Spooktober 13 (for the 12th): The Sorrows Of Satan

 

I had connectivity troubles yesterday and by the evening I basically didn't have any internet service, which really upset me because my little post on D.W. Griffith's The Sorrows Of Satan was time sensitive. Yesterday, October 12th, marked the film's 95th release anniversary. Based on the 1895 novel of the same name, Griffith did not want to make the film; but by the mid 1920's, he was under contract to Paramount and they were in a position to assign films to him. It was not Griffith's first gothic horror, but it turned out to be his finest, if a bit bereft of some of the latest technologies in film. Basically a Faustian tale, the film remains a bit obscure in the world of horror fans, but it is beloved by classic film fans, many of whom find Ricardo Cortez's turn as the compromised writer Geoffrey Tempest to be amongst his finest performances. Adolphe Menjou as Prince Lucio de Rimanez, or, you know, The Devil, is none too shabby as well! So, celebrating 95 years of The Sorrows of Satan. 🎃🎃

 

 

Born Today November 11: Thomas Bailey Aldrich

 

 

 1836-1907

 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich is best remembered for being the long time editor of The Atlantic Monthly magazine from 1881 to 1890. But he was also a writer of poetry, prose and criticism. Born on this day in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, he was taken as a child to New Orleans, returning to New England at near college age some ten years later. He never went to college, instead going to work in his teens for an Uncle in New York where he began to write for publication in both newspapers and magazines.  He was also fast friends with the New York area writers community of the time; which is eventually what led him into the field of editing. Promoting writers of an ever increasing circle of acquaintance landed him with an editor's job in the late 1850's, leading to an important job of being the editor of The New York Illustrated News during the Civil War (copies of which are housed at the Library of Congress in their "Chronicling America" section preserving newspapers--some are posted on line, including Civil War political cartoons*).  Magazine editing then became his career; but for someone who was such a busy and important editor, he also found time to write a large number of works. And, of course, it because of these that he has a little write up here. Two films have been produced using his work for scenarios, both of them in the silent era of the 1910's; they are also interconnected films. The first, Judith of Bethulia, was based on one of Alrich's poems; partially adapted by it's director, the film was made for Biograph--the director, by the way, was D. W. Griffith. The film was released on the 8th of March, 1914 and was quite a lavish production--it's price tag reportedly one of the reasons that Griffith left Biograph, having been put back in charge of one-reelers after the film's release (there was also a Broadway production ten years prior, based of the same dramatic poem--and with the same title; it was quite successful; the film's screenplay was heavily reliant on that play for material). Part of the reason that I spent so much space on the first film, is that the second is a cut from that film. In 1917, D. W. Griffith edited together a few newly shot scenes from the original screenplay and his Biograph film from 1914 to create Her Condoned Sin.  No other films were ever produced from Aldrich's volume of writing. He lived long enough to see the production of his work on Broadway, but passed away three years later on the 19th of March in 1907 at the age of 70. He is buried at Cambridge, Massachusetts' famed Mount Auburn Cemetery. 

[Source: Bobby Kelley (Find A Grave)]

 

[a Daguerrotype of Aldrich, a current holding of Harvard University]

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*I just had to mention this, as there is no one link that can be posted for this one newspaper on their site...and I got lost in wonder clicking through what is there, before I knew it...I had been tooling around for a couple of hours...it's a bit addictive.

