Born Today June 18: Joseph W. Smiley

1870-1945

Early silent actor turned director Joseph W. Smiley was born on this day in Boston. He was hired at Lubin early on and became a fixture there. However, his first appearance in film came in 1911 in the King Baggot short Pictureland, an IMP production.  At IMP, he very quickly moved over the directors chair that same year, directing the short melodrama Phone 1707 Chester, also starring Baggot. He stayed at IMP for the remainder of 1911 both as an actor and as a director, going to work as a director at Lubin the following year. His first film with them was the short comedy The Preacher and the Gossips (1912).  He stepped back in front of the camera at in 1913, directing himself in the gambling drama A Son of His Father. Somehow, Smiley wound up either acting and/or directing a number of films that can only be called fore-runners of the thriller and "near horror"--also "vamp" like roles of devising women.  (See: The Living Fear (1914), The Sorceress (1914), Marah, the Pythoness (1914), and A Strange Melody (1914)). In one case, The Gray Horror, he directed himself in an actual horror film, which also starred Lila Leslie aka "Marah-The Pythoness" or Mrs. Joseph Smiley in real life (an actress from Scotland). Smiley left Lubin after 1915 and directed only two additional films with other companies in 1916, the last of which was Energetic Eva that was both starred in and produced by actress Eva Tanguay.  He did, however, continue to act. Most of his subsequent film appearances came between 1916 and 1921; but he did appear in films all the way through the 1920's and even made one appearance in a pre-code independent melodrama in 1931.  He was directed by a number of recognizable silent directors including: Romaine Fielding, Robert G. Vignola, Maurice Tourneur, Dell Henderson & Travers Vale...he was even in one Albert Capellani film in 1921. The last silent that he appeared in is a lost W. C. Fields domestic comedy The Potters in 1927.  As mentioned above, Smiley appeared in one film in 1931; an independent religious melodrama mostly shot in New York: Corianton.  He then retired in the New York area, dying in 1945 on the 2nd of December at the age of 75.  There is no information as his burial in currently published records on line. 

With Lawrence Gray & Gloria Swanson

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