Born Today July 17: Jakob Christoph Heer

 

 1859-1925

Swiss novelist Jakob Christoph Heer was born on this date in Töss in the Kanton of Zurich (a village still located on the the outskirts of Zurich proper).  Heer was educated at Winterthur and became a teacher by profession. He had worked as a Vicar until 1897 when he obtained his teaching certificate and then worked in as an educator full time after 1882. All the while, he wrote novels in the romantic style, focusing on a sub-genre of "Domestic Romance." Writing in Swiss German, his theme heavily eschewed the increasing advance of technology and the increased removal of populations from rural life, focusing instead on the "idyllic" in living in natural settings surrounded by the pastoral rather than advances in technology (even in pursuits like farming).  In 1902 he was finally able to take up full time free lance writing. Heer's work has not been adapted for film often, but all the four films have been features; including the very first film made in 1929. This film was, though, was no small deal. It was a partial silent American production directed by none other than Ernst Lubitsch. Eternal Love would be the last "silent" film that he made (it actually featured sound effects by MovieTone).  It also starred Camilla Horn and John Barrymore in the leads and was based on Heer's novel Der Koenig der Bernina. The other three productions have all been German language films of Austria, Germany and his native Switzerland. The first full sound film made from his work was the 1932 German Sacred Waters; this was followed some 25 years later by the Austrian Der König der Bernina in 1957. The most recent use of his work for an adapted script came just three years later, way back in 1960 with the joint Swiss/West German production of Secred Waters. Though Heer is known as a novelist, he was also a prolific writer of short stories, poems and--not surprisingly--local travel literature (though he is said to have very much disliked the concept of tourism). Heer died in Zurich on the 20th of August, a little better than a month after his 66th birthday. A huge stone memorial was put up in his honor at Winterthur, the village where he recieved his education and began his writing career.

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Born Today July 26: Evelyn Preer

 

1896-1932 

[Note: sorry for the double space....more Blogger glitches!]

Very important and pioneering African American actress Evelyn Preer was born Evelyn Jarvis on this day in Vicksburg, Mississippi. When her father died suddenly, her mother moved her and her siblings to Chicago; she was young enough at the time to attend grammar school in the city. Her mother also introduced her to "street preaching"--which in turn introduced her, inadvertently, to street theater--and then on to vaudeville. So after graduating from high school, and already bitten by the acting bug, she went into the field as a profession; despite some family misgivings about it, she prevailed in joining a vaudeville company.  She toured extensively on what was known as the "chitlin circuit" in segregated black America in various vaudeville shows--this would eventually lead her all the way to Broadway in a colored performance of Salome in 1923 (she acted with a movie cohort of hers Laura Bowman). Preer's last name came from her first marriage to Frank Preer, who tragically died in 1923. Evelyn married fellow actor  Edward Thompson the following year, but kept her first married surname.  They met while working together at the Lafayette Theater in Chicago--an extremely important theater group for the advancement of African American acting.  Preer made history in 1919, when she accepted the leading female role of Orlean in Oscar Micheaux's directorial debut The Homesteader; it is the very first feature length film made by a black director with an all black cast (it is also notable, due to Micheaux having adapted his own novel for the screen). It is a stinking shame that it is a now lost to us.  In fact, of her nearly 20 film roles, more than half of them are believed lost.  From then on, whenever she appeared in the Micheaux film, he made her the star; although after 1920, her appearances in front of his camera were fewer and further apart due to her stage work. The last Micheaux film that she appeared in was The Spider's Web, starring opposite Lorenzo McClane (with whom she almost shared a birthday).  Her appearance in the film also marked the last time that she was in a silent film.  She next acted in a number of early talking shorts, all of them produced in 1929 and all of them made by the Christie Film Company, a division of Paramount. These were part of a greater project at Al Christie's company to make shorts that would compete with other similar comedic talking short films that were fairly numerous in the late 1920's. What is really interesting is that this was a major studio making films with all black casts and with stories that did not stereotype them; some may say that's rare now, it was all but unheard of in the 1920's! The other thing that all of these shorts had in common was the casting of her husband in them as well.  The first of these was The Melancholy Dame; and it marked the first time that Preer was directed in film by someone other than Micheaux, in this case Arvid E. Gillstrom (I have provided a full list of links below to these important films).  The other director that worked on these films was William Watson and at least one of them featured the acting of Sam McDaniel, brother of Hattie McDaniel with first African American woman to win an Academy Award.  The first film of the new decade to feature her acting was the full musical:  Georgia Rose.  The film, which was written and directed by Harry A. Grant, was made for Arista Pictures and released in September of 1930 (it is among the list of the lost unfortunately).  Her last three roles came in major motion pictures, though she was only credited in one: Good Sport (1931) a romantic comedy, Ladies of the Big House (1931) a Sylvia Sidney picture in which she plays an inmate and Josef von Sternberg's Blonde Venus (1932).  Preer was also an accomplished blues and jazz singer and twice contributed performances to films (along with her musical performance in Rose mentioned above). She also performed live with musical artists and recorded music--one of her musical collaborators early on was Duke Ellington. Preer had an ascendant career in front of her and she had motherhood to look forward to as well, but she developed post-partum complications about two weeks after giving birth to her daughter Edeve and eventually succumbed to double pneumonia in Los Angeles on the 17th of November at the just the age of 36.  She was cremated and her ashes were kept by family. Her husband continued to act in film during the 30's and 40's; and her daughter converted to Roman Catholicism, became a nun and university professor teaching African American cinema. During her lifetime, Preer's most important working relationship was no doubt with the powerhouse that Anita Bush. By far her most well known film performance came in Oscar Michaeux's Within Our Gates--which I am so happy to say is not only still with us, it is so widely available that as of this writing, it is available to stream on Amazon Prime. 