Born Today February 17: Kate Bruce

1860-1946

Prolific silent era matronly actress Kate Bruce was born on this day in Columbus, Indiana. She started acting on the stage and made her film debut in The Fight for Freedom in 1908 in one of the films for American Mutoscope & Biograph that was ghost co-directed by D. W. Griffith to help mitigate the rather disastrous directing efforts by Wallace McCutcheon Jr.!   Bruce is known to have made at least one appearance on Broadway. She would go on to be a favorite actress for Griffith, who used her in older female parts that required a motherly type.  Once she entered pictures, her roles, though very small, were numerous.  She showed up in roles (some of them uncredited) in several of Griffith's most well known Biograph shorts, among them: The Country Doctor, A Corner In Wheat, and A Trap For Santa Claus--all of them in 1909.  Of course, as an in-house actress with Biograph, she worked with other directors as well (including, most notably Travers Vale, but also J. Searle Dawley); however it was with Griffith that she is most associated in history.  The number of well known actors in the silent era that she acted along side is long and impressive as well.  That list includes: Jack Drumier, Alan Hale Sr., Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, at least one of the Moore brothers (Owen), and Louise Vale--wife of Travers.  One of her appearances with Dorothy Gish came in Gretchen the Greenhorn in 1916, filmed at Fine Arts Film Studio on Sunset Blvd.; it was probably the largest production she had worked on to date. [It appears that Bruce's first feature length appearance in a film came in politically motivated 1915 Civilization, which involved the Ince family is various ways].  She, along with practically everyone who had had worked frequently with Griffith, ended up with bit parts in his massive Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout The Ages in 1916.  After that film's production, she resumed work for Griffith in subsequent features--working almost exclusively for him from after 1917 through to mid-1920.  Getting older, she took fewer roles as the 1920's waned on; she took no roles at all in 1926 or in 1928.  The first talkie that she worked on was The Flying Fool in 1929, a William Boyd film made for Pathe Exchange that also had a silent version.  Her last role came, predictably, in a D.W. Griffith film in 1931: she was "Granny" in The Struggle.  She then retired and returned to the east coast, where the Gish sisters helped her live a comfortable, but modest life; she passed away on the 2nd of April, 1946 in New York City at the age of 86.  She was buried at Calvary Cemetery in Queens.  

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Released Today September 4: The Sealed Room (1909)

Born Today July 12: Linda Arvidson

1884-1949

Silent film actress and first wife of D. W. Griffith, Linda Arvidson was born Linda Arvidson Johnson in San Francisco, CA on this day.  She met Griffith in 1905 while they were both acting in the same play on the stage; and they wed the following year in May.  She was the star of his earliest films.  Her first film appearance came with the American Mutoscope and Biograph (of course!) produced Mr. Gay And Mrs. in 1907.  She next worked under director Wallace McCutcheon, at Biograph, acting along side her husband.  The first film she is absolutely credited with in one of his films came in The Princess In The Vase in 1908.  The two also worked with Wallace McCutcheon Jr. (see At The Crossroads Of Life (1908), which Griffith also penned).  The first time she was directed by her husband came in The Adventures Of Dollie (1908), which is a rather famous surviving silent and marked Griffith's directorial debut (she was often credited as Linda A. Griffith going forward in her movie acting career).  She added scenario writing to her list of credits in 1911 with How She Triumphed, a film she wrote for her husband to direct.  In all, she has 5 writing credits to her name, two the most important to history are the two Enoch films that Griffith made.  The vast majority of her acting career did come under the direction of her husband at Biograph; however around 1912 or so, the two separated (they didn't formally divorced until 1936).  When this event took place, she then signed a contract as the leading lady with Kinemacolor Company and company that had built it reputation on it's own early color film process; the first film that she made for them was A Christmas Spirit in 1912.  The contract lasted only for one year. She next went to work at Klaw & Erlanger, a company that had a partnership with Biograph; ultimately winding back up at Biograph.  She appeared in her last film in 1916, and that came in Charity a film on white slavery, directed by Frank Powell under the umbrella of his own production company.  She then retired from film acting altogether.  In 1925 she published a memoir When Movies Were Young, it has since be reprinted several times.  Arvidson died in New York City on the 26 of July 1949 at the age of 65.  She is buried in the Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California under the name Linda A. Griffith in a family plot.

[Source: Sue (Find A Grave)]

