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1-50 of 5,286
- William Rufus Shafter was born on 16 October 1835 in Galesburg, Michigan, USA. He was married to Harriet Grimes. He died on 12 November 1906.
- Robert Henry Hall was born on 15 November 1837 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He died on 29 December 1914 in Chicago Heights, Illinois, USA.
- Loyd Wheaton was born on 15 July 1838 in Pennfield, Michigan, USA. He died on 17 September 1918.
- Frank D. Baldwin was born on 26 June 1842 in Manchester, Michigan, USA. He was an actor, known for The Indian Wars (1914) and The Adventures of Buffalo Bill (1917). He died on 22 April 1923 in Denver, Colorado, USA.
- Bronson Howard was born on 7 October 1842 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He was a writer, known for The Saphead (1920), Aristocracy (1914) and One of Our Girls (1914). He was married to Alice Culverwell. He died on 4 August 1908 in Avon-by-the-Sea, New Jersey, USA.
- Will Carleton was born on 21 October 1845 in Lenawee County, Hudson, Michigan, USA. He was a writer, known for Over the Hill to the Poorhouse (1920), Over the Hill (1931) and Jeo eondeokeul neomeoseo (1960). He died on 18 December 1912 in Brooklyn, New York, USA.
- Riley Chamberlin was born on 7 November 1854 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. He was an actor, known for His Winning Way (1914), The Star of Bethlehem (1912) and Mr. Cinderella (1914). He died on 24 January 1917 in New Rochelle, New York, USA.
- Richard Foster Baker was born on 25 January 1857 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He was a director and actor, known for The Little Girl Next Door (1916), A Bunch of Keys (1915) and Kidder and Ko (1918). He died on 21 February 1921 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Director
- Actor
- Writer
A longtime and respected stage actor, Van Dyke Brooke went into the film business in 1909. A prolific actor, writer and director for Vitagraph, he stayed with the company until 1916, when the studio cleaned house and fired many of its "old-timers". He stayed in the business as an actor until his death in 1921.- Grace Duffie Boylan was on 9 February, 1861, at Kalamazoo, Michigan, one of eleven children born to Phelix K. and Juliette Duffie. Her father, who had emigrated from Ireland, owned the Dollar House Hotel in Kalamazoo. During the American Civil War he served for eighteen months as a Captain in the 19th Michigan Infantry, Company K. Boylan attended the "Harvard Annex," (now part of Radcliffe College) and the Northeastern Conservatory of Music in Boston. After graduation she worked as a journalist in Chicago. Duffie had worked as a art critic for the Chicago Daily Inter-Ocean and wrote a column called "One-Minute Romances from Real Life" for The Chicago Journal.
Boylan published her "Kids of Many Colors" series of children's books in 1901. Theses stories were about children of diverse races and cultures and came with titles like: "Our Little Cuban Kiddies", "Our Little Eskimo Kiddies", "Our Little Hawaiian Kiddies" "Our little Indian Kiddies", "Our Little Canadian Kiddies" and "Our Little Philippine Kiddies". Boylan also authored several works of juvenile fiction, "Yama Yama Land" and "Young Folks' Uncle Tom's Cabin" (not to be confused with the Harriet Beecher Stowe book), to name a couple.
She was well known as a writer of dialect poetry and patriotic verse with works like, "If Tam O'Shanter 'd Had a Wheel, and Other Poems and Sketches", "When Mary Looks at Me.", "Who Goes There?", "The Star of Christmas Morn" and "At Christmas Time", "When the Band Played and other readings and recitations", "Hosanna and Huzzah" and "In the Transvaal".
Books by Boylan include: "The Little White Cross", "Kiss of Glory", "The Supplanter", "The Pipes of Clovis; a Fairy Romance of the Twelfth Century", "The Old House", "Steps to Nowhere", "John of Joy", "Love Finds a Way", "Conquerors" and "When Geronimo Rode" (with Forrestine C. Hooker).
In 1918 Grace Duffie Boylan wrote, "Thy Son Liveth: Messages from a soldier to his mother", and had it initially published anonymously. The book told the story of an American soldier who after he was killed on a battlefield in France was able to send his grieving mother comforting messages through Morse code and automatic writing, assuring her that whilst his body had been destroyed, his soul was alive and vigorous. Boylan would later insist that her story was true and that she was the dead soldier's mother. Years later, 'Peter O'Fallon' would base his film A Rumor of Angels (2000) on Boylan's touching story.