[Note: about half the sources on her birth have her birth date on the 16th of July, after doing some additional research this week, I believer that her birthday was indeed the 26th of July instead]

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Wikipedia      

Find A Grave entry     

Full List Of The Christie Shorts:          

The Melancholy Dame  

The Framing Of The Shrew 

Oft In The Silly Night 

The Lady Fare 

Brown Gravy 

 The Widow's Bite 

Born Today July 15: Lorenzo McClane

This film, one of two that McClane is currently credited as acting in, was released in 1935. Used here as a reference point for his birthday bio, as the poster for the only silent for which he gets credit has not survived.

1897-1975

Lorenzo McClane was an African American actor who was part of the greater group of people involved with Oscar Micheaux's production house Micheaux Film. We are fortunate to know many more of the details of his life than a large number of other players involved with the making of "colored films" in the silent and early sound era.  Born Alphonso Lorenzo McClane in Washington D.C. on this day (I am wondering if he was part of the mixed community that gave us James Young [aka James Young Deer]), he was married with two children during his lifetime.  His only appearance that is recorded in a silent film comes in Micheaux's "crime horror" of 1927--shot in late 1926 in Baltimore--The Spider's Web (Micheaux remade the film in 1932 as The Girl From Chicago).  McClane was the male lead opposite Evelyn Preer. It is such a shame that so many of these films had little chance of survival. If one thinks about how few "big studio" silents have survived for various reasons, I personally think it's a near miracle that any of Micheaux's films have been preserved. So it is important that the other appearance that McClane made in film was a 1935 Michaeux Film production Murder In Harlem has survived. Shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey--where Micheaux was based until 1948--this is our one moment to see McClane in action. Unlike in The Spider's Web, he was in a lesser, though named, role--that of Arthur Vance (many roles in the film are "undetermined" due to incomplete records).  It is probable that McClane appeared in other films, but the extreme restrictions on black film actors choices (extreme prejudice in the north, Jim Crow in the south) at the time mean it is possible that these are his only film roles (I don't think that's likely though). We do know through records that McClane passed in January of 1975 in Teaneck, New Jersey.  Apparently he hadn't moved far from Fort Lee after his relocation there in the late 1920's or early 1930's. Teaneck is an adjacent township to the northwest of Fort Lee (present day 1-80 expressway runs through the southern edge). There presently is no information as to his burial.

