Released Today September 4: The Sealed Room (1909)

Born Today June 9: Marion Leonard

1881-1956

American stage and very early film actress Marion Leonard was born on this day in Cincinnati, Ohio.  And it was in Cincinnati that she began her stage career.  She eventually wound up working in the New York area and was signed to a contract with the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in 1908 at the age of 27.  She made her film debut that same year in At The Crossroads Of Life, a film written by soon to be directing sensation D. W. Griffith.  One of the films that she appeared in that is most remembered today in D. W. Griffith's 1909 The Sealed Room, basically Griffith's only horror film.  With her contract up in 1910, she went to work with Reliance Films; most probably the first film that she made for them was The Gray Of The Dawn (1910).  She did return to work at Biograph for a time, because she had begun a relationship with one of their most important behind-the-scenes writers and over-all mover and shaker Stanner E. V. Taylor.  By 1914, the now married couple had started their own production house in the Marion Leonard Film Company; The Rose Of Yesteryear (1914) appears to be their first film.  The last film that she appeared in before retiring from regular acting was directed by her husband; The Dragon's Claw was released in 1915.  As far as Internet Movie Database in concerned, this is where her film appearances ended, but she was persuaded--in her mid-40's--to return to make at least one (possibly more) appearance in a 1926 Mack Sennett film.  She died on the 9th of January 1956 at the Motion Picture and Television Country House & Hospital  in Woodland Hills, California.  Sadly there is no information as to her burial or cremation. 

In Griffith's The Sealed Room

For More:

IMDb

Silent Horror Image Of The Day

Early direction by D. W. Griffith, The Sealed Room 1909.  This is basically the only horror film that he made.

The Sealed Room (1909)

This has been described as the only horror short that D.W. Griffith made, or at least the only one that survives (I you take a look at his IMDb page, you see that he is credited with 535 titles as director and owed to some early Biograph Co. archives being lost, that number may well be light).  The fact that it is called a horror film at all is owed to the fact that the story comes from Poe's "A Cask of Amontillado," there are those, like those over at IMDb for example, that keep removing and then replacing the "horror" genre (yeah, I know that it's "user driven").  Whether you consider it a horror film or not, it certainly has a building creepiness to it.  To my knowledge, it is the only time Griffith directed a Poe project.  It is certainly among the very earliest films every based on Poe's work.  Please excuse the outsized embed. it is from the good folks over at Internet Archive, please check them out this pumpkin season, they have a lot of creepy stuff.  Happy Halloween!