Born Today February 21: Ormi Hawley

 1890-1942

 

Silent film actress Ormi Hawley was born Omretta Grace Hawley on this day in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Apparently always interested in a career in performance of some sort, she initially attended the very prestigious New England Conservatory of Music, which is still located in Boston.  She also made her professional stage debut in Boston; it was not long after that she caught the eye of film producers.  In her case it was Lubin studio, then based in Philadelphia. She made her film debut in the short melodrama Her Inspiration in 1911 (the film contains a couple of elements that a bit "spooky" in the since that the young wife is a painter and the daughter of a farmer in the northeastern frontier; Hawley herself would become the wife of an upstate New York farmer and was an avid painter later in life).  She appears in the film with John Halliday, an actor that was also making his film debut. Of the eleven films that she acted in during her debut year, nine of them featured Halliday.  The two would continue to act together for at least the next year or so, and he appears to be her most frequent co-star. Her years active were relatively short (1911-1919) but in that period of time she appeared in at least 130 films (some sources but the number closer to 300, but due to missing information in some production catalogs from the time--for now--it's impossible to know the number with any accuracy); almost all of her acting roles came in short films.  By the end of 1915, she was also still at Lubin.  It was a bit unusual for a young actress to stay with a studio for that long during the 1910's, but she stayed with them for nearly five years. In 1916, she finally had a role in a feature outside of Lubin:  The Social Highwayman (April 1916) [she had previously appeared in Lubin features, the first which appears to be Through Fire to Fortune].  Highwayman was a Shubert Film production with Noah Beery [Sr.] in a supporting role and Edwin August playing both a son and his own father (and directs the film); based on a play of the time, the plot  has a significantly racist tone against American of Italian descent. Her time in short films was over and the remainder of her roles came in feature length films.  There is no doubt that the last three years of her career are the most "prestigious" of her time in pictures.  In pretty rapid succession, she accepted the lead  in a Fox film, Where Love Leads; had the lead in a Kimecolor production distributed by Mutual, Her American Prince, and landed work at Famous Players/Paramount, appearing in The Anitcs of Ann--shot on location at a school on Long Island. She also had a role in the debut film of Marion Davies: Runaway Romany (released in December 1917).  In 1918, she appeared in a very late (one of their last) Edison film: The Unwritten Code, released in early April. She rounded out the year with a couple of supporting roles in Alice Brady films for Select. In 1919, her last year of acting, she appeared in three films; with her career swan song coming in The Greater Sinner in the female lead opposite James K. Hackett. As mentioned above, she married and quit the business. Her career was never a Hollywood one and from her upstate farm, she not only became a painter, but also wrote children's books. She died in Rome, New York on the 3rd of June in 1942 at just the age of 52. She is buried at Forest Park Cemetery in Camden, New York.  She at first had a simple marker, which has since been replaced with a larger marker reading (in part) "Silent Screen." [Note: most sources list her birth year as 1889, I am going by the year on her grave marker, absent any other official records online.]

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Born Today February 20: Mary Garden