Boylan was married several times. In the early 1890s she published works under the name Grace Duffie Roe, a surname that her daughter Clover also used. She had at least one child with husband Robert J. Boylan (1862-1934), a well known newspaper reporter and horse racing expert. Her third husband, St. George Kempson, whom she married on 20 December, 1905, was the editor of the New York Insurance Journal. Kempson died on 12 August, 1907, after an emergency appendectomy. She married next Louis Napoleon Geldert in March of 1909. Geldert was the owner of the respected publication, The Insurance Herald of Louisville, Kentucky. He would go to be an executive officer in the Interstate Cotton Seed Crushers Association and found the industry magazine, Cotton Oil Press. In 1906 he published "The Eagle Fire Company of New York: A History of Its First Century (1806-1906)" and in 1916 compiled and edited for the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, "Facts about Georgia: a state rich in resources and opulent in opportunities".
Grace Duffie Boylan died of heart disease on 24 March, 1935, at Memphis, Tennessee. She was survived by her husband, a daughter, Clover Roscoe and son, Malcolm Stuart Boylan. She had been a member of the Arts Club of Washington (DC), Authors League of America, Poetry Society of America and past president of the National League of Pen Women. - Lloyd Neal was born on 20 October 1861 in Michigan, USA. He was an actor, known for Too Young to Marry (1931) and 6 Day Bike Rider (1934). He died on 19 August 1952 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Lule Warrenton was born on 22 June 1862 in Flint, Michigan, USA. She was an actress and director, known for The College Orphan (1915), Drugged Waters (1916) and Samson (1914). She died on 14 May 1932 in Laguna Beach, California, USA.- Hawley Harvey Crippen was born on 11 September 1862 in Coldwater, Michigan, USA. He died on 23 November 1910 in HMP Pentonville, London, England, UK.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
George Bickel was born on 17 February 1863 in Saginaw, Michigan, USA. He was an actor, known for Recaptured Love (1930), Soup to Nuts (1930) and The Politicians (1915). He was married to Beatrice Boston. He died on 5 June 1941 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Writer
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 - April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that middle-class Americans could afford, he converted the automobile from an expensive luxury into an accessible conveyance that profoundly impacted the landscape of the 20th century.- Jay Smith was born on 23 August 1863 in Michigan, USA. He was an actor, known for The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin (1918). He died on 30 March 1940 in Ventura, California, USA.
- Jennie Harris Oliver was born on 18 March 1864 in Lowell, Michigan, USA. She was a writer, known for Mokey (1942). She was married to Lucius Lloyd Oliver. She died on 3 June 1942 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA.
- Frank Campeau was born on 14 December 1864 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He was an actor, known for 3 Bad Men (1926), Battling Bunyan (1924) and The Life of the Party (1920). He was married to Sarah Estelle Lewis and Lillian Stratton Corbin. He died on 5 November 1943 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Frederic S. Isham was born on 29 March 1865 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He was a writer, known for Nothing But the Truth (1941), The Social Buccaneer (1923) and Nothing But the Truth (1929). He was married to Helen M. Frue. He died on 6 September 1922 in New York City, New York, USA.
- Lynn Pratt was born on 18 January 1866 in Sylvan Center, Michigan, USA. He was an actor, known for A Virgin Paradise (1921). He died on 9 January 1930 in New York City, New York, USA.
- Edith Ellis was born in Coldwater, Michigan, to Edward C Ellis, playwright and actor, and Ruth McCarty Ellis, an actress. She claimed she was born to the stage, her first part was at age 6, and by 10 she was a star. Two plays were written for her before she was 12 years old. Several times she was head of her own stock companies, traveling or stationary, and wrote, produced, directed, and acted in many plays. Her first writing attempt was out of necessity, when she and her brother, Edward, were stranded on the road by the unexpected disbanding of their stock company. The play was successful enough to pay their way home. Edith married Frank A. Baker, and they leased the Park Theatre and the Criterion Theatre in Brooklyn, where she directed plays for many years. They later moved to the Berkely Lyceum in New York where she directed her own play, The Point of View, which never made it to Broadway. She also wrote uncredited scenarios for silent films for Samuel Goldwyn. Their daughter, Ellis Baker, became an actress. Later, Edith married C. Becher Furness, a Canadian. She finally made it to Broadway by age 34 with her play, "Mary Jane's Pa" (1908) which ran for a then-very respectable 120 performances. She continued her career there as a playwright/director through 7 more productions through mid-1925 (see "Other works"). While none of these later efforts were particularly wildly successful, her 1925 play, "White Collars" enjoyed two film adaptations by MGM in 1929 and 1938. Her earliest film adaptations were sold to Vitagraph and Myron Selznick.
