1878-1942
British born actor (and occasional director) George Cowl was born on this date in Blackpool, England. Cowl's film debut came in the 1914 war short Dan, which was made in the U.S. by the American All-Star Feature Corp. and released in August--so Cowl's immigration stateside must have come sometime earlier in the decade. We do not know much about Cowl, despite that he was an actor in films into the talking era. We do know that he had named appearances in a few films with quite famous directors, before turning to directing himself. These include: The Rack (1915) directed by Emile Chautard, The Closed Road (1916) directed by Maurice Tourneur, The Crimson Dove (1917) directed by Romaine Fielding and The Iron Ring (1917) directed by George Archainbaud. Cowl only had three known named directing credits--all in 1917; but he is also listed, along with Edmund Lawrence, as an uncredited director on William A. Brady's Beloved Adventuress in 1917. It is more like that the two men were serving as assistant directors to Brady, a credit designation that was rare during this time. Cowl's actual directing debut came later in the year when he co-directed the film that he is most closely associated with today (when he is known at all): Betsy Ross (September 1917). Produced and distributed by World Film, the other director credited here is the more recognizable Travers Vale; while Ross is played by Alice Brady (daughter of the above mentioned William A. Brady). The film survives and is available on disc. Cowl had just two solo outings as director, both with distribution by World. The first of these was The Corner Grocer a melodrama starring Madge Evans and Lew Fields; it represents the only film in which he also directed himself as a member of the cast. He next directed Kitty Gordon and Frank Beamish in Her Hour (November 1917). He is not listed as having any movie activity at all for 1918, before returning to acting in 1919, appearing in the Emile Chautard mystery The Mystery of the Yellow Room (October 1919) [Cowl made an uncredited appearance in the Harry Houdini film The Grim Game just before this.] And, he appeared in yet another Archainbaud film in 1920: The Shadow of Rosalie Byrnes with Elaine Hammerstein in the lead in a dual role playing twins. He would go on to appear in supporting roles in at two more Chautard films in the next two years. In 1923, he appeared in The Prisoner in the top male supporting role as "Lord Bob" opposite June Elvidge as "Lady Francis." He also took the supporting role in Fashionable Fakers, a 1923 comedy starring Johnnie Walker; next showing up in the sizable cast of the Frank Borzage directed Secrets (March 1924), a Norma Talmadge melodrama. While he has no film credits for 1925, he returned to act in two films in 1926 in more minor supporting roles (one of which was in another Borzage film: Marriage License? ). Having just one role in 1927, he finished the decade out with three film appearances in 1928, the last of which was the Civil War set Court-Martial, starring Betty Compson as Belle Starr (the film also featured sequences in the early technicolor process popularly known as "two-strip"). He did not appear in a film again until gaining a supporting role in the Myrna Loy pre-code 1930 romantic drama The Jazz Cinderella. While his last credited role came in Secrets of Hollywood in 1933. He is known for sure to have appeared in at least seven additional films in small, non-credited role between 1934 and 1937. His last film appearance came 5 years later as a butler in the film-noir The Glass Key starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, in 1942. The film was released several months after his death on the 4th of April at the age of 64. We know that he passed away in Los Angeles, but nothing else about his life or his burial/cremation is known at this time.
IMDb
1888-1944
Though George Brackett Seitz is remembered in film history as a prolific director, he is just as famous as writer (principally a playwright) outside of movie circles. Born on this date in Boston, Massachusetts, where he started his writing career for popular culture magazines penning short fictional stories, he is most famous for his work on the fairly famous serial The Perils of Pauline in 1914. He was also involved in another well known serial: The Exploits of Elaine, also dating from 1914; only in this case, he actually appeared in the production, as well as penning some of the episodes--additionally he directed at least one of the episodes, thus making the production both his acting and directing debut. Sietz subsequently became deeply involved in the earliest studio system largely located in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Despite starting as a writer and having more than a dozen screenplays produced into films, he became better known as a director, racking up more than 100 titles during the span of his long career in the industry. The first film that he directed completely on his own came in 1917 with action serial The Fatal Ring, which also starred Pauline star Pearl White (this is one of the "offenders" in the world of film that gave us that tired old stereo-type of silent film...that of being tied to railroad tracks). Perhaps his most famous turn in the director's chair came, ironically, on a film that was lost: Seitz directed The House of Hate in 1918--giving us some of the most enduring stills of an early on-location shoot in the Fort Lee area. [The serial has been recovered in part from Russia from an archived collection belonging to Sergei Eisenstein]. All of his ten acting credits--the latest of which was in 1921 (The Man Who Stole the Moon) came in productions that he also had a hand in directing--very many of them were serials that he also either wrote all or part of. His last confirmed active producer credit came in 1923 on yet another Pearl White serial: Plunder, which he also directed. His directing career, however continued on quite prolifically and unabated for two decades. Some of his films in the late 1920's contained innovations in both colour and/or sound. Court-Martial (1928), for example sported sequences in the so-called "two strip Technicolor" process. Likewise, The Circus Kid (1928) was one of the first films to contain both a talking prologue and sound effects/music throughout the entirety of the film. Despite that he worked on such groundbreaking projects in 1928, he did not make an all talking film until 1930 with Murder on the Roof. Seitz worked all the way up until the time of his death in 1944. His last job in film direction came in 1943 on the romantic comedy Andy Hardy's Blonde; the film was released in January of 1944 (in the later part of his directing career, he specialized in directing a large number of the Andy Hardy pictures of the 1930's and early 1940's). Seitz passed away on July 8 at the age of just 56 in Hollywood. He is buried in the place of his birth at the Jamaica Plain Cemetery. He was the father of George B. Seitz Jr., who also worked as a writer and director in the motion picture industry (in the 1950's). One of the things that I personally find interesting about Seitz's legacy is that his plays, though largely comedic products of their time, have also largely been left unproduced over the years; and there have been zero television productions of his Broadway work. It is unusual to say the least.