1874-1967

Famed Scottish operatic soprano Mary Garden was born in Aberdeen on this day. Though born in Scotland, she spent her formative years in the United States, the family having moved to Chicopee, Massachusetts when she was nine.  They subsequently relocated twice, first to Connecticut and finally to Chicago, where she would eventually study music.  Gifted from an early age in music (singing, violin and piano), she was noticed by a wealthy couple who agreed to pay for her operatic singing studies.  In 1896, she was able to transfer her studies to Paris; and it was in Paris that she made her professional opera debut in the spring of 1900.  By the following year, she was one of the leading sopranos at the Opéra-Comique and after 1901, she was a frequent performer across the channel to London's Covent Garden. In 1907 she made a change and began performing at New York's Manhattan Opera House, staying only one year before returning to the Paris and the National Opera there.  Finally from 1910 through 1913, she sang in her second hometown for the Chicago Grand Opera Company. This made her a national star in the United States; known even in households that did not regularly pay any attention to opera. By 1915 she was with the Chicago Opera Association, often guesting in performances in New York. It was during this time that she was first filmed. Garden did eventually appear in two scripted films, but her first filmed visage came in the form of a newsreel.  In 1913 and 1914 she was featured in two Pathe news shorts. The first of these was Pathe's Weekly, No. 73 (4 December 1913) in which she is not singing/performing at all, but taking in a performance by a "band of Indians from Glacier Park" (editorializing a little here: it is rather disturbing to read the description of a famous opera singer taking in a native dance, placed in a newsreel that also includes reporting on a horrible anti-Semitic trumped murder trial in Keiv "Russia" at the instigation of Russian monarchical fascists!)  Secondly, in April of 1914 she appears in the Pathe's Weekly, No. 28 taking part in the departure of a troupe of opera singers in Boston about to sail back to Europe after a sojourn working Stateside. Garden was considered one of the best operatic actors of her time and that acting did, in fact, make it into two films. The first was a Goldwyn production of Thais co-directed by Frank Hall Crane and Hugo Ballin in 1917.   The following year she also starred in (top billing in fact) The Splendid Sinner, another Goldwyn production; it marks her only acting in a film not opera or music related.  This is the extent of her appearances in films; though her performance from Thais was featured (among a host of others) in the short 1939 documentary The Movies March On.  She did make two appearance on talk shows, one in 1949 and one in 1954 ("The Ed Sullivan Show" where she appeared along side the likes of Sophie Tucker and Eartha Kitt). At the height of her career in the early 1920's, she was the director of the newly formed Chicago Civic Opera, one of the first women to ever hold such a position.  She retired from opera stage performance in 1934 after giving one last performance fittingly in Paris, where her career had so successfully been launched.  She did become involved in films in one other way during her lifetime. After her retirement from opera performance, she devoted part of her time to serve as a talent scout for MGM, in addition to giving lectures and recitals.  She began a long decline into some form of dementia probably in the early 1950's; sometime along the way, she chose to return to Scotland to stay. She died in the Aberdeenshire town of Inverurie on the 3rd of January in 1967 at the age of 92. She is buried locally at Aberdeen's Saint Nicholas Church Graveyard.  

[Source: John T. Chiarella (Find a Grave)]

 

Wikipedia 

 

Aberdeen.com

 

Find a Grave entry 

 

 

 

Born Today February 18: Rosa Porten

 

[Source: Wikipedia]

 1884-1972

 

Spit-fire, comically intelligent and groundbreaking German writer, director and silent film actress Rosa Porten was born on this day in Düsseldorf.  She was the daughter of performer turned early film director Franz Porten, and the sister of the much more famous actress Henny Porten.  Much much more than just an actress; she was also a very talented script writer and director in her own right, though she did enter the film industry as an actor.  Unsurprisingly, she made an appearance, along with her younger sister, in one of their father's films in 1906.  Meißner Porzellan was a little four minute short shot by their father Franz in only his second turn behind the camera.  Her father made films for the early German production company Messters Projektion, founded by inventor Oskar Messter; Messter himself made films, usually of a psuedo-documentary type.  Rosa Porten's next appearance in a film came in one of these Messter films and is actually quite interesting historically.  She and her sister appeared in the short film Apachentanz (or Apache Dance) in 1906.  The dance, which had nothing to do with the Native group in the American southwest, had become a dance craze in the clubs of Paris, much like the Charleston became closely associated with "flapper" culture of the 1920's. The dance, which may or may not have originated in Spain, was often performed to tango or other Spanish style music, was not strictly choreographed and resembled some tango styles, but always involved some form of partner insistence on the dance, followed at some point by "partner rejection."  It is unclear where the name originated from, but it may have come from the native group...but there is some evidence that it didn't as it is pronounced "A-posh-ee" or "A-poe-shay" (modern renditions can be found on YouTube). In any case, Messter had seen the dance on a trip to France and conceived to put onto film, with the help of Franco-German singer turned film enthusiast Albert Kutzner.  Though the Porten sister's are only listed cast in this little film, stills from the film show a man at the point of rejection...I don't want to assume that this is Kutzner, though it's possible. Records show that she did not appear in a film again until 1908 (though these records are thought to be woefully incomplete).  In 1908, her father undertook a short production of Shakespeare's Othello in which she was cast as Emilia; the film was ultimately released in their native Germany in 1909, but premiered in Denmark on the 7th of September, 1908.  During the next two years, she appeared in six more films, all of them directed by her father and featuring her sister as a member of the cast. She then went four years before appearing again in a film.  In the meantime, she had written at least two scripts and made her own directorial debut.  She alone wrote the short Das Liebesglück der Blinden in 1911; the film starred her sister Henny and was co-directed by Heinrich Bolten-Baeckers and Curt A. Stark (who would marry Henny Porten the following year).  She also wrote the 1915 Hans Oberländer directed Abgründe, which featured German actress Toni Sylva.  As a script writer, she was by far more prolific in her career, than she was as an actress.  In 1916, she made her directing debut, co-directing,along side Franz Eckstein (to whom she was married), Der Konkneipant, a film that they both also wrote together.  As a directing pair, they collectively used the name Dr. R. Portegg.  She resumed her acting career that same year, also in a film that she wrote for the pair to direct:  Die Wäscher-Resl.  The surviving records of her work show that most of her scripts were made into films by herself and husband; but in 1920, a script she had written in two parts was produced into two films, both directed by Léo Lasko:  Auri Sacre Fames, 1. Teil and Auri Sacre Fames, 2. Teil.  Though she most certainly appeared in many more films than just the 25 she is credited with (some put the number at double that), there is no evidence that she appeared in films much past the mid-1920's. The last recorded film in which she acted was drama Ihr schlechter Ruf, released in February of 1922; she had herself had adapted the Marie Madeleine novel for script. We know that she continued in the film business until nearly 1930, mostly writing.  Her scripts included an adaptation of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler in 1925. She also co-penned the last known film that she was involved in, Die Heiratsfalle (January 1928), which she also co-directed with her husband.  Her scripts, which featured women as leading characters, have been called very strongly feminist for their time; along with smartly comical.  The few films of hers that do survive are favorites of feminist film festivals and have also been featured (at least twice) in UNESCO's celebration of World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, which is celebrated every October 27. She is known have lived with her husband for a time at least in Pommern. She was also an accomplished writer of novels.  Her husband died in 1945; and at some point she relocated to Munich, where she passed away on the 7th May of 1972 at the age of 88. I can currently find no information about a burial. 