Ellis had her fascinating quirks. As her theatrical career wound down in the mid-1930s, she took up an avid interest in (using modern terminology) channeling the dead. She claimed to transcribe works by none other than George Washington (whom she claimed demanded she transcribe his definitive autobiography in a receptive transcendent state) and common citizens such as a New England farm boy named Wilfred Brandon, supposedly killed in the Revolutionary War. These oddly entertaining works attracted enough attention to warrant several printings ("Incarnation: a Plea from the Masters," first edition 1936, 1951 reprint + UK/European editions). She was plagued with vision problems by her 60s and died at what is generally believed to be age 84, although her birth date is in dispute. - William Wallace Cook was born on 11 April 1867 in Marshall, Michigan, USA. He was a writer, known for The Man Who Played Square (1924), Red Signals (1927) and '49-'17 (1917). He was married to Mary Ackley and Anna Gertrude Slater. He died on 20 July 1933 in Marshall, Michigan, USA.
- Howard Hall was born on 30 May 1867 in Decatur, Michigan, USA. He was an actor, known for The Barrier (1917), According to Law (1916) and The Weavers of Life (1917). He was married to Carrie Viola Vanderhoof. He died on 25 July 1921 in Long Beach, California, USA.
- Frank Mills was born on 24 January 1868 in Kendall, Michigan, USA. He was an actor, known for The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), The Unchastened Woman (1918) and The House of Mirrors (1916). He was married to Helen McBeth. He died on 11 June 1921 in Galesburg, Michigan, USA.
- Mabel Fenton was born on 29 March 1868 in Lawrence, Michigan, USA. She was an actress, known for Death of Nancy Sykes (1897) and How Molly Malone Made Good (1915). She was married to Charles J. Ross. She died on 19 April 1931 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- A.E. Witting was born on 21 October 1868 in Michigan, USA. He was an actor, known for The Charmer (1917), Two Men of Sandy Bar (1916) and The Son-of-a-Gun (1919). He was married to Mattie Witting. He died on 1 February 1941 in San Diego, California, USA.
- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Robert Gaillard was born on 14 November 1868 in Adrian, Michigan, USA. He was an actor and director, known for The Golden Pathway (1913), Beating the Odds (1919) and As You Like It (1912). He died on 24 September 1941 in Glendale, California, USA.- E. Lynn Summers was born on 7 June 1869 in Avon, Oakland, Michigan, USA. E. Lynn was a writer, known for Heads Win (1919), When Thieves Fall Out (1914) and A Message from Home (1913). E. Lynn died on 16 July 1938 in San Diego, California, USA.
- During the first years of the 20th century Charles Darnton was a theatre critic for the newspaper "The World" (NYC). Charles Darnton was the editor of the leaflet "Stageland" (NYC, 1909), illustrated by Marius de Zayas. Through Charles Darnton's example, a very young Byron Darnton, his nephew, began a career as journalist in NYC.
- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Walter Edwards was born on 8 January 1870 in Michigan, USA. He was a director and actor, known for The Power of the Street (1915), Who Cares? (1919) and A Girl Named Mary (1919). He died on 12 April 1920 in Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii, USA.- Additional Crew
Ray Stannard Baker was born on 17 April 1870 in Lansing, Michigan, USA. Ray Stannard is known for Wilson (1944). Ray Stannard died on 12 July 1946 in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA.- Frederick Truesdell was born on 20 May 1870 in Coldwater, Michigan, USA. He was an actor, known for Alias Jimmy Valentine (1915), My Own United States (1918) and Camille (1915). He was married to Jeanne Margaret Fournier and Ethel Dovey. He died on 9 May 1929 in Quincy, Michigan, USA.