           Micheaux on the set       

[Apologies for the tardy posting, I've been having computer trouble with Google interaction with my Mac of late]   

Born Today July 14: George Tobias

1901-1980

Comedic actor who specialized in supporting character roles, George Tobias was born on this day in New York City. He is most recognizable as Abner Kravitz from the 1960's supernatural situation comedy "Bewtiched". Before this, he was one of Hollywood's most prolific supporting actors in 1940's and 1950's. He was also a stage actor and worked in the theater during the early portion of his career on both coasts: California and New York--eventually working on Broadway.  Before all of this however, his appeared in one lone silent film in 1927 at the age of 26.  The film--The Lunatic--was based on a play and directed by Harry Garson.  He did not appear in another film until 12 years later, and that was in a bit part in the Warner Bros. romantic comedy Yes, May Darling Daughter--in the meantime, he had worked steadly on the stage. It was not long, however, before his film career took off in spades and he was never again far from the from a motion picture camera. He next got a nice credited supporting part in the MGM comedy Maisie (1939), starring Robert Young and Ann Sothern. He managed to make appearances just in 1939 alone in several films considered classics today:  Charles Laughton's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Roaring Twenties (in a bit part) and the Greta Garbo film Nonitchka (he also appeared in the 1957 remake Silk Stockings with Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse). With the coming of World War II, it is not a surprise that he appeared in a number war pictures, including the Oscar winning Sergeant York (1941) based on a the true story of highly decorated World War I soldier Sgt. Alvin C. York.  For someone known for his television roles, he made his small screen debut relatively late in 1954 in an uncredited role in the the second season episode A Dry Scalp Is Better Than None of the comedy series Our Miss Brooks--he made three appearances on the show in bit parts. His first recurring television role came in Hudson's Bay, only one other actor Barry Nelson (later famous for his appearance in The Shining) appeared in more episodes of the adventure series. Before landing the role of Kravitz, he had one other recurring character: Trader Penrose on another adventure series Adventures In Paradise.  The Bewtiched character of Abner--the "poopooing" husband of Gladys Kravitz, played by the hilarious Alice Pearce--first appeared in the second episode of the series: Be It Ever So Mortgaged, which aired on the 24th of September in 1964.  His last appearance came on the episode Darrin Goes Ape, which aired on the 11 of March in 1971. In all, he appeared in 54 episodes of the series. He wasn't done with the Bewitched universe however. His very last acting role before retirement came in the Arrival of Nancy episode of the Bewitched spin off series Tabitha; it aired on the 17th of December 1977.  Along the way, he made numerous guest appearances on a number of really well known television shows of the 1960's and 1970's. Tobias died just a little more than two year later after a battle the bladder cancer. He passed away on the 27th of February in 1980 in his adopted home of Los Angeles; he was 78. He was sent back to his native New York City for burial at the Jewish resting place of Mount Carmel in Glendale, Queens. As a point of really fun trivia that a I stumbled on today:  he played on a show that featured Dick York and Dick Sargent, after having been in the Gary Cooper film Sergeant York! Fun fact that!

[Source: Scott A. Carter (Find A Grave)] 

IMDb

Wikipedia

Abner Kravitz (in the Bewitched Wiki)