[retrieved from Pinterest]

 

Awesome entry at Columbia's Women's Pioneer Film Project

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Born Today February 17: Kenne Duncan

1902-1972

Western heavy Kenne Duncan (first name pronounced "Kenny") was born Kenneth Duncan MacLachlan in Ontario, Canada on this day in 1902 (many sources cite his birth year as 1903, but I am going by what is listed on the his grave marker). Though he is mostly remembered for his western and serial roles, or his roles in Ed Wood films (depending on what kind of film buff one is), he actually got his start in films in the late 1920's.  He first appeared in film as the character "Clint Scollard" in the silent short Almost Human in 1927.  A dog pal film starring character actor Frank Austin (known for his role in Roland West's The Monster from 1925) and featuring Fearless the Dog in his next to last role, the film had Duncan in a supporting role and was directed by Robin Williamson, who was the first director of Laurel and Hardy comedy shorts. He appeared in three more silent films, all in 1928, with the b-grade adventure Police Reporter representing his first work in a serial. His next two short films--Saps and Saddles and The Secret Outlaw--marked his first appearances in westerns.  Both films were directed by Walter Fabian and were produced by Universal.  His first film with sound came as an extra in the Gary Cooper World War I romantic film A Man from Wyoming, released in July of 1930. His first acting credit in a speaking role came the following year in the Clara Bow musical No Limit (January 1931).  He then started a long career of appearing in westerns, largely as the heavy, often credited as "Kenneth Duncan."  An actor with this type background, would naturally lead to a television career, as cowboy extras and heavies as guests were always needed, but Duncan's television debut did not come on any such show and, in fact, came shockingly early. He acted in the series "The Green Archer." Based on an Edgar Wallace novel, it of course started out as an old fashioned theatrical serial, and released both domestically and internationally so (complete with compacted versions for theatrical rentals); it was decided to adapt it also for very early television broadcast--though far more people saw it at the movie house! This would certainly not be his last theatrical serial gig (!), and, undoubtedly, it was in one of these that Edward D. Wood Jr. first saw him. He also appeared in a couple of b-grade horror films of the 1940's, but only as a extra (such as "murder victim" in The Phantom Speaks from 1945).  As you can imagine, he was indeed a shoe-in to appear in actual television westerns; and he had a large number of guest roles in the genre, including on: "The Cisco Kid" (where he got to play one of the good guys for a change, he was twice the sheriff), "The Lone Ranger," "The Range Rider," "The Gene Autry Show," "The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok," and "Death Valley Days" just to name a few. Anyone who has seen Tim Burton's Ed Wood is aware that Depp's Ed Wood pitched a "Dr. Acula" plot to a studio executive...well Duncan was the real Dr. Acula. Wood cast him in the lead role of what would become Night of the Ghouls, along with Tor Johnson as Lobo, of course. Wood had him trade in his cowboy hat for a turban...an idea that he no doubt got from seeing Duncan in the 1938 and 1941 serials The Spider's Web and The Spider Returns.  Ultimately, he would appear in five of Wood's productions, including one that was intended to be a television pilot.  He also became a life-long friend of Wood and many of the exploits Depp's Wood is shown having with Bela Lugosi in Burton's films actually occurred with Duncan and Wood, in the 1960's. Duncan did not do much acting in the 1960's and none, save one, short after 1961. He had long struggled with alcoholism. He also had begun to struggle with other forms of ill health, some likely related to numerous injuries over the years of cowboy work on location shoots. He did make an appearance in the five minute short film Superman vs. the Gorilla Gang (directed by Donald Glut) in 1965, and that was it for his acting career. Duncan suffered a stroke in 1971, that, along with other ill health woes, weighed on him heavily enough to take his own life with a deliberate overdose of barbiturates on the 5th of February in 1972, just shy of his 70th birthday. He had made Wood the executor of his will and Wood held a wake for him after his funeral in a pool.  His actual funeral was the event that Burton borrows heavily from for the funeral of Lugosi in his film. He is buried at Grand View Memorial Park, the other cemetery (and it's oldest) in Glendale, California. 