1891-1958
Producer and a studio mogul of the most abrasive sort Harry Cohn was born on this day in New York City. Early in his life, he first worked as a streetcar conductor, and later as shipping clerk and promoter for a sheet music business. His older brother Jack had managed to find work at Universal, so he convinced the studio to hire his younger brother as well. In 1919 the two, along with friend Joe Brandt, founded CBC (standing for Cohn Brandt Cohn) Film Sales Corporation. In 1919, he also entered into active film production. His first producer credit came on the Vitagraph film Passing The Buck. Harry headed off to Hollywood to manage production there, while his brother Jack stayed in New York to handle the finances. He quickly gained a reputation as crude, misogynistic, and aggressive. Brandt was the first to fall victim to the stresses that Harry caused and eventually sold his share to Harry--leaving him 2/3rds owner over his brother, which pleased him, since he resented growing up in Jack's shadow (the is ample evidence that Harry raised the funds for the buyout with the mob). When Harry took over as president of the studio, the company name was changed, and thus Columbia Pictures was born. There is so much that one could write on the life of Harry Cohn which I will avoid as much as possible here (leaving that for the links). Sticking to the silent era, I will point out that the vast majority of his direct producer credits date from that time period; with the later part of his life being spent as a straight out studio boss with way too much power. After his first foray into the producer role with Vitagraph, he produced a slew of shorts, mostly with Hall Room Boys Photoplays in 1919. Starting in 1920, C.B.C. started distributing these shorts. The first of these was Oh, Baby! (1920). The first film to tangentially carry the name "Columbia" was when CBC was in transition mode, during Harry's buy-out process in 1922; the film was More To Be Pitied Than Scorned. The first full fledged, all out Columbia picture also came in 1922 with Only A Shop Girl, a feature length drama--it was an Estelle Taylor film. By the later 1920's Columbia was increasingly sporting a list of impressive talent that even included the likes of director Frank Capra. It would take Columbia until the second half of 1928 to began experimenting with sound. For Cohn, his first production credit on a film that featured any sort of sound came with The Scarlet Lady, which featured a mono musical score by Western Electric. His next production credit was an all silent film that features sequences with the 2-Strip Technicolor: Court-Martial (1928). For the most part though, Columbia, under Cohn's direction, tended to stay with the old black and white silent films longer than most other studios of the day. Cohn's first full sound production credit came in 1929 with The Donovan's Affair, a Frank Capra film with sound by MovieTone. But the studio would make several more partial sounds films, before abandoning them altogether in late 1929. Cohn has a large number of production credits in 1930 and 1931; but they start to slow by 1932, crawling to a trickle by the mid 1930's. By 1935 through 1938, he only had 1 credit for each of those years. In 1939, he abandoned direct production work and set to being the tyrant mogul that he would become famous for. Cohn was responsible for the Three Stooges filmed shorts that would make the studio a great deal of extra money. In fact, he insisted that the studio continue to make Two-Reelers and serials long after other studios had given them up for out-dated. He called these, fondly mind you, "those lousy little "B" pictures." He had one more production credit to his name in 1947 on Orson Welles' The Lady From Shanghai; he served as executive producer on the film directly. This probably had more to do with actress Rita Hayworth's appearance in the film than it did with Welles' known insistence on pure directorial freedom (though, to be sure, that must have been a factor as well). He and Hayworth had a long, very acrid working relationship, and he never missed a chance to attempt to antagonize her. Cohn died while visiting Phoenix, Arizona on 27 February. He suffered a massive heart attack at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel after finishing a dinner there; he died in the ambulance en route to the hospital, he was 66 years old. He was taken back to to Los Angeles for a funeral and burial. There were many people at the funeral who apparently made it clear that they were there just to confirm that Harry Cohn was, indeed, dead. He is interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
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