1880-1958
Irish born silent actor turned director Herbert Brenon was born Alexander Herbert Reginald St. John Brenon on this day in Dublin; his father Edward was a writer and politician. His family moved to London just two years later, where he grew up and was educated through college. He also began to act in vaudeville there and created an act with his wife. Brenon worked in New York in theaters doing various stage jobs and vaudevillian acts. This is how he came to film first as an actor. He appeared in a very small part in the 1912 King Baggot film Shamus O'Brien, produced by Carl Laemmle and his company IMP and directed by Otis Turner. Before being cast as a film actor, however, he entered the film industry as a writer (taking up the profession of his father). He is thought to have penned the scenario for The Dream in 1911; also produced by IMP and reportedly directed by Thomas H. Ince--the film starred Mary Pickford and her first husband Owen Moore. Brenon received full credit for his adaptation of a Hawthorne's novel on The Scarlet Letter (1911), also starring Baggot and Lucille Young. Though Brenon is most often referred to as a director, he never quit writing for films during his entire time in the business--he has more than 60 writing credits. Just two months after Shamus O'Brien came out, Brenon's directorial debut was released. All For Her was released on the 2nd of May in 1912, it was a film that he also wrote from scratch and starred in. He was now a team player in the Independent Moving Pictures Co. of America. Taylor left IMP in the summer of 1912, and it appears that Brenon was retained in his place. His best known film from his time at the studio is most certainly his 1913 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; which he adapted from the Stevenson novella. Brenon would become a go-to director of films made from literature; one reason was his ability to adapt the original material himself (see, for example, the well known King Baggot historical drama Ivanhoe (1913)). In 1915, himself left IMP for Fox in 1915. The first film that he directed there with William Fox serving directly as producer was Kreutzer Sonata, featuring both Nance O'Neil and Theda Bara (Brenon would return to direct a few films at IMP in the late teens). Brenon would go on to direct Bara in several of Fox's films from the teens, including, and especially, her infamously lost vamp film Sin (this is for sure one of the crown jewels of lost films!). What is amazing here, is that Brenon wrote the screenplay for the film from one of his own stories. Fox promoted the film in such a way that it was banned in several states in the U.S. He would also direct "vamp" Valeska Surratt at Fox. By 1916, he had started his own production company, Herbert Brenon Film Corp.; the company produced War Brides starring Alla Nazimova that year utilizing Ideal's physical studio in Hudson Heights, New Jersey. The film saw the introduction of an up and coming Richard Barthelmess and had a production agreement with Lewis J. Selznick's brand new Selznick Distribution. By the time that he directed the ripped from the headlines The Fall Of The Romanoffs (featuring the odd character of Iliodor--who provided the "source material" in form of his book on "the mad monk" himself, Rasputin), Brenon had taken over the Ideal location and renamed for his production company. Brenon then went back to the U.K. after the end of the first world war, he made number of films while there that were small and not well known. The first of them apparently being Victory and Peace (1918); it was a war film produced by a national film trust that seemed endowed to make propaganda films. He then spent time making films in Italy; the first of these was Beatrice in 1919 and based on a story by Dante. He returned to making films in the U.S. in 1921 adapting and directing Passion Flower for Norma Talmadge's production company and starring the lady herself. He stayed with Talmadge's company for most of the remainder of the year, before returning to Fox in late 1921 (the Fox produced Any Wife, starring Pearl White, came out January of 1922). He then landed at Paramount (one of his early Paramount films survives, and is available on disc--The Spanish Dancer with Pola Negri). His Peter Pan from 1924 launched the career of Mary Brian, who he is credited with discovering. Probably his most famous film of all is the now lost 1926 production of The Great Gatsby. The film, based on the wildly popular Fitzgerald novel, starred Warner Baxter and the mysterious as strange Gatsby and Neil Hamilton in the Carraway role (William Powell was also in the film). The production was expensive and was based on the successful Broadway production directed by one George Cukor. The film was also the first that he made under a new arrangement with Famous Players--Lasky, with Paramount as a the distributor. His work in the late 1920's is a big budget as studio films of a later time would be. In fact, Brenon would direct some of the largest film productions of the late silent era, amongst them: the Roland Colman action adventure Beau Geste (1926), Sorrell and Son (1927)--for which he was nominated for one of the very first Oscars for Best Director, Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928) with Lon Chaney Sr., and The Rescue (1929) his last film of the decade and, which was also his first talkie--also starring Ronald Colman. Brenon continued to direct into the talking era--heading up 15 films during the 1930's, returning to direct in the U.K. in 1935. He directed his last film in 1940, The Flying Squad, a Scotland Yard crime drama set in London. Brenon then retired back to California. He passed away in Los Angeles on the 21st of June at the age of 78; he is interred in a large ornate private mausoleum at Woodlawn cemetery in The Bronx.
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| I noticed that the "clock" above his name is set at 4 o'clock...um teatime! [Source: Wikipedia] |
Note: the links below don't give much information for such an important director of the silent era, but do have filmographies of interest.
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