Born Today March 15: Montagu Love

1877-1943

British performer Montagu Love, born Harry Montague Love, was born on this day in Portsmouth, England. If you look up Love's name in an internet search, a number of works of art come up. At first, like 95% of such searches, it seems one should just assume the artist and the actor are not the same and the attempt to separate them out ensues. It is then that one realize they are, in fact, the same person. His art career, which what he started out doing, is just as important as his acting career in many ways.  Love was for a time an illustrator and cartoonist with London's Illustrated Daily News, where is was quite prolific. His paintings, a couple of which became popular illustrations for postcards, were always signed "H. Montagu Love," and often focused on the Boer Wars. For whatever reason, he was also interested in acting and managed make a stage debut after the turn of the century on the Isle of Wight (the company that he acted with, though, was American in origin, not British). He thereafter worked on the London stage until 1913, when he left the country for Canada. He quickly made his way into the United States and joined a touring company; this lead to a Broadway debut by the end of the year. This, in turn, quickly lead to film work in the New York area in 1915; though his return trips to the Broadway stage were numerous through the mid-1930's.  He is listed as having a lead role in a 1914 British & Colonial Kinematograph Company production The Suicide Club in 1914; but we know that he went to work for Wold Film with steady film work in 1915 starting with the feature Hearts in Exile. He appeared in five features that year alone.  Love cut quite the figure, standing well over six feet and sporting a brooding face, he was perfect for heavies and villains; though he started off in authority roles: everything from judges to nobility/royalty (Love even played an artist in the Harley Knoles directed The Devil's Toy in 1916...though he does sell his soul to Satan!).  In 1917, he took the lead in the Archainbaud directed horror The Brand of Satan, loosely based on the Jekyll and Hyde story in which the lead character has two personalities, one of which is a murderous underworld gang serial killer. It marked the beginnings of his type casting as a villain. While his stature made him a shoe in for the role of "The Black Monk" in Rasputin, the Black Monk (1917) directed by Arthur Ashley. In the late teens he had a run as a leading man for a time, appearing in several films with lesser known "vamp" actress June Elvidge.  In late 1919, he even branched out into comedies; but by the early 1920's, he was appearing in the villainous roles that he would be remembered for. One of his first in this vein was the role of Professor Balzamo, a magician and hypnotist, in The Case of Becky (October 1921).  Most films in which he acted during this time were of a melodramatic nature and featured some easily recognized names, such as:  Lionel Barrymore, Marion Davies, Harrison Ford, Norma Talmadge, Wallace Reid and Bebe Daniels. In 1926 he appeared as Ghabah in The Son of the Sheik, famously Valentino's last film; the shock the public felt at Valentino's sudden death meant that all the principle players in the film became well known as a result. This took Love's public recognition to a new level.  He followed the role directly with the role of Count Giano Donati in the John Barrymore Don Juan, a very early Warner Bros. partial sound film that had it's big premiere in New York City in August of 1926 (and general release the following February). And, his role as the evil Duke in the Ronald Colman/Vilma Bánky romantic adventure The Night of Love (1927) continues to win him special praise as a top-notch villain.  In 1928 he was directed by three famous ex-pat directors: two Scandinavians and a German. He appeared in two Benjamin Christensen films (The Hawk's Nest and The Haunted House, a partial silent in which he plays the "Mad Doctor"), and one film by Victor Sjöström (The Wind) starring Lillian Gish.  He then appeared in Paul Leni's mystery horror The Last Warning; also a partial silent, it reused sets from The Phantom of the Opera (1925).  He acted in no less than nine films in 1929, with Bulldog Drummond marking his first full sound film. His role as Baron Falon in the partial silent The Mysterious Island is one the most often cited villain roles that Love played in the 1920's; with his last film of the decade was the full sound crime drama A Most Immoral Lady (1929) starring Leatrice Joy.  He was still only half way through his film career when 1930 rolled around. He appeared in a number of films based on works of literature in the later portion of his career; and a few quite famous adventure films, including: The Prisoner of Zenda in 1937 The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938, The Man in the Iron Mask in 1939 and The Son of Monte Cristo in 1940. He worked right up until his sudden death in 1943 and several films in which he appeared were released after his death; the last regularly scheduled release was the Phil Rosen directed war drama Wings Over the Pacific released in late July of 1943. The biographical drama Devotion was delayed and was not released until April of 1946. Love passed away in Los Angeles on the 17th of May in 1943. He was 66 years of age. He is interred in the vault at the famous Los Angeles crematoria Chapel of the Pines.

