Born Today December 2: Doris Hollister

 

 1906-1990

 

Child actress Doris Ethel Hollister was born on this day in New York to actress Alice Hollister and cinematographer George K. Hollister Sr.; she was the older sister of fellow child actor George Hollister Jr.  She made her film debut in the Sidney Olcott early feature From the Manger to the Cross; or, Jesus of Nazareth in which her mother played Mary Magdalene. The film had a much larger uncredited cast than it did a credited one, she was just one of many who appeared without credit--which also saw her younger brother appear as Jesus as a child sans a credit; she was just 6 years of age when the film was filmed all over the middle east and north Africa in 1912. Her first film acting credit came the very next spring.  Again acting with her mother and younger brother, she played the daughter in the Robert Vignola short immigration drama The Alien, which was released in May of 1913 when she was still just 6. In all, she appeared in just seven films, none of them past the age of 7. All of her films were Kalem productions, and all, save for the first one, were shorts. Historically, the most well known of these films was an adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin; released in 1913--it featured an all white cast in blackface parts, of which her brother George was a member.  Her last film appearance came in the Kenean Buel directed western The Brand, which was released in August of 1914. As an adult, Doris was married for a time to extremely prolific animation director/producer Walter Lantz; they divorced in 1940.  She died in Tustin, California on the 26th of July in 1990 at the age of 83. She is reportedly interred not far from the ashes of her parents at the Iris Terrace of Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale.

 

Still from The Atheist (1913) with Tom Moore and Alfrede Handsworth

 

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Born Today June 6: George Hollister Jr.

1908-1976

George (and his sister Doris) was born surrounded by film fame, despite the industry's young age.  He was the son cinematographer George K. Hollister and his actress wife Alice.  Both George Jr. and Doris were born in New York City and were amongst the first recognizable child actors in film. Young George first appeared in film 1912 in the Sidney Olcott, shot on location, middle eastern themed drama An Arabian Tragedy (filmed in Egypt).  He was just 4 years old.  He also appeared in the epic Olcott directed relatively unsung masterpiece  From The Manger To The Cross; or, Jesus Of Nazareth, also released in 1912 and shot on location; where he played Jesus as a young child (his parents and his sister were also involved with the production in a big way!).  Between the ages of 4 and 7, he appeared in 12 films--most of them in 1912 and 1913.  A goodly number of them featured his mother, and all of them were for Kalem, who had his mother under contract as an actor and his father was the principle director of photography.  The last film that he made at the company as a child was the Kenean Buel directed melodrama The Swindler in 1915, which starred Guy Coombs and Alice Joyce.  Hollister appeared in just one film as an adult, a late silent in 1929 at the age of 21: The Arizona Kid.  This is all his work as it related to the film business.  Hollister lived until the age of 67, dying on the 22nd of January, 1976 in San Diego (outliving his mother Alice by just three years).  Both of his parents and his sister are interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, but even a search a cemetery records there don't reveal whether he too was also laid to rest there.  [Note: if you read the comment below, his granddaughter was so kind as to let me know that he is not buried with family member in Glendale; unfortunately, she states that his burial place is not known at this time; let's hope that is a temporary thing! 😇]

Most of the principle cast of From The Manger to The Cross aboard ship en route to the Holy Land, George Jr. is in the middle of the photograph; his sister Doris is the other child. Both of his parents as also pictured. 

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Born Today September 28: Alice Hollister

1886-1973

Alice Hollister, exclusively a silent film actress, was born in Worcester, MA on this day.  Hollister is her married name; as of now her maiden is unknown, but it is thought that she was the daughter of French-Canadian parents.  She got her last name from marrying, at the age of seventeen, George K. Hollister, who would become an important early cinematographer at Kalem.  Studios back then, like wealthy individuals, would send crews south for the winter.  The Hollister's relocated there seasonally with their two young children.  It was during the "over winter" in Florida of 1911 that Alice would appear in her first film: By A Woman's Wit, directed by Sidney Olcott.  Also appearing in many of the "warmer climes" films were the Hollister's two children: George Jr. and Doris.  Most of the films that she appeared in before 1916 were studio shorts.  An exception would be From The Manger to the Cross, or, Jesus of Nazareth (1912), which would be her first full length film (also directed by Olcott),  and was shot entirely on location in the Middle East--not least of which was in Bethlehem. In 1913, she got the chance to play the Vamp role--unusual for a married actress (but then again here husband was the cinematographer....)--in The Vampire; the film featured choreography and trained dancers to perform "The Vampire Dance" (somewhere, buried in the film is supposedly an uncredited appearance by Robert Vignola, the director of the film). [She would appear in the type one more time in The Vampire's Trail in 1914.]  By 1916, her career began to slow.  From this time forward, she would only appear in a couple of films a year, with 1924 and 1925 accounting for only one film in each year.  Her last film appearance came in The Dancers (1925), a Fox production.  She then retired to family life.  Her husband died in 1952, but she lived until the age of 83.  She passed away on the 24th of February in 1973 in Costa Mesa, California.  She is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale.  

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