 

 

 

 

[source: Randy (Find a Grave)]

As Ram Singh in The Spider Returns (1941)

  

As Dr. Acula in The Night of the Ghoul (1959)

with Tor Johnson

 

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Born Today February 16: [Joseph] Viktor (Victor) von Scheffel

 

1826-1886

 

German writer of prose and poetry Joseph Viktor (Victor) von Scheffel was born on this day in Karlsruhe. He was born into a well off family with military ties. His mother in particular came from a very prosperous family and was herself an intellectual. This meant that the family were in a position to afford young Scheffel a first rate education, and his mother was in a position to closely over-see his schooling, even contributing to it directly.  He eventually attended universities at Heidelburg, Munich and Berlin. He, like so many of his peers at the time, studied the law and graduated with a degree in in 1847 or 1848. He acted in the capacity (basically) of a town judge for four years, ending in 1852.  He had already begun to write; in fact, there is ample evidence that his interest in writing particularly poetry stemmed from childhood.  In 1853 he wrote and published his first poem, the romantic, but lightly comedic, epic: Der Trompeter von Säckingen.  It became instantly and immensely popular.  It's success sent him traveling about the continent; though his family, hoping that this was only a phase, he would eventually return to his legal career, but Scheffel developed a serious eye ailment and this meant the end of that career and to his subsequent plans to teach at university. Normally this would be a terrible life event, but in his case, he freed him eventually to write.  He began work on novel while living in Switzerland for health reasons, the ultimate result was Ekkehard. And, it is these two works comprise the only source material that has thus far been used in films. To date only two films have been made using his work as source material and only one of those came in the silent era. In 1918 Eiko Film GmbH released Der Trompeter von Säckingen, obviously based on his epic poem of the same name. That film was adapted and directed by German director Franz Porten, with some help from his much more famous daughters Rosa and Henny. Well Rosa more so than Henny, whose involvement in the film is currently unconfirmed.  Both daughters were well known film actors in their own rights and Rosa was greatly instrumental in the adaptation of the script.  It was filmed on location in Bad Säckingen (on the border with France), the town in which Scheffel wrote the book and is popularly still known as "Trumpeter's City" because of the poem. Unfortunately the survival of the film is unknown and unlikely.  The film was also a remake of an earlier film by the same name that Franz Porten had made in 1907. That version was directly based on the popular opera produced from Scheffel's work in 1884 by Viktor Nessler. The only other production so far to use Scheffel's work is the 1990 mini-series using his novel Ekkehard for the script. It was a 5 part series made for German television and was completely directed by the now retired Diethard Klante.  Scheffel, who enjoyed a great deal of personal popularity during his lifetime, worked for a couple of years as custodial managerial librarian for a royal house in the Black Forest, but continued health woes forced him to give it up. He eventually settled back into life in his birth town of Karlsruhe, marrying for the first time and having a child--a namesake son--in 1867. The family moved to a villa on Lake Constance in 1872. In 1876 he was formally granted the right to claim hereditary nobility (hence the "von" in his name).  Scheffel died at the age of 60 on the 9th of April and his interred in his home town at the Hauptfriedhof/Karlsruhe Main Cemetery in an family crypt that now includes his parents, wife and son. There is also a memorial statue of him in the town of Bad Säckingen.  He published several more collections of writings, poems, even songs, but none were more popular than his original epic.