Love's most famous illustration of Redvers Buller during the First Boer War, made into a postcard by the greeting card company Raphael Tuck & Sons. 

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Born Today February 13: George Fitzmaurice

1885-1940

French born director George Fitzmaurice (occasionally spelled FitzMaurice in a few sources) was born on this day in Paris. Often described as a "silent film director," Fitzmaurice's career actually continued well into the sound era.  "Fitz" as he was affectionately known got his start as a set designer; and he started directing films in 1914. Working for the American arm of the French Pathé Frères, he directed When Rome Ruled, a feature length historical drama set in North Africa; the film was released in August of 1914. He made just two more short films for Frères in 1914 (he also had a hand in writing scenarios for a further two films for them that year--one of which he may have directed), before jumping ship to an the American production company George Kleine Productions.  His first film for them was the comedy Stop Thief!, based on the popular Carlyle Moore play, and released in February of 1915.  In the middle of that year, he was instrumental in the founding the production enterprise Astra Film Corp., directing their very first release: Via Wireless (1915) starring Gail Kane. Fitzmaurice was married for a time to screenwriter Ouida Bergére (later more famous as Mrs. Basil Rathbone), and his next film was one of her adaptations for the screen: At Bay (November 1915). Bergére began to write scripts completely from scratch, usually romantic melodramas, having a director with whom she was romantically involved (they did not wed until 1918) meant that her work was going to get produced. This had the added effect of "typecasting," if you will, Fitzmaurice as a talented director of romances. This would also eventually make him a highly celebrated director in Hollywood. Astra became defunct in 1920, but Fitzmaurice had already moved west and to Paramount in that later half of 1919. Actually his first films for the studio were filmed in the New York area (well, one was filmed in Miami), with The Witness for the Defense (September 1919) being the very first. In the early 1920's, he also directed a couple of films for the company in Europe, the most historically interesting is the now lost Three Live Ghosts (1922), filmed at Islington Studios in London and had an art director by the name of Alfred Hitchcock.  In 1923, he directed Pola Negri in Bella Donna, a romantic drama with partial sound by De Forest Phonofilm; one of the earliest large feature productions to have sound attached.  He next directed her in the fully silent remake of The Cheat (1923) with Jack Holt (first made by Cecil B. DeMille in 1915).  It was also his last Paramount film. He moved over to the Samuel Goldwyn company and directed The Eternal City (1923), a war drama set during World War I (this is one of those films happily discovered to have survived, despite thought permanently lost for decades).  Through a partnership with Goldwyn, he was able to found his own George Fitzmaurice Productions; directing and bringing out the melodrama A Thief in Paradise, starring Ronald Colman and Doris Kenyon, in June of 1925.  Colman would become a frequent actor in Fitzmaurice productions over the next few years--some of his famous appearances with Vilma Bánky came in Fitz directions. In 1928 he began directing films that had sound, and though these were partial silents, they were his first films with sound in the era when sound was becoming the norm. One of these--Lilac Time--starred a young Gary Cooper opposite Colleen Moore.  While his first full talkie was the mystery thriller The Locked Door, starring Barbara Stanwyck. His last film of the decade--made for Warner Bros.--was also a talkie: Tiger Rose was a western romantic action film complete with musical originals; it starred Lupe Valez and Monte Blue and was filmed on location in Lake Arrowhead, California. But there is one film that Fitzmaurice is extremely famous for directing--in part it's that the film's superstar died before it's release. Fitzmaurice directed The Son of the Sheik in 1926; it would turn out to be Rudolph Valentino's last film. By the turn of the decade, he was still very famous for this film and that kept in demand.  His first film of the new decade was the romantic thriller The Bad One starring Dolores del Rio; while his most famous film from the decade is Raffles again starring Ronald Colman and released in July of 1930. In all, he directed nearly twenty films between 1930 and 1938, though on several he went uncredited and one, Nana, he was fired from by Goldwyn and replaced with a woman: the now legendary Dorothy Arzner. Fitzmaurice managed to direct one film in 1940, the diamond intrigue crime drama Adventure in Diamonds, which was released in March.  It would turn out to be his last film; he died at the age of 55 on the 13th of June that same year. He is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale--his grave marker put his birth year at 1887, but that is generally accepted to be incorrect. Fitzmaurice did direct one film that was nominated for an Oscar, and that picture came in the 1920's. His romantic partial silent The Barker (December 1928) was included in nominations for the 1930 Academy Awards, nominated for Best Lead Actress for Betty Compson. Fitzmaurice's second marriage was to actress Diana Kane (the sister of actresses Lois Wilson and Connie Lewis), they had one daughter and remained married until his untimely death.