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Born Today: Dell Henderson

1877-1956

Actor George Delbert "Dell" Henderson was born on this day in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada (his birth year of 1883 on IMDb is incorrect).  Henderson, like so many silent stars, got his start on the stage, but didn't stay there long.  He appeared in his first film in 1908 in the D. W. Griffith directed, Mack Sennett penned comedic short Monday Morning In A Coney Island Police Court.  He spent most of his early film career in D.W. Griffith films, branching out only to star in a few Mack Sennett directed films (Sennett ran Biograph's comedy division before founding Keystone in 1912).  Griffith even hired him to adapt print material into film scenarios; the first film that he worked on in this capacity was The Modern Prodigal (1910), a film that survives and is available for purchase.  Henderson made his own directorial debut along side Sennett in 1911 with Comrades.  The first film that he directed on his own was Mr. Grouch At The Seashore in 1912, featuring amongst others, Jack Pickford--younger brother of Mary.  By the time that Griffith graduated to feature length films, Henderson was mostly directing himself in films for Biograph.  However it was over at Famous Players in 1916 that he directed his first feature length film with Rolling Stones.  In 1917, he added his only production credit to his name with Outcast, a film that he also directed; the film was made at the largely independent Empire All Star Corp.  Henderson kept directing all throughout the 1910's and 1920's, but decided to retire from the chair in 1927 to devote his life to a full time acting career (he had become so engrossed with directing that he had an acting hiatus between 1916 and 1924).  The last film that he directed was The Rambling Ranger, a 50 minute western made for Universal.  His last writing credit came in 1928 with Galloping Ghosts; he penned the script with Stan Laurel, with the film featuring Oliver Hardy, made for Hal Roach Studios.  The first sound film that appeared in is a film that he is well remembered for: King Vidor's 1928 Show People--the film is a partial silent with only sound effects and a score.  The first full sound film that he appeared in was the 1929 romance The College Coquette, with sound by MovieTone.  He continued to work right up close to the time of his death, though most of his roles were small and uncredited; the last film he appeared in was Louisa (1950), a film starring Ronald Reagan.  He only appeared on television once in 1954 in the This Is Your Life episode honoring Mack Sennett.  Henderson died two years later of a heart attack at the age of 79 on the 2nd of December.  He is interred at Valhalla Memorial Park. Henderson was married to actress Florence Lee, with whom he appeared in several silent films.

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Born Today June 17: Adolphe d'Ennery

1811-1899

French playwright Adolphe Phillippe d'Ennery (sometimes spelled Dennery) was born on this day in Paris.  Though writing before finding success, his first successful drama was published in 1831 and was actually co-penned with another author: Charles Desnoyer.  It would be the first of several successful co-authorships for him (more than a 100 actually).  He was also a novelist (oddly many of his novels were adaptations of his own plays), but it is his plays that he is remembered for today.  The first time his work was used for the basis of a film scenario came in 1902 with the UK produced short A Duel With Knives, ironically based on one of his novels (the film is that not to have survived).  The first time one of his plays was used for film material came just 2 years later with The Voyage Across The Impossible (1904), a film made by none other than Melies.  Probably the most famous silent film to use his writing for a script was D.W. Griffith's own personal adaptation of one d'Ennery's co-authored novels in Orphans Of The Storm (1921), a 2 1/3 hour long epic starring the Gish sisters.  The first sound film to be produced from his work came in 1932 with It Happened In Paris.  One of his plays was first adapted for a television movie in 1957 in the Soviet Union in Don Sezar de Bazan.  The most recent use came in 2011, again made for television; this time a stage performance of an opera that he and Louis Gallet wrote the libretto for.  Le Cid was a French production.  He died in the city of his birth of the 25th of January 1899 at the age of 87.  He is buried in Pére Lachaise.

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Born Today May 31: Walt Whitman

