Born Today April 3: Washington Irving

1783-1859

American author Washington Irving was born on this day in New York City, he parents were in the merchant business and quite well off; what we would call "upper middle class" today.  He was essentially the baby of the family.  Several of his older brothers followed father William Irving Sr. into the merchant business, but noticing Washington's penchant to writing; all encouraged him to pursue literary interests in addition to his training in the family trade.  They even went so far to help finance a career in writing, the younger Irving had a keen interest in adventure stories and soon became obsessed with the theater as well.  When yellow fever broke out in New York City, his parents sent him up river to Tarrytown to escape any possibility that he would contract the disease.  Tarrytown and its environs would figure heavily in his later stories; he was particularly fascinated by a little Dutch village not far from Tarrytown called Sleepy Hollow.  By the age of 19, he was writing letters to a local New York newspaper under a pseudo name on topics ranging from happenings at the theater and local social "news."  Though there is no evidence that he was writing the letters to gain any form of fame, nonetheless, they did bring him his first popular notoriety.  By 1804 he began to show signs of ill health, so his brother devised a plan to pay for trip to Europe to both improve his health and to further his education.  Never the most studious pupil, though, he irritated particularly his older brother William Jr. for not availing himself of educational opportunities while there, chasing again, his passion for the theater.  He was truly one to march by the beat of his own drum.  Despite all of this, he was a popular guest wherever he chose to travel through a 2 year period.  When he returned to the U.S., he went under tutelage for the law profession--not a career that he had any interest in; he did, however, manage--barely--to pass the bar in 1908.  One of the interesting facts of Irving's life was that created with his brothers a lampoon magazine in New York.  Salamugundi was created with help from siblings and a friend, and all wrote under outrageous fake names.  The magazine is remembered today of affixing the name "Gotham" to New York City in 1807--a pun on the Anglo-Saxon "Goat Town."  Ever up to high-jinx, his first major work was pure satire with a fictional historical gag attached to it's publication.  A History of New-York From the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty was a spoof piece supposedly written by one Diedrich Knickerbocker; to "advertise" the work, Irving took out a number of ads supposedly placed by a hotel owner, stating that if Mr. Knickerbocker didn't show back up and pay his outstanding hotel bill, the proprietor would publish the manuscript that he had left behind in his room.  The whole affair threatened to become serious when even the police began to consider offering a reward for the "missing historian."  Irving then went into the profession of editing.  He soon found himself on opposing sides with his family with the coming of the War of 1812, which the merchant class did not support--he however was persuaded to enlist in 1814, but he never saw any real action.  His family, though, suffered huge personal losses as a result of the war.  To help them out for a change, Irving left for London to attempt to salvage what he could for the family business.  This kept him in Europe for some 17 years.  It was here that he writing took off in droves.  Though, his life was filled with far more than writing--he was a dedicated public servant for most of his adult life.  He also became one of the very first American writers to be universally admired and well read in Europe; having admirers amongst some of Britain’s top literary figures of the day.  Irving's life is, of course, far too vast to cover in a simple post on his birth, that focuses on early film, so links are provided for further reading into his varied and fascinating history.  Getting to the films, the first ever made using his work as source material was the short from the year 1896 Rip Passing Over The Mountain, a Rip Van Torn yarn produced by the American Mutoscope Company.  In fact, the vast majority of the earliest films of his work were based on his character of Rip Van Winkle.  The first film made of his Sleepy Hollow story came in 1908 with The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow, a Kalem film.  Although a large number of silent films from his work were made, the vast majority of them were quite early.  The last film of his work made during the silent era came in 1922 with the independent The Headless Horseman, a film still available today, starring Will Rogers as Ichabod Crane.  It would be 12 years before another production of his work came out with Ub Iwerks animated short classic The Headless Horseman.  It would not be until 1949 that another animated short was produced from this same work with Disney's The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow; followed closely by the well known expanded The Adventures Of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949).  The first foreign language film made using his work was Spain's Cuenttos de la Alhambra.  Probably the best known feature film of his work made to date came out in 1999 with Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow starring Johnny Depp as Crane and Christopher Walken as the Horseman.  In 2013 a highly stylized version of that same story appeared as the basis for the television series of the same name.  One of the most recent use of his work in film came with a documentary examining the actual historic town of Sleep Hollow, NY itself, in A Journey To Sleepy Hollow released on Halloween in 2016.  While the web series "Crane" is the latest venture to make use of his work.  Irving died at the age of 76 just after completing his biography of his namesake, George Washington.  He died around 9 PM from a massive heart attack in Tarrytown, New York on November 28.  He was buried in the cemetery there more recently consecrated, adjacent to the old Dutch burial ground there--his marker being a humble, non-adorned affair.  Par his request, the cemetery was renamed Sleepy Hollow and the area of incorporation formally named North Tarrytown, was eventually renamed Sleepy Hollow as well.  Two points of trivia about Irving: 1) his international fame lead him to seek some the earliest world wide copyright claims--which greatly influenced the drafting of domestic copyright law; 2)  Irving was the "source" of the notion that prior to Columbus' voyage proved that the world was round--stating in his biography of Columbus--that Europeans widely believed the world to be flat before this historic undertaking in sea voyaging (this was not true, and no one knows if this was a joke or not...nevertheless school kids--myself included--were taught this in school).*

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*Please excuse any typos that I  missed and did not correct in this, blogger eliminated spellcheck on the the dashboard months ago, and this is my first attempt at writing and editing a piece without it. 

