramount Westerns based on Zane Grey novels, Kohler not only played the heavy, but also repeated some of those roles when these films were remade as talkies a decade later. His career lasted without let-up until his sudden death due to a heart attack at 51 in 1938.
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American director of French-Dutch ancestry, born in Paris. He studied the fine arts in Paris before resettling in America. As a set designer for stage productions, he was able to break into films in 1908 doing the same work. He dabbled in screen writing and then began directing, at first sporadically, in 1914. He soon became recognized as a talent and developed a name for himself as a specialist in romantic dramas. His career lasted more than thirty-five years. Although his films include such well-known works as The Son of the Sheik (1926), Raffles (1930), and Mata Hari (1931), he never quite reached the upper reaches of his profession, but was always considered a reliable and occasionally innovative workman.- Russian-born Jewish advocate, author, and Zionist leader. Jabotinsky began a career as a journalist, but following the Russian pogroms began to devote himself to the cause of a Jewish homeland. He founded the Jewish Legion of the British Army during World War I, and led the struggle between the wars to gain acceptance of a Jewish right to the lands of Palestine. He also struggled unsuccessfully to arrange the exodus of the entire Jewish population of Poland in 1936, in view of his belief that annihilation awaited Jews there. He wrote numerous books, including a novel about Samson which served as the source for the Cecil B. DeMille movie Samson and Delilah (1949). Jabotinsky, who had changed his first name from Vladimir to Ze'ev in 1903, died of a heart attack in New York City in 1940. Although initially refused burial in Palestine and, later, the state of Israel, his body was reinterred in Jerusalem in 1964.
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John Barrymore was born John Sidney Blyth on February 15, 1882 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. An American stage and screen actor whose rise to superstardom and subsequent decline is one of the legendary tragedies of Hollywood. A member of the most famous generation of the most famous theatrical family in America, he was also its most acclaimed star. His father was Maurice Blyth (or Blythe; family spellings vary), a stage success under the name Maurice Barrymore. His mother, Georgie Drew, was the daughter of actor John Drew. Although well known in the theatre, Maurice and Georgie were eclipsed by their three children, John, Lionel Barrymore, and Ethel Barrymore, each of whom became legendary stars. John was handsome and roguish. He made his stage debut at age 18 in one of his father's productions, but was much more interested in becoming an artist.
Briefly educated at King's College, Wimbledon, and at New York's Art Students League, Barrymore worked as a freelance artist and for a while sketched for the New York Evening Journal. Gradually, though, the draw of his family's profession ensnared him, and by 1905, he had given up professional drawing and was touring the country in plays. He survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and in 1909, became a major Broadway star in "The Fortune Hunter". In 1922, Barrymore became his generation's most acclaimed "Hamlet", in New York and London. But by this time, he had become a frequent player in motion pictures. His screen debut supposedly came in An American Citizen (1914), though records of several lost films indicate he may have made appearances as far back as 1912. He became every bit the star of films that he was on stage, eclipsing his siblings in both arenas.
Though his striking matinee-idol looks had garnered him the nickname "The Great Profile", he often buried them under makeup or distortion in order to create memorable characters of degradation or horror. He was a romantic leading man into the early days of sound films, but his heavy drinking (since boyhood) began to take a toll, and he degenerated quickly into a man old before his time. He made a number of memorable appearances in character roles, but these became over time more memorable for the humiliation of a once-great star than for his gifts. His last few films were broad and distasteful caricatures of himself, though in even the worst, such as Playmates (1941), he could rouse himself to a moving soliloquy from "Hamlet". He died on May 29, 1942, mourned as much for the loss of his life as for the loss of grace, wit, and brilliance which had characterized his career at its height.- Actor
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Buck Jones was one of the greatest of the "B" western stars. Although born in Indiana, Jones reportedly (but disputedly) grew up on a ranch near Red Rock in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), and there learned the riding and shooting skills that would stand him in good stead as a hero of Westerns. He joined the army as a teenager and served on US-Mexican border before seeing service in the Moro uprising in the Philippines. Though wounded, he recuperated and re-enlisted, hoping to become a pilot. He was not accepted for pilot training and left the army in 1913. He took a menial job with the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West Show and soon became champion bronco buster for the show. He moved on to the Julia Allen Show, but with the beginning of the First World War, Jones took work training horses for the Allied armies. After the war, he and his wife, Odelle Osborne, whom he had met in the Miller Brothers show, toured with the Ringling Brothers circus, then settled in Hollywood, where Jones got work in a number of Westerns starring Tom Mix and Franklyn Farnum. Producer William Fox put Jones under contract and promoted him as a new Western star. He used the name Charles Jones at first, then Charles "Buck" Jones, before settling on his permanent stage name. He quickly climbed to the upper ranks of Western stardom, playing a more dignified, less gaudy hero than Mix, if not as austere as William S. Hart. With his famed horse Silver, Jones was one of the most successful and popular actors in the genre, and at one point he was receiving more fan mail than any actor in the world. Months after America's entry into World War II, Jones participated in a war-bond-selling tour. On November 28, 1942, he was a guest of some local citizens in Boston at the famed Coconut Grove nightclub. Fire broke out and nearly 500 people died in one of the worst fire disasters on record. Jones was horribly burned and died two days later before his wife Dell could arrive to comfort him. Although legend has it that he died returning to the blaze to rescue others (a story probably originated by producer Trem Carr for whatever reason), the actual evidence indicates that he was trapped with all the others and succumbed as most did, trying to escape. He remains, however, a hero to thousands who followed his film adventures.- American poet and writer, several of whose short stories were filmed. The son of a U.S. Army officer who inculcated in Benet and his brother, famed poet William Rose Benet, an appreciation for excellence in literature, Benet was raised around military posts. He attended Yale University, then traveled to Paris, where he met his wife, Rosemary Carr, and began to write professionally. While in Paris again on a Guggenheim Fellowship, he published the story, The Sobbin Women, which later became the basis for the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1929 for his narrative poem on the American Civil War, "John Brown's Body." He also wrote numerous radio dramas and a few screenplays before his early death at 44.