1819-1892

Famed American poet Walter Whitman was born on this date on Long Island, New York.  When Whitman was four years of age, his family moved into the city, settling in Brooklyn.  He generally didn't experience a happy childhood; as the family was greatly unsettled both financially and in housing due to a series of bad investments that Walter Whitman Sr. had made. By just he age of eleven, he had concluded his formal schooling, and was forced to seek employment to help supplement the family income (he was the second oldest of 9 children).  He started out as an office boy for a very small law firm, and then moved on to apprentice in the printing business for a Long Island Newspaper.  He was taken with the typesetting.  It is around this time that is thought that he was also allowed to write bits as filler for a few issues.  A year later, he got another job at another printer, this time in Brooklyn.  In the spring of the following year he landed a job at a local Whig newspaper there called the Long-Island Star; it was at this time that he became a frequent visitor to the local library and discovered the theater.  He also published his first poems in the New-York Mirror, albeit anonymously.  He moved further into the city, taking a job in Manhattan as a compositor--an advanced type-setting job.  He returned to Long Island in 1836, where he took various local teaching positions--a profession he did not enjoy.  In Huntingdon, New York, tired of teaching, he founded his own newspaper the Long Islander.  For the longest of times, it was basically a one man operation.  After just ten months, he sold the operation and went back to type-setting in Jamaica, Queens; but left shortly after--taking up more teaching positions.  During this period of time he published a series of editorials: "Sun-Down-Papers--From The Desk of a Schoolmaster."  After this, he returned to New York City to take up a lower level position at New World; he also continued to work in various capacities at newspapers working his way up to editor.  Through the 1840's he worked also as free-lance fiction and poetry writer.  By 1852, he was penning as serialized novel Life and Adventures of Jack Engle: An Autobiography: A Story of New York at the Present Time in which the Reader Will Find Some Familiar Characters. He then published, under the pen-name Mose Velsor the curiosity that is Manly Health and Training.  This is when he decided to take up poetry seriously and devote his life to the writing of it.  By the early 1850's he was working on pieces that would become his most famous work Leaves Of Grass.  Though Whitman's portrait appears on the front piece of the first edition, the work was published without a name attached to it.  Despite high praise from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the book caused a sensation.  A second edition was almost not released--all through out the 1850's Whitman would continue to have financial difficulties--keeping him working hard in the newspaper business.  The coming of the extreme violence of the Civil War had a profoundly negative impact on Whitman, at one point he left for Washington D.C., with no intention of returning to New York.  In D.C., a friend of his helped him to secure a part-time job at the army's paymaster office, leaving Whitman time to work as a nurse at army hospitals in the area.  Family woes also plagued him at this time, with one brother having been captured by the Confederates, another dying from consumption, and yet another that he personally have to have committed to a mental facility.  Nonetheless, he managed to find a full time, well paying job the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior.  He was abruptly fired from this job by the new Secretary of the Department--a former Senator from Iowa.  In Whitman's case, it is thought that he was fired because the Senator had found a copy of the 1960 publication of Leaves Of Grass.  He was then transferred to Attorney General's office, where he spent time interviewing former confederate soldiers for presidential pardon, and found many of them "real characters."  All through this time, he had continued to publish poems sparsely and a variety of subjects, including one of the death the President Abraham Lincoln.  Whitman remained at the Attorney General's office until 1873, when he suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed.  He then retired to the home of one of his brother's in Camden, N.J.  He remained there until 1884, suffering bouts of depression, until he could purchase his own home in the town.  By this time, he was almost completely bedridden; though he was able to continue to work from bed editing various editions of Leaves of Grass.  He had a live in housekeeper who had a menagerie of animals and lived with him rent free in exchange for work.  While working on what he called his "deathbed edition" of Leaves, he commissioned a granite mausoleum shaped as a house, overseeing it's construction was the last real work of his life.  Walt Whitman finally gave up the ghost on the 26th of March 1892 at the age of 72.  An autopsy revealed him to have been suffering from a myriad of afflictions, any one of which would have taken a person's life.  A public viewing of his body was held in his home and four days later, he was placed in his self designed tomb located at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden.  Very few films have used Whitman's writing as source material--and the most that have are either shorts or episodic art television. However the very first use of his work comes in a doozy of a silent film.  A section of D. W. Griffith's 3 hour and 20 minute sprawling epic Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout The Ages, which dates from 1916, used Whitman's poem "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking."  His work would not be used again until 1954 in the television series Your Favorite Story.  The most recent use of his work for film source material came in an animated video short Manahatta which was made in 2011.  

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Born Today May 13: J. Searle Dawley