 

[source: Frank K. (Find a Grave)]

[source: Frank K. (Find a Grave)]

 

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Born Today February 15: Henry Cronjager

 

 1877-1967

 

German born early cinematographer and even earlier Edison employee Henry Cronjager was born on this day probably in Clausthal.  He and his brother Jules immigrated to the United States,  most likely in the very early 1890's, as he was known to be a working photographer in New York by 1893.  Having worked in various photographic portraiture shops eventually got him a hire at the Edison art department later in the 1890's, his interest in still photography quickly morphed into interest in motion photography while working there.  His first film credit does not come until spring of 1908, listed as shooting the almost completely unknown Edison short A Country Girl's Seminary Life.  He undoubtedly had worked on films prior to this at the Edison lab; it seems unthinkable that he hadn't given the department that he was hired for, but this is his earliest mention in the Edison catalog. At Edison, he worked with both J. Searle Dawley and Edwin S. Porter, two men who would come to be regarded as among the best of the earliest film directors.  He was chosen by Dawley to photograph his 1911 feature The Battle of Trafalger, one of the Edison studios earliest feature length films. the last film he photographed at Edison was the Oscar Apfel directed short The Passer-Bay (June 1912).  The other studios that he worked with most often mentioned are Biograph and Fox, but little mention of his time at Thanhouser can be found.  He spent about a year there working for director Carroll Fleming; with their short films were distributed theatrically by Mutual. And, his work at Biograph was in co-production with Klaw & Erlanger.  He then became a kind of free agent for a few features before landing at Fox Films--his most oft cited silent cinematographic work of the late teens, though he was there for only a short time. He made a couple of films for Arrow in 1917, and I believe his only surviving work from this period is the expertly shot Crime and Punishment (February 1917), though it is by no means widely available. His first film at Fox was the "biographical" drama based on the life of General John Pershing: Why America Will Win in 1918.  He also worked with director Marshall Neilan on several films in 1919 and 1920 that included performances by: Richard Barthelmess, Blanche Sweet, Mary Pickford, Lewis Stone and Matt Moore.  He then moved on to working with director Frances Marion, photographing:  The Love Light (January 1921) with Mary Pickford and Just Around the Corner (December 1921) with Lewis Sargent. But, it is Tol'able David, with Barthelmess and directed by Henry King that is most often put forward as amongst his finest work. He would also serve as cinematographer on the next two Barthelmess/King productions The Seventh Day (February 1922) and Sonny (May 1922).  Through the mid-1920's his work was mostly for, one way or another, Paramount--working for a variety of directors that were either employed directly by Paramount or had their films distributed by the studio.  One of his non-Paramount jobs from the era was the Maurice Tourneur comedy Clothes Make the Pirate in 1925; it is lamentably a lost film and one that I have always hoped a print would show up for--I like Tourneur and it looks a hoot!  He also photographed Tourneur's next film Old Loves and New in 1926.  In 1927 he worked on a few films for DeMille Pictures and photographed the only two American films directed by Swedish director Nils Olaf Chrisander. Cronjager never worked on any partial silents in the waning years of the decade, instead going right to work in 1929 on a full talkie. He was one of three cinematographers to work on Linda (April 1929) starring Warner Baxter, Helen Foster and Noah Beery, and was--shock horror--directed by a woman:  Dorothy Davenport (credited as Mrs. Wallace Reid). The other two DP's were Hungarian Ernest Laszlo and Bert Baldridge. He moved right into the next decade, working on the Victor Halperin film Party Girl starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and released in January of 1930.  He would photograph just four more film in his career, which ended in 1933 after he photographed Ace of Aces for RKO and director J. Walter Ruben. He does have two more connections to silent films however. Firstly, though he went uncredited, he was one of a long list of cinematographers to work on Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels (1930) in it's very early days in 1928, when it was being shot as a silent (his son Henry Jr. was one of the aerial photographers on the film, he did get a credit). Secondly, his work was featured in the little short experimental film Sigrid Holmquist by Swedish artist Maria Norrman; the film, through experimental editing of clips of other silent film stars such as Clara Bow, explores the life of Swedish silent film star Holmquist; it is itself a modern silent film (the film is currently streamable on Vimeo). Some of Cronjager's work is included in the film, along with three others.  Cronjager retired in 1933, but stayed in the Los Angeles area. He passed away there at the age of 90 (!) on the 1st of August. His ashes are interred in the Abbey of Psalms at The Hollywood Forever Cemetery.  Cinematography became the family profession. Henry Cronjager's brother Jules and his two sons Henry Jr. and Edward were all very successful directors of photography; as was his grandson William, who primarily worked in television. 