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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Born Today April 10: Lew Wallace

1826-1905

American military man, civil servant, politician and writer Lewis "Lew" Wallace was born on this date in Brookville, Indiana.  His father was an former military man and influential lawyer, who would become Governor of Indiana.  When his father was elected, the family moved to Indianapolis, where the younger Wallace and his many siblings grew up.  Wallace was pretty much a "do everything" sort of man.  He followed in the footsteps of his father in regard to the law and the military, rising to the rank of General. He served in both the Mexican-American war and in the Civil War as a Union officer.  He even did a brief stint in the Mexican army after resigning his military commission in the U.S.  After military service, he was appointed governor of the then New Mexican territories, and he later served the country in the capacity of an ambassador.  So why is general and a civil servant on a silent film blog?  Because, in addition to all of the above, Wallace was also a writer.  In his autobiography, he stated that he started writing as diversion from studying the law, which he found tedious.  While a couple of films in the silent era were made from so-called "lesser novels," all of the rest of the films made from his work come from just one novel, and it's famous one.  Ben-Hur was first published in 1880.  Fans of silent film will at once think of the epic film Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ of 1925, however the book was first filmed in 1907.  Ben Hur (1907) was a 15 minute short produced by Kalem in New York  (the film astoundingly has survived).  A Prince of India, which was shot in Ithaca, New York, came out in 1914; and the Italians took on his work in 1917 with Cuori e sensi.  Everyone who knows anything about major Hollywood blockbusters is very well familiar with the first sound production of his famous work:  Ben-Hur starring Charlton Heston came out in 1959.  The book as since been filmed 4 more times, with two theme being animated.  The most recent of these came with the 2016 remake Ben-Hur.  Ben-Hur has been called the most important and influential Christian book of the nineteenth century.  Wallace continued to write up to the time of his death, which came on the 15th of February in 1905 at the age of 77 in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where he had retired.  He is buried there with pomp and circumstance in Oak Hill Cemetery.

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Born Today September 30: Frederick Sleigh Roberts

1832-1914

The subject of early documentary newsreel style films, Lord Roberts, was born in India into a prominent Anglo-Irish military family.  Eton educated, he later attended Addiscombe Military Seminary, before entering the East India Company Army as a Second Lieutenant.  He eventually rose all the way to Field Marshall and served as the Commander in Chief of the Forces for the British Military.  He later became the 1st Earl Roberts.  Starting in 1899 he was featured in a number of short documentaries by various early British film companies performing various official duties.  The first of these was Lord Roberts Unveils Statue of Queen Victoria by the Hepworth company.  He continued to be the subject of, and in, such shorts right up until a year before his death; the last of which was England's King at Liverpool (1913), produced by the Kalem company.  On the 14th of November 1914 he passed away from pneumonia in St. Omer, France at the age of 82.  His body lay in state before he was given a state funeral and buried at St. Paul's Cathedral.  He is only one of two non-royal individuals to lay in state in the 20th century; the other being Sir Winston Churchill.  For more about his extensive life, see the Wikipedia link below.

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Born Today June 4: Clara Blandick

