Born Today December 14: Jane Cowl

 

1884-1950

 

Stage and film actress Jane Cowl was born Jane Bailey on this day in Boston.  Though born in Boston, she spent a good deal of her childhood in New York City, attending high school in Brooklyn and later attending Columbia in Manhattan.  She, of course, started on the stage and made her official Broadway debut in 1903.  She stayed primarily a stage actress for all of career, which lasted through the 1940's.  She made her film debut in the lead role in the drama Garden of Lies in 1915; shot primarily in several locations in Florida.  She appeared in just one other silent film in her career in 1917; The Spreading Dawn was another drama in which she took top billing--it was made for Goldwyn.  As far as silents go, she actually had a bigger presence in the writing department than she did as an actress. Under the name Alan Langdon Martin, she wrote plays with Jane Murfin (they used the pen name jointly).  Between the two of them, they share five silent or partially silent writing credits for films made between the years 1918 and 1928.  The first of these was Daybreak (1918) an Albert Capellani film.  The last of these was the partial silent Lilac Time (1928) starring Colleen Moore and Gary Cooper.  Two more films were made from thier plays before Cowl again appeared in a film again herself (see: Smilin' Through--1932 and Smilin' Through--1941). In 1943, she made her first film appearance in 26 years, though the role was tiny and uncredited, in the Frank Borzage film Stage Door Canteen.  It would be a further six years before she had another credited film role in Once More, My Darling (1949).  She made three more films, the last of which--Payment on Demand (a Bette Davis film)--was released posthumously in February of 1951.  Also posthumously, were two productions for television of her play Smithin Through--both in 1953. They represent the most recent use of her writing for a film and/or television.  Cowl died in Santa Monica on the 22 of June in 1950 at the age of 65.  Her ashes were buried at Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood.   Cowl was married to actor Adolph Klauber; but they had been separated for three years before his death in 1933; she never remarried. On Broadway, she was one of the first influential female directors as well. 

[Source: AJM (Find a Grave)]

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Born Today December 21: J. Gunnis Davis

Still from the Bride Of Frankenstein (his scenes were cut in final product)

1873-1937

Actor and director J. Gunnis Davis was born Joseph Gunnis Davis on this day in Sunderland Tyne-and-Wear, England, despite his stage name being James Gunnis Davis for most of his film career.  He was a well known British stage actor who had been schooled in London.  The vast majority of his career was spent in the UK on the stage as both an actor and a director.  He came to the U.S. with his wife, who was also an actor, under his birth name after the turn of the century.  They both apparently continued to act on the stage--he certainly did and gained acclaim for some of his performances.  He got into the film industry as an actor in The Lucky Loser in 1912 under his stage name.  The film was an Eclair production.  Davis was then contracted to Eclair, and stayed with them through 1913.  At the very end of 1913, he began working for Kalem, who would give him the opportunity to direct.  He made his directorial debut in 1914 in what has come down to us as an important early surviving serial in The Hazards Of Helen; he was one of 6 directors that included Robert Vignola.  It was the beginning of a very prolific directing career that would last through 1917.  Almost all of the films that he directed were shorts and were for Kalem.  Actress Helen Gibson was the star of most, if not all of them.  Davis was given formal credit for writing just one scenario for one of the films that he directed, Saving The Fast Mail (1917), but doubtless he had written all or part of other shorts under his direction as well (many of them lack a writing credit altogether).  In the meantime, he had continued to act from time to time, though his work in front of the camera slowed.  Also during this time, he appeared on the stage as well; he had a role in a 1915 production of Alice In Wonderland that was well regarded.  One of his more prominent roles came as second bill in The Pit in 1914, based on the Frank Norris novel of the same name and directed by Maurice Tourneur.  The film was made for World Film; this brought Davis into the orbit of the cabal of characters that had founded that company (the film was directly produced by William A. Brady's company).  The last film that Davis directed was The Deserted Engine in 1917--the film was also the last in Kalem's A Daughter Of The Daring series--an eleven part serial of one-reelers.  After this point, he devoted himself solely to acting.  With his directing career behind him, he appeared in films mostly for World Film; this led him, by the early 1920's, into the Selznick production world.  He had a part in A Certain Rich Man, one of the first films produced under David O. Selznick's new Selznick Pictures Corp., which would become Selznick International Pictures.  Additionally, he appeared in films made at Vitagraph in the 1920's.  Most of the roles that he had in that decade were small and some went uncredited. In 1928 he had a role in the partial silent Lilac Time, a film that starred Gary Cooper and Colleen Moore; it was his first "sound film."  He did not appear in another film until 1930; (by this time, of course, all major motion pictures were full sound affairs) the film was Headin' North, a small western featuring saloon vaudeville.  Having been a stage actor for all of his adult life, there was little chance that he would be a target for cutting during the sound era. He was given roles in the films where a British accent would clearly help the story in bit parts and if those parts were deemed superfluous to the story, they were cut in post-production--this is what happened to his appearance in The Bride of Frankenstein.  One exception to this is Charlie Chan Carries On (1931) [it so unfortunate that this is a lost film, not least because of his speaking role].  After his appearance in One More River in 1934, all of his roles went uncredited, whether they made it into the film or not.  His last film credit came in 1937 in yet another Gary Cooper film Souls at Sea.  This is because he died suddenly on the 23rd of March of that year in Los Angeles at the age of 63. He is reportedly buried in a cemetery in Los Angeles--either Hollywood Forever or the Hollywood Hills location of Forest Lawn Memorial Park, but I can find zero information from either location to back this up.