[Source: AJM (Find a Grave)]

[Source: AJM (Find a Grave)]

Wikipedia

AFI Catalog entry

IMDb  

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Born Today February 14 [Valentine's Day]: Valentine Grant

 

1881-1949

 

Silent film actress Valentine Grant, named for the day, was born on Valentine's Day in Frankfort, Indiana in 1881.  Not much is known about her early life, or how she came to study music in New York; but we do know that she studied high opera singing and performance there. Her aim was to become an opera leading lady, though there are no records of her singing range. We also know that she was good enough to tour the United States as an opera performer, but some unknown health ailment forced her to quit. At some point along the way, she met the Canadian born actor turned director Sidney Olcott.  She would not only become an actress in his films, she would also become his wife in either later 1914 or early 1915. By the mid-teens, Olcott also had his own production company and it was in one of his short films that she made her film debut in March of 1914: When Men Could Kill.  She only appeared in around 16 films (there may have been a couple of more) and of those, more than ten were shorts; and all of them, save one, was directed by her husband.  That "save one" was The Melting Pot, a film with propagandist elements, made in 1915 and based on a novel and subsequent play by British author Israel Zangwill.  Grant appeared in the female lead opposite fellow Indianan Walker Whiteside; it was also her first feature.  Olcott was the son of  Irish immigrants and became interested in making films that would appeal to Irish audiences in both his native Canada and the United States; Grant appeared in three of them:  All for Old Ireland (July 1915), Bold Emmett Ireland's Martyr (August 1915) and The Irish in America (September 1915).  All of them filmed in Ireland.  Olcott was by this time working for Lubin Manufacturing, meaning, of course Grant was also working for Lubin. The couple left for Famous Players in 1916 and The Taint (December 1915) was not only their last film at Lubin together, it was her last appearance in a short film.  Their first film at Famous Players was the feature The Innocent Life (April 1916), again sporting an "Irish in America" story.  Their next Famous Players/Paramount feature The Daughter of MacGregor, starred Grant opposite Sidney Mason, was shot on location in Canada and Florida, and was also completely written by Grant for her husband to direct. Her last film appearance came in the 1918 melodrama The Belgian, produced by the Sidney Olcott Players and, of course, directed by Olcott; it was the only other film that Walker Whiteside acted in. Grant then retired from working altogether afterward. Olcott continued to direct films through the 1920's, which meant that the couple had to relocate to California--where he directed in lots such as the Universal plaza.  They both died there, just months apart in 1949.  She passed away first in Orange County on the 12th of March at the age of 68. She is listed as having been cremated and interred at San Diego's Cypress View Crematory and Mausoleum.  

 

Grant acting in Ireland

 

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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 February 12: Margarita Fischer