1877-1949

The man who considered himself the very first real motion picture director, who the world came to know as J. Searle Dawley, was born James Searle Dawley on this date in Del Norte, Colorado.  I would say that it's more accurate to say that he could be considered the very first director of purely narrative films; but the honor of very first director really should go to the man who hired Dawley at the Edison Co., and that would be Edwin S. Porter.  Dawley at first wanted to break into the acting circuit, securing a position in the acting house run by Louis Morrison; however the tour that he was hired to work on was canceled and his was obliged to return home to Colorado.  This was in 1895 and came just after his high school graduation.  He rejoined the group in 1897, and worked both as a actor and a stage manager for 3 years.  He then left for the vaudeville circuit, with ambitions to become a writer.  He worked there both as a writer and actor, before joining the Spooner company, where he plied all of his talent accrued to date: acting, writing and stage managing.  Having gained attention of the Edison Co. and of Porter, he was hired in 1907 specifically to direct.  This was indeed a first.  He was hired to direct a short film that already had a scenario attached to it:  The Nine Lives Of A Cat became his directorial debut in 1907.  Though D. W. Griffith was two years older than Dawley, he wouldn't make his directorial debut until 1908.  In fact, Dawley would direct Griffith in a film that survives to this day; Rescued From An Eagle's Nest was filmed in 1908, before Griffith made his debut later in the year.  It is a remarkable film, because it contains some of the earliest complicated special effects--films had formally moved on from good old fashioned trick photography.  Some of Dawley's early work in Fort Lee for Edison available on disc include:  A Little Girl Who Didn't Believe In Santa Claus  1907, A Suburbanite's Ingenious Alarm 1908, Fireside Remembrances 1908 (all up to this point co-directed with Porter), and  Cupid's Pranks 1908.  Dawley made the move to California in 1910, earlier than most directors--though he still worked for Edison Manufacturing.  He began to focus of films on works of literature.  He brought works by Twain, the Brothers Grimm, Dickens, Dumas,  and Stevenson amongst others, to the moving picture.  But it would be one work of literature by a female author that Dawley would forever be known for.  In 1910 he made the first ever filmed adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  The film, though a short, features extremely sophisticated special effects--cutting edge for it's time.  

It was released on March 18th and starred Augustus Phillips (in his first film appearance) as Frankenstein and Charles Ogle as his monster.  Being the person chosen to set up Edison in a new studio in the Hollywood area, he also brought in new directors that would go on to have a big impact on silent cinema.  The first non-Edison film that he directed was for Solax (Alice Guy's studio).  The film was Between Two Fires (1912), this was quite a long time before he severed work for Edison.   In 1912 and 1913, he began filming outdoor documentaries, most in Yellowstone National Park, but at least one film was produced in Yosemite as well (Dawley had developed a penchant for photographing and filming in the locations as he made his way from the east coast to the west coast--many of these films were actually filmed during the his time of travel and released later).  In 1913, he made his first film for Zukor's Famous Players, a adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess Of The D'Urbervilles.  Though known as a famous silent film director, it should not be forgotten that one of his first skills in the theater was writing, and though he was adept and literary adaptation, he also wrote original scenarios for films as well.  The first of these came in 1909 with The Legend Of Sterling Keep.  In all, he has 40 writing credits to his name.  And though he would never make a film in the sound era, his films were not all silent, in fact, the one credit that he has for cinematographer comes in a De Forest Phononfilm demonstration entitled Adolph Zukor Introduces Phonofilm, a film that has Zukor explaining the Phonofilm sound on film system, it dates from 1923.  In fact, his last 3 films used the De Forest Phonofilm system and were full sound movies:  Abraham Lincoln dates from 1924 and Roger Wolfe Kahn Musical Number dates from 1925.  Dawley's last film came out in 1926:  Brooke Johns and Goodee Montgomery, it is a formally lost and now restored film.  After this, Dawley decided to retire from the movie industry; he eventually made his way over to radio, where he worked successfully through the 1930's.  Dawley would also go on to be one of the founders of an organization to would eventually turn into the Screen Director's Guild.  He certainly influenced a whole host of other directors, both contemporary with him and a younger generation coming into their own when he decided to retire.  Walt Disney mentioned several times how influential Dawley had been for him on multiple levels.  Dawley passed away in Hollywood at the age of 71 on the 30th of March 1949.  Strangely there is no information about a funeral service of any sort.  

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Born Today May 6: Rudolph Valentino