- Actor
- Writer
Character actor in films, often portraying strident types, he is best remembered cast as "The Thin Man" (actually, "Wynant") of the hit 1934 MGM film. He Ellis was active on Broadway as an actor, producer and playwright from 1905-32 (see "Other Works"). He died in Beverly Hills, CA at age 81 in 1952.- Actor
- Writer
Louis Fitzroy was born on 24 November 1870 in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Making Matters Worse (1915), The Silent Way (1914) and Blind Husbands (1919). He was married to Margaret Cullington. He died on 26 January 1947 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Special Effects
- Visual Effects
- Art Department
Walter Hoffman was born on 1 March 1871 in Michigan, USA. He died on 11 January 1957 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
- Producer
Louis Myll was born on 29 April 1871 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He was a director and producer, known for Keep Moving (1915), The Adopted Baby (1915) and When Ciderville Went Dry (1915). He was married to Alma Hanlon and Corah White. He died on 22 April 1939 in Detroit, Michigan, USA.- Leonora Ainsworth was born on 12 June 1871 in Michigan, USA. She was a writer, known for The Madcap (1916), The Masked Substitute (1915) and The Devil and Idle Hands (1915). She was married to William C. Dowlan and Walter Irving Towne. She died on 8 September 1939 in California, USA.
- Lyricist, author and songwriter ("At Dawning", "From the Land of the Sky-Blue Water") and teacher, who taught school in Nebraska. She joined ASCAP in 1927, and her chief musical collaborator was Charles Wakefield Cadman. Her other popular-song compositions include "From Wigwam to Tepee" and "I Hear a Thrush at Eve".
- Lon Haschal was born on 17 September 1871 in Michigan. He was an actor, known for One on the Aisle (1930). He died on 13 December 1932 in Fair Haven, New Jersey, USA.
- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Like many pioneers, the work of 'Winsor McCay' has been largely superseded by successors such as Walt Disney and Max Fleischer but he more than earns a place in film history for being the American cinema's first great cartoon animator. He started out as a newspaper cartoonist, achieving a national reputation for his strips 'Little Nemo in Slumberland' and 'Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend'. Inspired by his son's flick-books, he spent four years and produced four thousand individual drawings in making his first animated cartoon 'Little Nemo', completing it in 1911. But his biggest cartoon success was 'Gertie the Dinosaur' (1913), which was the centrepiece of a vaudeville act in which the live McCay would interact with his cartoon character. For this, he single-handedly produced ten thousand individual drawings, laboriously re-drawing the background every time. It is often wrongly cited as the first animated cartoon, but it was certainly the first successful one, and influenced dozens of imitators. His 1918 production 'The Sinking of the Lusitania' was even more ambitious: comprising 25,000 drawings, it was the first feature-length American cartoon, and the second one made anywhere. He retired from film-making in the 1920s, but would subsequently describe himself as "the creator of animated cartoons". This honour, strictly speaking, belongs to the Frenchman Emile Cohl - but McCay was certainly the first to bring them to a wide audience.- Most fans of popular--and prolific--western novelist B.M. Bower would probably be shocked to find out that the "B.M." stood for "Bertha Muzzie", for B.M. Bower was indeed a woman. Born in Cleveland, MN, in 1871, her family moved to Montana when she was a small child and she grew up there, where she loved to jump on a horse and roam the open ranges, hanging out with real cowboys and absorbing as much western lore and history as she could. She married Clayton J. Bower when she was 19 (she married three times altogether). By 1904 she had published her most famous--and many consider her best--novel, "Chip of the Flying U". It sold very well and was brought to the screen three times--with Tom Mix (Chip of the Flying U (1914)), Hoot Gibson (Chip of the Flying U (1926)) and Johnny Mack Brown (Chip of the Flying U (1939)). She wrote several sequels to "Chip" among her prolific output. She eventually left Montana and moved to Oregon for a while, but then moved to Los Angeles, CA, where she died in 1940.
- Charles Hagen was born on 19 December 1871 in Michigan, USA. He was an actor, known for The City Gone Wild (1927) and The Ray Milland Show (1953). He died on 13 June 1958 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- William B. Mack was born on 8 April 1872 in Bay City, Michigan, USA. He was an actor, known for Backbone (1923), Missing Millions (1922) and Virtuous Men (1919). He was married to Gertrude O'Malley. He died on 13 September 1955 in Islip, Long Island, New York, USA.