Find A Grave entry

Born Today July 10: Gail Kane

1883-1966

Actress of the the stage and silent screen Gail Kane (Abigale) was born on this day in Philadelphia (and if you are familiar with her, you may being doing a double take on that birth year there...apparently she fudged her age by two years, stating to producers that her birth year was 1885-her real birth year appears on her tombstone). Though known as a silent star for a brief time, she spent as much, or more, of her acting career on the stage as she did before the camera. I find it interesting, that as an accomplished stage actor, her entire film career came during the silent era--she never made a talkie.  Most stage actors who tried film acting in the silent era did not find it to their liking and went back to the stage; many came back in the 1930's with the coming of sound. Not so with Kane. Of course, this is not a mystery--she simply retired from acting altogether to raise her child in Maine; so even her stage career did not last into the age of sound film.  This is also of interest to me, because her ambitions to follow a career in acting apparently surfaced while she was still in school, and it became a path that she was absolutely determined to follow. By the time she made her film debut in 1913, she was near 30 by her telling (in reality she was 30--but I don't blame her bit for shaving off a little on her age--my own grandmother did the same); that came in the independent western Arizona, which was shot on location on Staten Island by the All-Star Feature Corporation. Her stage career, much of which was on Broadway, ran concurant with her film career. This might provide another good reason for her retiring in her early 40's--she and her husband spent most of their time in the Augusta, Maine area--which was convienent for the New York theater scene....but certainly not for Hollywood film shoots! She also performed in London and had parts in plays produced by George Cohan.  As for her film career, she was billed as an ingenue from the beginning. For example, the tagline for The Great Diamond Robbery (1914) read "Miss Gail Kane is today one of America's leading photoplay actresses"--it was just her second film appearance. Ultimately she would take roles in close to 35 films between 1913 through 1927. In the first years of her film career, she was directed by a number famous directors, including Travers Vale (The Men She Married), Emile Chautard (The Heart of a Hero), George Fitzmaurice (Via Wireless) and Maurice Tourneur (The Pit & The Velvet Paw).  She also played identical twins in The Scarlet Oath; one the first times that this acting technique was employed and one that remains almost completely unique to film, since, obviously, this is much harder to pull off in live performance. In 1917 she signed a contract with Mutual out in Hollywood and began making films with their production house American Film Company, the first of which was Whose Life?.  After some skirmishes in Hollywood that involved contract breach by Mutual, she was back to making films in New Jersey the following year. When Men Betray (1918) was made for the independent company Graphic Films, shot on location in Lakewood, New Jersey and written and directed by Graphic founder Ivan Abramson. Although not written widely about, Kane started her own production company in 1918 and the production house produced two films in which she appeared that year: Love's Law and The Daredevil, both directed by Francis J. Grandon.  As her stage career picked up in the New York area, her film career slowed. She only appeared in one film in 1920: Empty Arms; and only two films in 1921:  Idle Hands and Wise Husbands. Her most prolific time on the stage however came during the years 1923 and 1927, when she appeared in no films at all after she had a role in the Lillian Gish film The White Sister.  During this time, she acted in at least 6 major stage productions--most of them on Broadway. One hitch came on cold night in February 1927, when the New York police raided (probably illegally) two major productions on supposed violations of local "morality laws." Arrested along with Kane were the likes of Winifred Fraser, Basil Rathbone, Mae West and a distraught Helen Menken (my, I would give anything to travel back and time to be a fly on the wall when those coppers got West downtown!!). After this incident, Kane made just one more film appearance, and swore off the stage altogether. For the first time in her career, she took the role of an older woman, playing "Mrs. Weyeth" in a World War I set drama Convoy which was released in April of 1927 (it is among the list of films listed as lost).  She then retired for good with her little family to Augusta, Maine, where she remained for the rest of her life.  Kane passed away from natural causes on the 17 of February 1966 at the age of 82; she is buried next to her husband, whom she lost in 1939, at Augusta's Saint Marys Cemetery.

[Source: Dapper (Find A Grave)]

[Source: Dapper (Find A Grave)]