Poster for A Forest Romance (1913) in which Davis had a large role with Mona Darkfeather.

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Born Today May 7: Gary Cooper

1901-1961

Born Frank James Cooper in Helena, Montana to English immigrant parents; he had one older sibling, a brother named Arthur.  Their father Charles had become a prominent lawyer in Montana, rising even up to the Montana Supreme Court; this allowed for the family to purchase a large ranch and live comfortably.  Their mother, Alice, wanted her two sons to have an English education, so in 1909 she escorted them back to the UK where they were enrolled in Dunstable Grammar School located in Bedfordshire.  He was educated there from 1910 through 1912.  The boys were then escorted, again by their mother, back to Montana to attend school at the Johnson Grammar School in Helena.  While in high school, he was encouraged by a teacher to join the debate club and get involved in the dramatic arts; this was his first exposure to public oration and acting of any sort.  Also while still in high school, he enrolled in college courses the agricultural college in Bozeman.  After graduating, he headed for Grinnell College in Iowa, the year was 1922.  While there he did well in his course work, but was disappointed not to be accepted at the college's drama club.  During summer's he supported himself as a guide at Yellowstone.  Disgruntled with college life, he quit suddenly in 1924 and headed to Chicago to find work as an artist, but was unsuccessful.  After a month, he headed back to his hometown of Helena, where he got work selling editorial cartoons to the local newspaper.  In the autumn of that same year, Cooper's father Charles left the Montana Supreme Court and moved with his wife Alice out to Los Angeles to work with family members living there.  At his father's request, he joined them there.  He wasn't there long before he ran into two acquaintances from back home who worked as stunt riders in the motion picture industry; they introduced him to rodeo champion "Slim" Talbot who knew people in the industry.  Talbot took Cooper to see a casting director, and he soon found work as an extra for $5.00 a day and a stunt rider for double that amount.  This is were some confusion comes into play.  Many film historians have claimed that Cooper made his film debut in 1923 in an uncredited role in a film titled The Last Hour; this highly doubtful, as Cooper didn't show up in Los Angeles until Thanksgiving of 1924.  It is much more likely that his real debut came as a "crowd extra" in Dick Turbin which came out in 1925.  From there on he got steady work in extra roles in a string of silent films throughout the 1920's.  Realizing that there was more than one actor who went by the credited name of "Frank Cooper," he figured that he needed to change his name.  Nan Collins, a casting director, that had turned agent for Cooper suggested the name "Gary" (after her hometown of Gary, Indiana) and a budding star was born. The first known credit under this name came in 1927 with The Last Outlaw, as "Garry Cooper," in an early starring role for him.  The first partial sound film he starred in came in 1928 in Lilac Time opposite Colleen Moore; though the film had no speaking parts--only sound effects with a musical score.  The first film that he starred in that actually had talking sequences in parts was The Shopworn Angel (1928), with sound provided by Western Electric Sound System.  It was, however, the very last film that he made in the 1920's that was not only his full sound film, but made him a superstar; that would be The Virginian (1929).  Directed by Victor Fleming, it is still a household name amongst connoisseurs of the western film genre.  Cooper would go on to have a very prolific film career, with some very notable roles along the way, including that of real war hero Alvin C. York in the 1941 Sergeant York , for which he won an Oscar.  He also won for High Noon (1952).  His life, though, was cut short, when a late diagnosis of prostate cancer allowed the disease to spread to his colon.  He passed on the 13th of May in 1961, just a week after marking his 60th birthday.  His funeral mass was held on May 18 and was attended by many Hollywood luminaries.  He was then interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City.  However, in 1974 when his family relocated to New York, he was exhumed and his remains transported to Southampton, NY, where he was reburied at the Sacred Hearts cemetery there; a 3 ton boulder from the Montauk quarry, along with a flat grave stone mark his final resting place.  

His original grave marker in California

His new grave marker, with Montauk boulder, along with the marker for his wife's grave in Southampton, NY.

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