[source: AJM (Find A Grave)]

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Born Today January 9: Vilma Bánky

 

 

1901-1991 

 

Silent film actress Vilma Bánky was born Vilma Koncsics (sometimes credited, of course, as Koncsics Vilma) on this day in Nagydorog, Austria-Hungary (now located in the Republic of Hungary) to an ethnic Hungarian father and a German mother.  Of course she is a very familiar face to even causal film fans due to her acting opposite the Latin Lover himself, Rudolph Valentino in two films; but, unknown to most, she started her film career back in Hungary (albeit in an Austrian/German production).  As an infant, her family was officially relocated to Budapest (her father was an upper level police officer who worked directly for the Emperor), growing up there, she had intended on becoming a secretarial agent, but while in school training as such, she was noticed for her striking looks and offered a job in a film. That film was the now lost Im letzten Augenblick, it had Austrian German intertitles and directed by German writer/director Carl Boese. She did not appear in another film until she took the lead in a Béla Balogh film Veszélyben a pokol in 1921. She would bounce around in the continental European film market, including one of Géza von Bolváry's Hungarian films before his departure for Germany: Tavaszi szerelem (1921). Without a doubt, her most high profile film before her own departure for Hollywood was King of the Circus, a 1924 Austrian comedy starring Max Linder (who has been compared to Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton). In 1925, she was "discovered" by studio head Samuel Goldwyn while on a trip to Budapest and signed to an extremely lucrative contract with his company. He went home to drum up an reputation for her and she made an appearance in one last European film, The Lady from Paris (December 1924), a German picture directed by Manfred Noa (she also appeared in another Noa film--Soll man heiraten?--but the film was not released until October of 1925).  Goldwyn's company had done such a good job of promoting her as the next big thing, that when she arrived in the United States in 1925, there was immediately a ton of press and publicity, hailing her as "The Hungarian Rhapsody."  Her first film in the U.S. was a resounding success for Goldwyn and George Fitzmaurice's companies. The Dark Angel (September 1925) was based on a popular play and had Bánky starring opposite Ronald Colman and directed by Fitzmaurice himself. Her next two films were the very famous appearances with Valentino.  The first was The Eagle, directed by Clarence Brown, it was based on a Pushkin novel and released in November of 1925.  Following directly after, was The Son of the Sheik (September 1926), sequel to Valentino's 1921 blockbuster The Sheik, the film was another George Fitzmaurice directed effort and famously became Valentino's last film. As for Bánky, Valentino was the one who selected her for the roles personally; it seems that he was genuinely fascinated with her. For her part, she followed up her role in this--now one of the most famous of silent films--with a return to acting with Ronald Colman in the western The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926). The two films were shot virtually at the same time.  She would continue to act opposite Colman through 1928, including in her fist appearance in a film with sound. Two Lovers (March 1928) was a historical romance film that was directly produced by Goldwyn and directed by Fred Niblo; it was released as both a partial silent and a fully silent film and marked her last role acting with Colman.  Unfortunately, both versions are now sadly considered lost. She made just two more films in the decade--both partial silents. The last of them--This Is Heaven--was a romantic comedy filmed in New York City and released in June of 1929. She made just three films in the 1930's, two of them directed by Victor Sjöström; his romantic drama A Lady to Love (1930) was her first full sound film. Her transition to sound simply did not fly however; her extremely thick Hungarian accent was a career-ender. Her last film was in the German language film The Rebel in 1933 (she was fluent in German from a young age).  She then retired to a long life filled the charitable works and golf....lots and lots of golf (she was, in fact, a championship player in 1950's and she played well into her 80's).  In June of 1927, she married fellow actor Rod La Rocque, and huge ceremony, throwing one the most elaborate receptions that Hollywood as yet witnessed. Theirs was not a typical Hollywood marriage however, as they remained married until his death in 1969.  Bánky herself passed away on the 18th of March in 1991 at the age of 91 (note: some sources put her birth year in 1898--if she were born in that year, she would have made her 93 at the time of her death). She was cremated and her ashes were scattered at sea at the very spot where her husband's ashes had been scattered some 22 years prior.  Bánky was also one of the most fashionable women in films of the 1920's, both on and off the screen.

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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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