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Wikipedia 

Find A Grave entry

Born Today July 9: Jan Neruda

1834-1891

Czech writer of many styles and  genres Jan Neopmuk Neruda was born on this day in Prague. Neruda was part of the Czech school of literary realism and was involved with Czech revivalism, a school that started 18th century Prague and was deeply involved in the promotion and standardation of the Czech language--favoring it over romance/Latin languages and local German.  Neruda wrote exclusively in the language.  In this capacity, he became one of the most well known national literary figures of his time, despite that he was deeply shy and quite introverted in his private life.  A journalist by trade, Neruda was very much admired both Czech writers and English authors when he was in grammar school as a young man. He particularly loved reading Shakespeare, but also had a love of the romantic poetry of both Germany and England.  Despite all of this, he went through a rough patch in his life in which he was basically unwelcome in Prague; labeled a "national traitor"(keep in mind that what is now the Czech Republic--Czechia--was then still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire); because of this, Neruda went traveling on the European continent and eventually wound up in Egypt of all places; these have provided some interesting history of these places during the 19th cnetury.  While traveling, he kept a detailed diary of events and keen observations. Outside of his homeland, his Prague Tales have been widely translated, and remain today his most well known and read works.  Given that Neruda was a writer, it's obvious that the write-up here means that his work was used for source material for a silent film screenplay at least once. And, in fact, it was just once.  What is of interest (at least I find it really facinating!) is that the source material used was actually a column (albeit in the form of a story) that he wrote in the capacity as a journalist. This simply does not happen very often: sure plays, novels, short stories, librettos, poems...even placards on paintings have all been used for film scenarios, journalistic columns...not so much. The film in question is a comedy dating from 1924:  Kam s nim? (the column would be remade into a full sound film in 1955).  The film was adaptated from the column by Neruda and directed by Václav Wasserman. This was the only silent film (that we know of) made from his work.  It would be 12 years before another film was produced using his writing for the screenplay; that was another Wasserman film Quarryman (Trhani).  One of his novels was made into a Czech language television series in 1984.  Until 2009, the most recent use of his work came in 1989 with the release of the short horror film Vampyr; 20 years later Beggar's Story, another short, was released--the first of his work to be adapted and directed by woman:  Lucie Groene.  To date this is the most recent film of his work.  All of the 15 films and television productions made from his work has been in the Czech language that he so loved.  In failing health for years due to an inflammatory condition and an accident that left it hard from him to walk, he finally succumbed on the 22nd of August 1891, after a bout with intestinal cancer, at the age of just 57. He is buried at Prague's historical Vysehrad Cemetery which is located at 10th century castle of the same name. 

Wikipedia 

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Born Today July 8: Arthur C. Miller

1895-1970

[apologies for lack proper editing, I am experiencing computer difficulties, but would like to publish this anyway.]

One of the most well known of the early cinematographers of the Fort Lee period of film making in the United States, Arthur Charles Miller was born on this day in Roslyn, New York. During his lifetime he was a seven time Oscar nominee and a three time winner in the 1940's for his cinematography work; but arguably his most famous work today came from the silent era. His birthplace of Roslyn is located on the northwestern edge of Long Island in Nassau County, this meant it's proximity to New York City saw a large number of residents finding work in the city, especially during the early 20th century, when public transportation exploded in the area. Miller was just 13 years of age when he found work in the new motion picture industry.  This came about quite by accident; as he recounted much later in life, that he knew how to ride horses and was working for a local horse dealer who knew that Miller could ride bare back--he soon found himself on a location shoot on a golf course in Brooklyn.  This is how he made the aquaintance of then cinematographer Fred Balshofer. His first credit comes on as an assistant camera operator on The True Heart of an Indian in 1909, on which Balshofer was responsible for the outdoor scenes shot in New Jersey (he also co-directed the short). Miller was just 14 years old (Note: it is highly probable that his has other credits earlier than this, as we still do not know what the film was that he was riding the horse for in 1908). Even more impressively at the age of 14, Balshofer allowed Miller to operate a camera all on his own for part of another film that Balshofer co-directed, thus giving Miller his first cinematographer credit: that film was Romance of a Fishermaid (1909). Just two years later, at the age of 16, he earned his first solo credit in cinematography for directing the photography of the Lois Weber film A Heroine of '76 (1911). The following year, at the age of 17, he was the DP on a Mack Sennett film at Keystone: At Coney Island (1912)--a film starring Sennett and Mabel Normand. What Miller is most remembered for in regards to his work in silents, are the serials that he worked on, the first of which was The Perils of Pauline (1914).  What is astonishing is that Pathé hired him for the entire 20 part serial as the sole cinematographer on the project when he was only 19! His reputation for being an expert at shooting tough on locations was solidified by the project; it is no wonder, then that he was selected four years later by Astra as one of two cinematographers on the now famously lost serial The House of Hate. He was more than ready to shoot even the most difficult of outdoor locations, even cliff sides (see below).