1886-1975

The daughter of touring "minstrels," Margarita Fischer was born on this day in Missouri Valley, Iowa.  At one time she was more well known as the wife of director Harry A. Pollard, but during her career, she was most definitely a star and well known in her own right. Fischer started acting as a child on the stage and later became a bit of a sensation in live theater. She made her film debut in 1910 in the Selig short There, Little Girl, Don't Cry based on a James Whitecomb Riley poem. Having signed with Selig Polyscope, she would go on to appear in over a dozen films for them that year (many adventure and/or westerns). She even had her turn as a vamp in the Rudyard Kipling inspired The Vampire (November 1910). She continued her western adventures and series of short films at American Manufacturing Company (AMC). Many of these films were shot in Arizona and few survive, though a copy of Bertie's Bandit (1911) is known to be in the collection of MoMA. It was in these films that she started working with Pollard, whom she would wed in July of 1911. By 1912, she and Pollard both were appearing in films at IMP, with the Thomas Ince directed short The Trinity (1912) being a prime example of her work there; in it, she acts opposite King Baggot. It was also at IMP that Pollard began to hone his directing skills and his wife became a frequent player in his early films. Nothing Shall Be Hidden (1912) is one of their earliest collaborations in this regard.  1912 turned out to be a banner year for Fischer, she appeared in more than 35 films...to be sure they we all shorts, but still that's a lot of acting for just one year!  She capped the year off with the Christmas short The Old Folks' Christmas, which was released on the 23rd of December and was directed by George Loane Tucker.  It also finished up her stint at IMP; for 1913, she moved over to Rex Motion Pictures.  Her first film with them was the short mystery The Great Ganton Mystery (March 1913).  She wound up appearing in almost as many films in 1913 as she had the previous year, but in 1914, she returned to AMC to act in films directed by Pollard and it was in this year that she first made her appearance in a feature: Sweet Land of Liberty (March 1914) directed by, you guessed it...her husband. [The film not only survives, it is widely available for streaming.]  She there-after went straight back to acting in shorts, finishing the year having appeared in more films in a 12 month period than she had before.  In 1915 however, her film appearances slowed owed to her switching full time to feature length productions; all but one of which (The Lonesome Heart) were directed by Pollard.  Aside from a brief stint in 1917, Fischer was officially done with short film acting for good. She became a pretty big star of the screen, with box office draw in the late 1910's. And, while she mostly starred in films by her husband, there were exceptions. A list of other directors that she worked with during this period of her career includes: Lloyd Ingraham, Edward Sloman, Roy William Neill, and  George L. Cox. She appeared in multiple films by all of these directors; and, in fact, it was a Cox film that she appeared in that marked the beginning of the new decade: The Dangerous Talent (March 1920). After 1920, however, her acting slowed considerably. She made just two films in 1921, and skipping three years, she made only one film each for the years 1924, 1925 and 1927. After which she retired from acting altogether. Her last film was the 1927 large production of Uncle Tom's Cabin; it was a Universal partial silent and was, yes, directed by her Harry Pollard.  Fischer lost her husband in in 1934 and she never remarried. She did go on to live a long life herself, dying in Encinitas, CA on the 11th of March at the age of 89.  She in interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. 

Source: Scott G [Find a Grave]

Source: Scott G. (Find A Grave)

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Born Today February 10: Harry Beaumont

 

