Born Today September 1: John W. Boyle

1891-1959

Cinematographer John W. Boyle was born on this day in Memphis, Tennessee.  By the end of his career, he had shot over 150 films, but he got his start solidly in the silent era.  His first film was Greater Love Hath No Man in 1915.  He was in fact, the cinematographer on a film starring Arthur Shirley (II), who was written up yesterday on this blog; the film was The Fall Of A Nation (1916).  By 1917,  he was working for Fox and photographed a great many of their late 1910's iconic films (most of them sadly lost)--including a great many of the Theda Bara/J. Gordon Edwards films.  Even after Edwards was through directing Bara, he kept Boyle on as his cinematographer.   He, for example, shot the now lost Edwards' directed The Queen Of Sheba (1921), which features Betty Blythe who also had a birthday on the 1st of September. From 1922 on, he was working at various studios, including: Metro, Warner Bros.,  and Goldwyn.  He was given top jobs at some the earliest merged studios as well.  1928 brought his first brush with early talking pictures; he was director of photography on The Good-By Kiss a partial sound film directed by the great Mack Sennett, for whom he worked in the late silent era.  He next worked on a short film of Sennett's that had an experimental two-color technicolor sequence: The Campus Carmen (1928).  Sennett's next comedic short The Lion's Roar (1928) was a full sound affair that Boyle also photographed.  Also by 1928, he gained the attention of up and coming directors working under Sennett's umbrella at Sennett Comedies--one of them was Frank Capra.  These aquntiances would serve him well later in his career.  The over-whelming bulk of the films that he shot in the late 1920's and early 1930's were shorts around 20 minutes long.  In 1928 and 1929, he also served as president of the American Society of Cinematographers.  Boyle worked right up until the time of his death, having made his television debut in shooting seven episodes of Big Town in the early 1950's.  The last film that he shot was Courage of Black Beauty in 1957.  Boyle passed away in Hollywood on the 28 of September 1959, almost one month to the day after his 68th birthday.  He is interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.  In 1965, some of his archive footage of Abbott and Costello was used in The World Of Abbott and Costello.  

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Born Today June 24: J. Gordon Edwards

1867-1925

Canadian born silent film director J. Gordon Edwards was born on this day in Montreal.  Like so many silent film pioneers, Edwards got his start in the theater; first as an actor, then as a director at the Suburban Garden Theater in St. Louis, Missouri.  He would go on to be Theda Bara's favorite director, whom he directed some 22 times.  He made his film debut in 1914, directing St. Elmo for Balboa Amusement.  He was then hired by Fox, where he was trusted with a good number of their largest budget films.  The first film that he made for them was The Celebrated Scandal in 1915, starring Betty Nansen.  He added writing to his list of accomplishments in 1915 with Blindness of Devotion.  He first directed Bara in 1916 in Under Two Flags (like so many Bara/Fox films, this film is lost); the film represents his only producer credit.  One of his most important films with Bara came in 1917 with the now also lost Cleopatra.  In 1921, he directed the huge epic The Queen Of Sheba, complete with a very elaborate chariot race (again, it is another lost Fox film)--the film represented one the largest budgets in the then hence-to history of the famed studio.  His last time in the directing chair came with It Is The Law in 1924.  Edwards died the following year in New York City from pneumonia on New Year's Eve (1925) at the age of 58.  He is buried in a very elaborate tomb resembling the Taj Majal in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.

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