Very famous still from The House of Hate filming on Cliffhanger Point in New Jersey near Fort Lee. (And yes, this is where we get the term "cliffhanger")

In the meantime, he had worked on several George Fitzmaurice films, both at Pathé and Astra. One of those films was Blind Man's Luck (1917) was written by George B. Seitz, who would be the director on House of Hate.  After the filming for Hate concluded, he went back to being principle director of photography for Fitzmaurice, who was by this time working with his screenwriting wife Ouida Bergère.  When Fitzmaurice moved to Hollywood and signed at contract in 1919 with Paramount, Miller went with him.  Their first film for the studio The Witness for the Defense, a solidly melodramatic outing, starred Elsie Ferguson opposite Vernon Steele. His camera work at Paramount with a director other than Fitzmaurice was on another melodrama His House in Order (1920) directed by Hugh Ford.  When, by 1924 Fitzmaurice had gone over to the Samuel Goldwyn studio, again Miller followed, with The Cheat, a 1923 Pola Negri vehicle, being their first them there (in between studios, they worked on another Negri film that was a special sound project with the DeForest Phonofilm system: Bella Donna also in 1923).  When the George Fitzmaurice Productions company got going, the duo made His Supreme Moment in 1925; the film featured two scenes in the new technicolor process (known today as "2-strip Technicolor"). This would be the last film he shot with the director--his longest professional relationship to date; he then moved on to work with director Paul Sloane and the DeMille brothers. In 1927 he got the chance to team up with Lois Weber again, with her firmly in charge of the production this time around (!); that film was The Angel of Broadway and featured art direction by Mitchell Leisen. The first film that he worked on that had a major sound system attatched to it's production was the partial silent Annapolis a dramedy directed by Christy Cabanne utilizing the RCA Photophone System for sound effects. This change is photographic technique at the time was pretty fast and furious for DP's that wished to remain in the industry with the coming of full sound. Working with films with sound effects was one thing, photographing a film with talking sequences was quite another. Forturnately for Miller, he had experience with this.  The first film that he worked on with "modern" talking sequences was appropriately titled The Spieler, which despite it's obvious German origins, had come to denote a "fast talkers" or swindlers by way of Australia. The film, featuring Alan Hale in the lead, was released in December of 1928.  He never worked on a fully silent film again. His next two films would prove that he had the ability to adapt well to this environment: The Bellamy Trial (a "3/4" sound film) was ironically set on Long Island not far from where he hailed from and Strange Cargo (a full talkie) was by all accounts a film at least 10 years ahead of it's time, thanks in no small part to his photographic approach. Both films were released in 1929.  He worked on four more films in 1929, ironically he wound right back up at Pathé Exchange, where he had gotten such an early start as a young adult.  His last film of that decade was His First Command, released at the very end of the year/decade. He was already at work in 1929 on the first of his work to be released in 1930, shooting Officer O'Brien in time for it's release in February of 1930. It was not long however before the financial crisis that started on Wall Street in 1929 quickly caught up with the movie industry in Hollywood.  This would be his last film with Pathé--end of an era. [Please don't comment of the later RKO Pathé stuff...just not really the same company]. He then knocked around in several pre-code films in the very early 30's at a couple of different studios, including RKO--featuring talking films with some familiar faces including Pola Negri. He managed to ink a deal with Fox, which was in a position to concalitade it's power in tough times and his career was again on a solid footing. He was still with Fox when he was first nominated for an Oscar for The Rains Came and when he won his first Oscar for How Green Was My Valley. Miller would be nominated 5 more time, winning two more Oscars. All of his nominations came during a time when the Oscars awarded seperated wins to black & white and color cinematography.  Miller was nominated only once for a color film, all of his wins came for black and white film stock shoots. Miller retired from active film making after shooting The Prowler, which was released in May of 1951. He would serve as the President of the American Society of Cinematographers, of which he was a founding member in 1918,  from 1954-1956. Though he health kept him from shooting, he was active in the industry throughtout the the rest of his life. He penned a very important book with Fred Balshofer entitled One Reel A Week about their experience in the first studio hubs in the New York/New Jersey area before the move to Hollywood. Miller passed away on the 13 of the July in Hollywood, just five days after his 75th birthday. His ashes are interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery

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Wilipedia

Born Today July 7: Ruth Ford

1911-2009

Actress Ruth Elizabeth Ford was born on this day in Brookhaven, Mississippi. She and her writer/artist brother Charles Henri Ford were the children of wealthy hotel owners throughout the South. This meant frequent moves for the family when the children were young; though eventually Ruth obtained a degree back in her birth state from the University of Mississippi and went to work as a print model (she said on several occasions that her long time friendship with writer William Faulkner began when she was getting a Masters Degree in philosophy from the university). She and her brother both were early transplants to the New York City artist/theater scene--they would stay there, aside from her film sojourn in Hollywood in th 1940's, for the rest of their lives.  The reason for her inclusion here is her involvement in the theater scene of New York in the 1930's. Indeed, Ford was no child actress of films, but rather a now well known member of Orson Welles' Mercury Theater and a cast member of his silent film Too Much Johnson in 1938. The film is famous for amongst other things, being a very late silent film that was used as a rehearsal vehicle.  Unlike many other cast members however, the film was apparently not Ford's film debut. She is listed amongst the rather large uncredited cast member list of the equally bizarre poverty row Marshall Neilan directed horror film Chloe, Love Is Calling You from 1934 (this film, set in the bayous of Louisiana, was shot entirely on location in Florida).  She did not appear in another film until 1941, when she showed up in the lower budget Tex Ritter western Roaring Frontiers--a "damsel in distress" film in which she, obviously, plays the damsel.  In the meantime, she had married her first husband and a daughter. This period in her life marked the beginning of a less than stellar film career, that included lower budget films like:  Secrets of the Lone Wolf (1941), Murder In The Big House (1942), The Gorilla Man (1943), Adventure in Iraq (1943) & Woman Who Came Back (1945). She also made her television debut in the 1940's on the 3rd of November episode of Theatre of Romance: Camille. From that point forward, she did not appear in another film for some 14 years, instead doing television work and appearing in stage productions. In 1963 she again took up film acting, when she appeared in the only film ever directed by Dore Schary: Act One, along side Jason Robards and George Hamilton. She continued to act, off and on, through the rest of decade and throughout the 1970's. She appeared in two films in the 1980's, the last of which was the serial crime thriller Too Scared to Scream. Always an actor of the stage throughout her career, she finished her stage work out on Broadway in 1976. Ford retired to her apartment in The Dakota in New York City, which was already a hubbub of artistic activity, and continued to be so.  When her brother, who also had an apartment at The Dakota died in 2004 at the age of 94, she inherited his holdings. She herself died in New York City on the 12th of August, just a little more than a month after her 98th birthday.  Both her and her brother are buried in their birthplace in Brookhaven at the Rose Hill Cemetery there.  

[Source: Charline Herring Ryan (Find A Grave)]

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Wikipedia

Find A Grave entry

Born Today July 6: Annabelle Moore (Whitford)