1876-1962

Clara Blanchard Dickey was born to a ship's captain and his wife on board the ship that he captained docked in Hong Kong, Victoria Harbor; the Willard Mudgett.  She was delivered by another ship's captain that was anchored nearby; one Cp. William C. Blanchard, with his wife Clara in attendance.  The Dickey's wanting to thank the couple for their assistance, named their new born daughter after them.  When she got into acting she would take the first parts of her middle and last name to create her stage name.  Her parents settled in Quincy, Mass when Clara was two or three years of age; and she grew up there.  Quincy's close proximity to Boston meant that frequent excursions could easily be made there.  Later she would move there, where she made the acquaintance of Shakespearean actor E. H. Sothern.  She would later appear in a stage production of Richard Lovelace with him there.  After this, she made the move to New York, where she made her first professional stage appearance there in 1901, in a production If I Were King, which had a nice run at the Garden Theater (and early incarnation of Madison Square Garden).  From this point forward, she regularly achieved praise for her stage performances, and in 1906 she was hired by the Kalem Company--a New York based film studio.  She probably made appearances in bit parts before 1911, but it is that year when her first confirmed film appearance came in the comedy short The Maid's Double.  She went on to make several film appearances in the 1910's, but quit in 1917; though she did continue stage acting.  She wouldn't make another film again, until 1929.  During World War I, she volunteered overseas for the American Expeditionary Forces.  During the 1920's, many of her stage performances in New York won critical praise; she was met with rave reviews especially for her supporting role in Hell-Bent Fer Heaven, which won a Pulitzer.  She moved to Hollywood in 1929, and got a role in an early talkie Wise Girls (1929).  After this, her film career took off, with her becoming the go-to girl for supporting roles.  She is by far and away most famous for her role as Auntie Em in the 1939 film production of The Wizard Of Oz.  In 1949 and 1951 she made a couple of appearances in early television shows, but retired from acting altogether after her appearance on The Bigelow Theater, as she had already started to experience health troubles. She, however, continued to live in Los Angeles.  Her health troubles only got worse throughout the 1950's.  By 1964, in her 80's, she faced blindness and had been in excruciating pain for more than a decade from the advancement of a severe arthritic condition; she had had enough.  On the 15th of April, after attending Palm Sunday service at her church, she rearranged her home to surround herself with fond memories of her life.  She then dressed in a blue dress gown, and took an overdose of sleeping pills.  To make sure she didn't wake up in a hospital, if someone were to find her before death, she lie down on her couch and covered herself with a gold blanket; she then placed a plastic bag over her head.  Her body was found a little later on by her landlady.  She was 85 years of age.  She left behind a note that simply read "I am now about to make the great adventure.  I cannot endure this agonizing pain any longer.  It's all over my body.  Neither can I face the impending blindness.  I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen."  Her remains were cremated and interred in Niche 17230 in the mausoleum of one of the great cemeteries to the stars, Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, Ca, along with her sister and brother-in-law's ashes.  

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Born Today January 12: Jack London

1876-1916

Writer Jack London was born John Griffith Chaney in San Francisco on this date. In addition to being a prolific novelist and writer of short stories, he was also a journalist and a very vocal social activist.  He got his last name that he is known by today from his step-father John London.  His life and writing were greatly influenced by his "colorful" young adult life that included working in an cannery, becoming a oyster pirate, and actually "hoboing" around the country, homeless for a time.  He was greatly influenced by his foster mother Virginia (Jenny) Prentiss, who was African-American and a former slave. In 1893 he began writing short stories, the first of which was entitled "Typhoon off the Coast of Japan" based on his sailing experiences.  His managed to get the story published that same year; yet by 1894 he was homeless again.  He was arrested for vagrancy, and spent a horrible month in jail in which he wrote that he was witness to the "awful abysses of human degradation."  After this, he devoted his time to intensive self-education; spending vast amounts of time in the Oakland Public Library.  He did manage to get into the University of California, Berkeley, but had to leave a year later due to financial reasons.  In 1897 he joined the Klondike Gold Rush.  During this time he wound up suffering from a whole host of health hardships from frostbite to scurvy; all of this left his health seriously and permanently impaired.  His struggles to survive during this time inspired the story  "To Build A Fire."  After this, his writing took off and, he managed to become the most prolific and highest paid author of his time.  He was part of the radical literary group in San Francisco known as "The Crowd."  He was also very active and passionate advocate for rights of workers and unionization; and an outspoken advocate for socialism.  After 1905, he became a self-educated "earth friendly" rancher.  He was also an animal rights activist; focusing (far ahead of his time) on the cruelty shown to circus animals (something that is still an issue today).

London in 1914

The first film that was made from his work was a short made by the Kalem Company in 1907 and was based on his novel The Sea Wolf (film's title being the same of the novel).  London has one acting credit to his name, which came in 1913, in which he played a sailor in a remake of The Sea Wolf.  It was shot on location in his native San Francisco and was produced by Hobart Bosworth Productions.  The last silent film made that was based on his work, was made in 1929; the screenplay was an adaptation of one of his short stories, Smoke Bellew and was produced by Big 4 Film (which was a company that didn't survive long in the new talking era).  Films continue to be made using his material. The latest release came in July 2014, with A Thousand Death's.  Into The Void, based on his novel, in post-production and is set for release next year.  

London died prematurely at the age of 40 in Glen Ellen, California, in a cottage on his Beauty Ranch, in Sonoma County.  In addition to the lasting ill effects of his days in the Klondike gold run on his health, he had long suffered from serious alcoholism.  He had additionally picked up tropical infections from his traveling the south Pacific after he became a rich man.  At the time of his death, he was suffering from Uremia brought on by kidney stones, which is incredibly painful, for which he was taking morphine.  The official cause of the death was uremic poisoning brought on by renal colic (or kidney stones) and acute nephritis (or kidney failure).  Rumors of suicide swirled wildly around the time of his death (and speculation remains to this day owed to his taking morphine).  And, it's possible he may have actually died from an accidental overdose of morphine.  His was cremated, and his ashes were interred on his ranch; which is now part of the Jack London State Park, underneath a large boulder from the property.

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