1895-1926

Valentino's full birth name was the staggering Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antoguolla!  He was born in Castellaneta in the Puglia region of Italy to a French mother and Italian father (hence some of his names being French).  Initially he enrolled in an agricultural school in Genoa, where he earned a certificate; but then moved to Paris for a while.  He briefly returned to Italy, but was unable to find work; so he left for the United States in 1913 at the age of 18.  He entered the U.S. at Ellis Island on Dec. 23, as so many had before him and so many would after him.  After spending time in odd jobs and enduring a bout of homelessness in New York, he landed a job as a dancer at Maxim's. After legal troubles stemming from his involvement as a witness during a divorce trial and subsequent events this brought on, Valentino joined a traveling show to avoid being called as a witness again.  This is what lead him to the west coast.  While still in New York he appeared in his first movie, a "vamp" film directed by none other than D. W. Griffith in 1914:  The Battle of the Sexes, as a dance extra. In fact, Valentino was in several films while living in New York, a subject not written much about--many of them products of the first "Hollywood:" Fort Lee, NJ. The first film that he was in out west in Hollywood came in 1918 with A Society Sensation, a short comedy drama.  After this, he languished somewhat, accepting bit parts as they came along [indeed he had become so tired of scrounging for work in live performances that he had returned to New York for a time].  During this period of time, he was credited with variations on his name, it was not until 1919 that he was first credited with the name for which he would become ultra-famous.  This came with Eyes of Youth.  Valentino continued on it bit parts until 1921, when by a strange set of events he got a major role in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  The film was a huge success, being one of the very first films to gross more than $100,000 at the box office and catapulted Valentino into into stardom.  Despite this, the studio system--in the case it was Metro Picture (the "Metro" in our current MGM)--wouldn't give him any kind of credit for his being the major reason for the film's success and would keep him on paltry pay and treat him as second rate actor.  His next two films for Metro gained attention of other producers; he quit Metro and signed with Famous Players-Lasky.  It was this production studio that placed him in the role that he so well known for The Sheik.  Valentino was now a super-star and Hollywood's premiere "Latin Lover."  Sadly, he would only star in 10 more films, his last being, ironically, The Son of the Sheik, in 1926. On the 15th of August in 1926 he collapsed either inside or outside the Hotel Ambassador in New York City and was quickly hospitalized.  Diagnosed with appendicitis and gastric ulcers, her underwent emergency surgery, which may have actually hastened his death.  After surgery, he developed peritonitis, an infection surrounding the sack that encases in inner organs, this then lead to an infection surrounding the sack around his left lung.  The condition was fatal.  Despite his terminal condition, his doctors did not inform him of his immanent death; right up to his last moments of consciousness, he was reportedly speaking of recovery and future plans.  There are conflicting reports about how much he actually knew--because at one point he was given last rights; however this would not have been uncommon in those days, without doctors being totally honest about medical severity.  He died of the infection on 23 August; he was just 31 years of age.  He was such a superstar that an estimated 100,000 people came out to the street where the funeral home that had his body on display was located.  It was also reported, but not confirmed, that several distraught fans committed suicide upon learning of his death. What probably killed Rudolph Valentino became known as "Valentino's syndrome," a condition in which perforated ulcers were/are mistaken for acute appendicitis.  Despite that he died so young, his fame was so vast, that even today he is one of the only silent film actors still known to younger generations. His funeral mass was held in New York, but his interment occurred in what is know known as the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.  He was placed in the mausoleum under his partial name "Rudolfo Guguliemi Valentino."  His estate was left to his surviving siblings.

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Born Today May 1: Tom Moore

1883-1955

Thomas J. Moore, silent movie star and director, was born on this day in Fordstown Crossroads, County Meath in Ireland.  He, along with his siblings, immigrated to the United States in 1896.  Two of his brothers, Owen and Matt, also had successful careers in films starting in the silent era.  The family at first settled in the Toledo, Ohio area.  Eventually the two eldest brothers (of which Tom was the oldest) landed debut roles in film.  In Tom's case this came in the D.W. Griffith short The Test Of Friendship that starred Griffith's wife at the time in 1908.  This is when Griffith was still working for American Mutoscope and still making films in New Jersey.  He continued to work for Griffith through 1909, but by 1912 he was with Kalem, with the shot on location The Belle Of New Orleans being his first film for them.  He made his directorial debut in 1914, where he directed himself in The Mad Mountaineer.  Though directing would prove not be his thing, he did direct 17 short films in 1914 and 1915, the last of which was The Legacy Of Folly, in which he also appeared.  All of these films were for Kalem.  His first confirmed full length film appearance came in 1917 in the western The Jaguar's Claw.  By this time he was working for the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company.  In 1921, he was voted by a trade magazine as one of the top 15 male lead actors in Hollywood.  The first sound film that he appeared was Side Street in 1929, his two actor brothers appeared along side him.  It was a full mono sound production, with sound by RCA Photophone System.  He did manage to make the sound transition, but his star was beginning to fade by the early 1930's, so he quit acting in 1936, and would not be back for ten years.  Because he was forced to seek work with various small film production companies in the 1930's, he was one of the silent era's only super stars to be adversely affected by the depression, when many of these companies went out of business.  He returned to acting in late 1946 and would continue to make film appearances until his death in 1955.  He made his television debut in 1953 on the series Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, in an episode entitled The Avenging Gunman.  His last film appearance came in The Human Jungle in 1954.  His final filmed appearance came in the television series The Human Jungle in the episode Your Favorite Story.  During his lifetime, he was married three times; two of those marriage were to silent film actresses.  He was first married to Alice Joyce, with whom he had a daughter Alice, who had a brief acting career in the 1930's.  His second marriage was to French sensation Renée Adorée.  He was even the subject of a This Is Your Life episode in 1954.  Moore died on the 12th of February in Santa Monica, after battling cancer.  Although there are currently no photos, Tom was buried in Catholic Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles along with at least two of his brothers, Owen and Matt.  