1878-1961

Subject of several famous Edison dance shorts Annabelle Whitford, who used the name "Annabelle Moore" when performing (it was reportedly her stepfather's surname), was born on this day in Chicago [Note that through the years since her debut in film in the 1890's, she has been credited with both surnames]. She was famous not just for her appearance in early film, she was a sensation long before; which is, of course, how she came to be in motion pictures. She is historically important as a participant in a number firsts. She was the original "Gibson Girl", and was one of the original performers in Ziegfeld Follies in 1907; she was the first actor/performer featured in the very first Kinetoscope installed for viewing in London, England, and she has been credited as introducing eroticism to film--just to name but a few.  An excellent case can be made that she was the very first movie star.  In terms of how she came to be the subject of films, she was trained as a dancer in her youth and made her formal dance debut at the 1893 Columbian Exchange.  It is not a coincidence that she performed "butterfly dances" and similar "dress" or "skirt dances," and that she was from Chicago. The originator of the "skirt dance" was Loie Fuller, who started as a very talented improve or free dancer; she was already a famous burlesque dancer who both choreographed and lit her own dances--the most famous of which was the Serpentine Dance--and she was also from Chicago.  When Annabelle traveled to New York the following year, at the age of 16, she became one of the earliest actual performers for the Edison Manufacturing co. when she appeared in the Annabelle Sun Dance (1894) directed by William K. L. Dickson himself, and one of the films shot in the Black Maria, the world's very first film studio (note that the "poster" in the Internet Movie Database for this film depicts a different film, in fact the very next film she appeared in). In all, she made three "skirt dance" films for Edison--including the Annabelle Butterfly Dance (1894) & Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895)--before moving on to American Mutoscope with another rendition of the Butterfly Dance in 1896. In another historical first, Annabelle Serpentine Dance represents one of the very first color motion pictures, hand tinted, and is most likely the very first distributed color film. In all she appeared 10 "dance" films with both companies combined. At American Mutoscope, she added her Tambourine Dance and a Flag Dance to the world of earliest cinema. Her later dance films in 1897 were all made back at the Edison facility.  She has just one other film to her name, a "trick film" made by the German Mutoscope & Biograph company, combining skirt dancing with footage shot at the German aquarium--edited in such a way as to make the dancer appear to be dancing underwater.  It was released as A Mermaid Dance in 1902. In the early 20th century, she spent time exclusively in stage revues of various sorts, and even did a little stage acting before retiring for good in 1912. She had married in 1910 and her and her husband moved back to Chicago. He died there in 1958, she followed on the 1st of December in 1961 at the age of 83.  In a "not much has changed" note: her and her husband, a Dr., donated in 1957 to a charity to benefit under privileged children in Chicago, when she earned-all on her own-a one time payment for writing an article about her witnessing the horrible fire at the Iroquois Theater in 1903, when the Federal Government learned of the donation, they kicked both of them off of their pensions....classy uh?? Interestingly, in the weeks following that blaze, which killed over 600 people, Annabelle herself was counted among the dead. About her actual death almost 6 decades later, there are conflicting reports as to whether she was buried at Chicago's famed Graceland Cemetery or cremated there and her ashes scattered. Three interesting documentaries have included footage and biographical materials on her, each in their own area of focus: from early color to early erotica. They are listed below:

Glorious Technicolor (1998)

Sex at 24 Frames Per Second (2003)

The Quiet Room: A Story of Cinema (2013 short) 

Gibson Girl

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Born Today July 5: Jamie Darling

[Poster for David Copperfield (1913) in which he played Daniel Peggotty]

1850 (or 1951)-1934

Almost forgotten, British silent film actor Jamie Darling was born Thomas Dawson Walker on this day in Hull, England (interesting factoid: the town was located for a time in the ceremonial county of Humberside in the north eastern part of the country). There are scant biographical materials on him, but what is known is that he was a successful performer in musical theater in the Victorian music halls. He seems to have had at least one, possibly more stage names during this period of his life. He appears to have changed his name again to enter films.  His first film appearance (as far as we know) came when he was 60 or 61 years of age; that film was actually a milestone: an early full sound film featuring the  Cecil Hepworth invention the Vivaphone. Are We Down-Hearted? was a short full sound comedy directed by Frank Wilson and featured Madge Campbell. He was hired as a stock player for the Hepworth Co., and he stayed with them for the entirety of his film career; all of his film credits come from the Hepworth catalogue. Hepworth was the innovator of the feature length film in the UK and Darling was again part of history with his appearance in the company's 1 hour and 7 minute long version of Dickens' David Copperfield in 1913.  Of the 15 films that Darling acted in for Hepworth during the years 1911-1915, four of them were features: The Vicar of Wakefield (1913), The Cloister and the Hearth (1913) and another Dickens adaptation The Old Curiosity Shop (1913).  His last film was another short comedy: Cock 'o the Walk with Chrissie White in 1915. Darling/Walker died on the 10th of November 1934 in Norfolk at the age of 83 or 84. I can find no information on burial. 

[Still from The Vicar of Wakefield]

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