- Writer
- Director
- Additional Crew
Pierce Kingsley was born on 5 June 1872 in Alma, Michigan, USA. Pierce was a writer and director, known for The House of Bondage (1914), Silver Threads Among the Gold (1915) and After the Ball (1914). Pierce was married to Gladys May "Minnie" Nastelske. Pierce died on 26 June 1936 in near East Alton, Illinois, USA.- Writer
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Harry von Tilzer was born on 8 July 1872 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He was a writer and composer, known for You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010), Night School (2018) and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007). He died on 10 January 1946 in New York City, New York, USA.- Writer
- Additional Crew
- Director
Rob Wagner moved to Santa Barbara from Detroit in 1906. He settled in Los Angeles about 1909. His first scenario for a film, "The Artist's Sons," was produced by Selig Studios in 1911. Between 1915 and 1918 he wrote a series of articles on the film industry for the Saturday Evening Post. Wagner was Charlie Chaplin's publicity man and confidant for many years. He was a director of Will Rogers film shorts. He was founder, editor and publisher of Rob Wagner's Script, a literary magazine for the film community. The magazine was published from 1929 to 1949.- Jefferson Osborne was born on 25 September 1872 in Bay City, Michigan, USA. He was an actor, known for The Last Egyptian (1914), The Great Radium Mystery (1919) and Homespun Folks (1920). He died on 11 June 1932 in Hondo, California, USA.
- Don Merrifield was born on 6 December 1872 in Union City, Michigan, USA. He was an actor, known for The Proof of Innocence (1922) and The Black Panther's Cub (1921). He died on 27 July 1944 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Messmore Kendall was born on 9 December 1872 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. Messmore was a producer, known for Pardon My French (1921), The Song of the Soul (1920) and Cardigan (1922). Messmore was married to Sepha Treble, Elizabeth Thomason and Katherine Grace Flynn. Messmore died on 1 May 1959 in Palm Beach, Florida, USA.- Leon Czolgosz was an American anarchist of Polish extraction who shot President William McKinley while the president was attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York in September 1901.
Born in Michigan in May 1873, the 28-year-old Czolgosz was the son of ethnic Polish immigrants from Prussia. He arrived in Buffalo on August 31, 1901 and stalked the president once he arrived at the exposition. He bought a pistol on September 2nd and on September 6th, joined a receiving line at the Temple of Music whose members moved forward to shake hands with the president. The meet-and-greet was only expected to last was 10 minutes, but that was enough to change history.
The assassin had secreted his pistol wrapped in a handkerchief inside his pocket. When he made it to the head of the line and McKinley extended his hand, Czolgosz swatted it away and twice pulled the trigger of his weapon, shooting McKinley in the stomach. The two bullets fired at point-blank range staggered the president, but did not immediately kill him. (He lived on for a week and a day, expiring on the 14th.)
The crowd in the Temple of Music seized Czolgosz and beat him to the point of death before soldiers and police intervened. The near-dead Czolgosz was jailed and stood trial on September 23rd, nine days after McKinley died of his wounds. Czolgosz had been deeply influenced by the anarchists Alexander Berkman (himself the would-be assassin of Henry Clay Frick) and Emma Goldman, whom he had seen give a public speech and subsequently met.
Czolgosz's meeting with Goldman occurred the very same year he killed McKinley, and she was arrested as part of a possible conspiracy but was released for lack of evidence. It was apparent Czolgosz acted alone. Goldman tried to rally support for the assassin, comparing him in print to Brutus who had slain Julius Caesar, but many anarchists shunned Czolgosz, as he had brought opprobrium onto the movement. Theodore Roosevelt, the new president, had declared, "When compared with the suppression of anarchy, every other question sinks into insignificance.
At his arraignment, Czolgosz pleaded guilty, which is not allowed in a capital trial, and the judge changed his plea to "not guilty". His lawyers wanted to go with an insanity defense such as used for Charles J. Guiteau, the assassin of President James Garfield, but a defiant Czolgosz refused to cooperate with them as, to him, they were symbols of the authority he hated and had struck out against in the Temple of Music. He clearly wanted to be martyred, and he was, convicted after a two day trial when the jury came back with a guilty verdict after one hour. He was executed in the electric chair at Auburn State Prison (Auburn, New York) on October 29, 1901, 53 days after he shot and fatally wounded President McKinley.