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Born Today June 5: William Boyd

1895-1972

William Lawrence Boyd was born in Hendrysburg, Ohio, the son of a day laborer and his wife.  The family quickly relocated to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Boyd would grow up.  When he was quite a young man, he father passed away and he made the move to California and found work as an orange picker.  He would go on to be a tool dresser, surveyor and an auto salesman.  He also found extra work in bit uncredited parts in films; with his first appearance coming in Cecil B. DeMille's Old Wives For New (1918).  At first he seems to have regarded this film work as just another odd job, but when he enlisted in the Army to fight in World War I, he was rejected on grounds of having a week heart, he returned to Hollywood.  Soon more prominent film roles began roll in for him. His first actual credited role seems to have come in 1920 with "carpenter" in The City Of Masks .  In 1923, he was given a small but named/credited role in DeMille's silent version of Adam's Rib; things then started to pick up for him.  By the mid 1920's he was solidly known as a leading man in Hollywood, with a yearly salary to match ($100,000, that is around 1.3 million dollars).  In 1926, he was given the lead role in yet another DeMille film:  The Volga Boatman.  For a time he was DeMille's go to guy.  In 1929 he landed a role as a "Count" in his first sound film, a very early talkie by famed/infamous silent movie directorial pioneer D. W. Griffith, in The Lady Of Pavements.  The last film that he made in the 1920's was the all talking His First Command.  Around this time, another actor with the name William "Stage" Boyd was arrested on charges of gambling and alcohol charges.  The studio that this William Boyd worked for assumed that the news paper article was about him and fired him.  Having squandered his money, he was brought up short and left destitute.  He kicked around Hollywood taking any parts he could land, asking for credit under the name Bill or Billy Boyd to avoid people getting him further mixed up with the other Boyd.  This all changed in 1935, when he was offered a supporting role in the up coming production of Hop-Along Cassidy; he had other ideas.  He asked to be considered for the title role, worked for it and won it.  From then on, he was known to the world as Hop-Along Cassidy.  He would not play any other character for the rest of his acting career.  Eventually the character was given his own television program, which ran from 1952 thru to 1954.  Upon the show's cancellation, Boyd retired from acting.  He then got involved in real estate investing and moved to Palm Desert.  He eventually moved to Laguna Beach, where is died on 12 September in 1972 from heart failure as a severe complication of Parkinson's Disease.  He is interred in a vault at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, along with his widow.  

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Born Today January 16: Harry Carey

1878-1947

Born Harry DeWitt Carey II was born on this date in the New York borough of The Bronx.  He was the son of prominent judge who served on the New York Supreme Court.  He grew up in one of the only high-scale areas of The Bronx:  City Island.  In higher education, he first attended Hamilton Military Academy; then he studied law at NYU.  By the time he made it into his first movie, he had been a real cowboy, railway superintendent, a playwright & author, and had practiced law.  He first got into acting after writing he first play while recuperating from pneumonia; he then spent the next three years touring the country performing it.  The play was quite the success.  However, his next play flopped.  After being introduced to Fort Lee director D. W. Griffith, his film career started.  Griffith knowing his background as a cowboy, immediately began to give him rolee in the earliest of westerns.  Carey made his film debut in 1909 in Griffith's western short Bill Sharkey's Last Game.  The vast majority of the films that he made were in the silent era; even the last film he made in the 1920's was fully silent:  The Border Patrol (1928).  In fact, the only film he made in the 1920's that had sound, was a partial sound film:  The Trail of '98 (1928), with soundtrack and sound effects provided by both Movietone and Western Electric Sound System.  Having taught himself how to act live on a stage, he made a very successful transition to talking films, and did so in 1931 in Trader Horn, his first full sound film, ironically in English and Swahili.  He was nominated for one Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, for his role as President of the Senate in the famous 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes To Washington starring James Stewart.  Carey passed away on the 21st. of September 1947 at the age of 69 from coronary thrombosis as a complication from emphysema and lung cancer in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles.  Some list the cause of his deadly coronary thrombosis as coming from a bee sting.  He worked right up until the time of his death, with two films he worked on being released in 1948.  He is entombed in a above ground mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, NYC.  