1888-1966

Prolific director and actor Harry Beaumont was born on this day in Abilene, Kansas. Though known primarily as a director to the stars int he 1920's, he actually started first in pictures as an actor, and has around 100 such credits to his name. His acting career started when he came as close as anyone can to "running away with the circus;" he quit school to join a touring performance company. This eventually led him to stages in larger and larger cities, culminating with a stage debut in New York City.  It was a short jump at the time into film acting in the area and he joined the Edison studio in 1912; but he had actually appeared in several films before this time.  His film debut came in 1911 when he was under contract to the foreign Australia Life Biograph Company in One Hundred Years Ago.  He had roles in three additional early Australian films, before making his Edison debut in How Patrick's Eyes Were Opened as "The Salesman." A goodly number of his films at Edison were directed by C. J. Williams, including:  How Father Accomplished His Work (1912), A Thrilling Rescue by Uncle Mun (1912) and The Totville Eye (1912)--the later of which has survived and has been restored and released on DVD (see Edison: The Invention of the Movies). Though in his 4 years at Edison (really a fairly unheard amount of time for a player to remain at one studio at this time), he worked with many, many late in-house Edison directors!  A few include: Harold M. Shaw, Charles M. Seay (of note: he directed Beaumont in a version of the Charles Reade novel It's Never Too Late To Mend), George Lessey, Charles Barbin and Langdon West. I am not being cheeky when I say that probably the most important director that he worked with at Edison was himself! He got his start seemingly by accident in a co-directing  sort situation in 1914 (an"apprenticeship" if you will), when he directed My Friend From India with Ashley Miller.  His first solo outing as a director came the next year with the short melodrama For His Mother. Many of his earliest directions featured Edison contract player Bessie Learn. He also penned a couple of the scenarios that he directed at Edison as well (though he had written his first scenario in Australia in 1912 for a picture in which he acted--A Daughter of Australia).  The first film that he wrote at Edison Lost--A Pair of Shoes in 1914--a short comedic script was directed by Preston Kendall; and he first directed one of his own screenplays in 1915 with the melodrama Her Happiness. Beaumont, meanwhile continued to act in other directors productions at Edison.  He left the company and moved to Chicago's Essanay in 1916, and it was at this independent studio the he first directed himself in a film: The White Alley (penned by writer Carolyn Wells...shock/horror...a woman!).  While at Essanay, he fell back on his acting career for a time in 1916, but in the end, he directed far more films there, than he acted in, moving ever closer to a career completely behind the camera.  His last Essanay film was The Long Green Trail, released in late August of 1917.   He then went to work for Goldwyn pictures as a director back east (incidentally, his last acting job came in 1918, on yet another Australian production A Woman Suffers written and directed by Raymond Longford). His work for Goldwyn would prove fateful for his future very successful direction career in the 1920's, as he would become a valuable employee of the future combined company that would be known as MGM.  The first film that he directed for the company was ironically titled Go West, Young Man in 1918.  A frequent actor appearing in his Goldwyn pictures was the Moore brother Tom (he would later direct brother Matt at Warner's).  He next went to work for Metro (one of the "M's" in MGM) in 1922, making the comedy Fourteenth Lover starring Viola Dana & Jack Mulhall (incidentally, also penned by women: Edith M. Kennedy and Alice D. G. Miller).  Davis and Shirley Mason became fixtures in his films while at Metro; and he wrote his last screenplay while with the studio: June Madness in1922.  In 1923, he went to work for Warner Bros.; and directed Main Street, a dark comedy/drama based on a Sinclair Lewis novel starring Florence Vidor--then wife of famed director King Vidor. The film's success, and it's well connected cast meant that he was now a director of note; and, aside from a couple of films in-between back at Metro, by 1924 he was solidly in demand in Hollywood. Probably his most famous film from the silent era was the 2 hour and 15 minute long Beau Brummel starring John Barrymore and made at Warner's.  Right around the time that Warner Brothers were starting to experiment with "mass production" methods of films with sound, Beaumont left for Fox, a studio with the exact opposite approach to "talking films."  His first Fox film was his own personal comedic take on the by-then old theme from Fox: the Vamp picture.  Sporting an adapted screen play by Kenneth B. Clarke, he directed Womanpower, starring Margaret Livingston and Katherine Perry with Ralph Graves as the "hapless male," in 1926; the film was given a wide release in September of that year. He only lasted at Fox for a few films before being lured to the newly merged MGM in 1928. He started off there with a bang, directing "Latin lover" Ramon Novarro in Forbidden Hours.  His first film with sound (which no doubt would have come much earlier if he had remained at Warner's) also came in 1928. He helmed the partial silent (music and sound effects only) Our Dancing Daughters starring a youth by the name of Joan Crawford.  The picture was given a much wider release as a fully silent film, which is largely how it is remembered today (the film is available to view in several formats from DVD to streamable). The film made Crawford a national movie star. His next film with sound was also a rather big deal, certainly the studio thought so at the time; Beaumont helmed The Broadway Melody, which was billed as "TALKING SINGING DANCING" and released in June of 1929.  It boasted a large cast, though most went uncredited, but the credits are very recognizable even today:  Bessie Love, Anita Page and Charles King.  It is a big deal because it was the studio's first sounded musical, and would go on to become the first sound film to win the Best Picture Academy Award. The film survives, but it's original early technicolor sequences have been lost. Beaumont was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, as was Bessie Love for Best Actress (the directing Oscar went to Frank Lloyd for his direction of The Divine Lady).   His last film in the 1920's came with Speedway, a thoroughly modern film that not only boasted sound effects by Western Electric, but is also about race cars--doesn't get much more contemporary than that(!)--I love one tagline on a print ad for the film that reads: THE TWO-MILE-A-MINUTE COMEDY DRAMA!  His first film of the new decade was another musical--by now becoming a bit a specialty for him--that was co-directed with William Nigh: Lord Byron of Broadway.  He worked fairly prolifically through at least the lion's share of the 1930's, exclusively for MGM, and with many of his film falling under the, you guessed it, musical genre. During this time he worked with the likes of: Irene Dunn,  John Gilbert, Tallulah Bankhead, Robert Montgomery, Myrna Loy, Lionel Barrymore and Charles Ruggles, as well as several more turns with Joan Crawford.  After 1937's When's Your Birthday he had a seven year hiatus in directing. He returned in 1944 with the Ann Sothern romantic comedy Maisie Goes to Reno.  He would direct just five more films, two of them "Maisie" pictures. His last film was a Wallace Beery vehicle: Alias a Gentleman in 1948 (which was also close the last film for Berry who died in 1949).  Beaumont, tired of being relegated to lesser projects at MGM, then retired in his adopted state of California.  He passed away in a hospital in Santa Monica at the age of 78 on the 22 of December in 1966. His ashes are interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park's Great Mausoleum in Glendale. He is interred with family members.

[Photo: A.J. (Find A Grave)]

Beaumont directing in 1917 (Filling His Own Shoes)

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