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Born Today December 16: Sir Noël Coward

1899-1973

Born Noël Peirce Coward in Teddington, Middlesex, England, UK.  He is best known as a influential comedy playwright; but in reality he was the epitome of a Renaissance man:  he was also a composer/lyricist, director, painter, singer and actor.  He possessed a unique and extraordinary wit, with which in invented a form "Englishness" that persisted at least up until and, even through, the British rock invasion of the 1960's.  He was on the unprofessional stage by the age of 6 and acting professionally by the age of 11, while attending dance academy in London (on strong encouragement from his mother).  He is supposed to have written his first play, a drama, by the age of 16.  In 1921, he visited an increasingly swinging New York City and caught "the Broadway bug" in a big way, when a play he was starring in debuted on "The Great White Way."  By this time, he had already appeared in film for the first time, and with no slouch director either; he had two bit parts in D. W. Griffith's Hearts Of The World, which was released in 1918 and is an anthology of series of tales set in Europe about the coming of The Great War (and is currently on Amazon's Prime rental free).  In the silent era, only three films were produced as adaptations of his work; one of the directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The first one was German, Forbidden Love (originally titled "The Queen Was in the Palour"), was made in 1927.  The next was Easy Virtue in 1928, and was directed by Hitchcock before he left England for Hollywood.  The last was The Vortex, also in 1928, based on his infamous play of the same name that had taken New York by scandalous storm earlier in the 1920's.  From then on out, his adapted works were in full sound; and often either included songs that he had written, or were turned into musicals.  One of my personal favorites, is the David Lean directed Blithe Spirit (1945), which he is reported to have worked on the screenplay covertly.  Coward died in Jamaica, on his Firefly Estate, in Blue Harbor on 26 March 1973 of a heart attack, after suffering for many years the condition that is properly known as "hardening of the arteries."  He is buried there.

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Statue over-looking his burial slab in Jamaica.

Born Today October 11: Lowell Sherman

1885 or 1888-1934

Born Lowell J. Sherman in San Francisco to theater parents, most probably in the year 1885 (but many sources list 1888 as the year of his birth); his father was a theatrical agent, while his mother acted on the stage.  Like so many children born into theatrical families, he began his stage career young on touring companies.  As an adult, around 1904, he starting acting on Broadway in several productions; one of which, A Girl of the Golden West, was a huge hit in 1905.  His first appearance in film came in 1914 in the full feature length Behind The Scenes.  In the 1910's he was frequently cast as light cads and playboys; this all changed when, in 1920, D. W. Griffith cast him as an out and out bad guy, a predatory (possible statutory rapist) in Way Down East.  He went on to have a very prolific acting career throughout the 1920's, both on and off screen. Though he was a very good actor and much sought out, was always very reliable, he found acting not so fulfilling.  He is quoted as saying later on in his life: "Nothing becomes so monotonous as acting on the stage, especially if you are successful...working in the movies seemed even duller."  He then went on to become one of the very first silent era actors to make a very successful transition into directing films.  His directorial debut came in a very early talky in 1928 entitled Phipps.  He did continue to act in films until 1932, but from 1928 until 1935 he had 15 directorial credits, some of which he directed himself in.  If his last credit seems odd, a full year after his death, that is because he was in the early stages of directing Becky Sharp, when he unexpectedly died of double pneumonia in 1934 and the project was taken over by Rouben Mamoulian.  He was either 49 or 46 (probably 49) when he passed.  He is interred, like so many others Forest Lawn Memorial Park, including Mamoulian himself.  Sherman in entombed the memorial mausoleum section of the cemetery, like Carole Lombard and Clark Gable, but not near them.  He is, however, very near American film music composer Ralph Rainger.  IMDb.