1887-1963
Character actor Monte Blue was born Gerard Montgomery Bluefeather (some sources cite "Blue" as his birth sir name, but his father was of Native ancestry, Osage and Tsalagi [Cherokee], so it's possible either name could have been used--the original last name of the family was indeed "Bluefeather") on this day in Indianapolis, Indiana. Montgomery and his four siblings grew up in a orphanage, in a home set up for orphaned children of soldiers (their father was a Civil War Veteran); this was occasioned by the sudden death of their father in a car accident and that their mother could no longer care for them on her own. In addition to working a myriad of laboring jobs, from railroad worker to ranch hand, he also eventually got a higher education at Indiana's Purdue University. Blue seems to have stumbled into the movie industry, making his film debut in 1915 as a hired extra in D. W. Griffith's infamous The Birth of a Nation as an uncredited extra/stuntman and as one of the many assistants to the director. Though many next jump to his smallish role in Griffith's "apology" for Birth of a Nation Intolerance (1916) as his next role (and Blue's only other director's assistant credit), he in fact had at least 13 film appearances between the two films. His first actual named role came in his second film appearance--that of "Ignorance" in Christy Cabanne's lost epic The Absentee (1915). It was also during this time that Blue appeared in his first western--a genre that would become his trademark (see The Wild Girl From The Hills (1915), a short western that partnered Blue up with Francis Marion). While Griffith's Orphan of the Storm is often cited as the next big production in which he appeared, Blue was in fact in a named cast member of DeMille's 1918 remake of his own The Squaw Man. He had also starred in lesser productions; see, for example, The Ship of Doom--a Wyndham Gittens production from 1917. Orphans was, though, his big "breakout role." After this, he was solidly considered leading man material and cast as such. For the most part, his film career in the 1920's was spent in a series of romantic leads; frequent co-stars of his during this time were Mae Murray and Marie Prevost. One of my personal favorites is Ernst Lubitsch's So This Is Paris (1926); though many feel that his best silent performance came two years later in White Shadows in the South Seas, though the film had a partial sound version making it the first film in which he appeared with talking sequences (it is also MGM's first sound film--that version was limited and premiered with special equipment at Grauman's Chinese Theater--it was also the first time that MGM's famous lion roared in full sound). Blue was under contract with Warner's for most of the decade, and was merely "loaned" out to MGM for White Shadows. When he returned to Warner's, his next film--Conquest (1928)-was the first full sound film that he made (with sound by Vitaphone). Though he did return to silent acting in 1929, appearing the B-grade Central American action adventure From Headquarters. He was also a participant in the all-star 2 hour musical revue Show of Shows--along with nearly every other Warner's contract performer. His last film performance released in the 1920's was a Rin Tin-Tin film Tiger Rose, which also starred Lupe Velez. While his first film of the new decade was Isle of Escape, which was made with Myrna Loy, whom he'd worked with previously in the 20's. He was one of the few a-listers of the silent era to smoothly make the transition to sound. All was not necessarily hunky-dory in life however; Blue lost almost all of his investments in the stock market crash of 1929. And, like a lot of silent stars that got their start in the teens, he was largely playing either bit parts in films or appearing in poverty row films by the late 1930's. Many of these were westerns, which would be the key to the second half of his long career; as his film appearances in the 1940's was almost exclusively in westerns. There were, however, a few very notable exceptions--the most famous of which comes in his roll of Sheriff Ben Wade in John Huston's Key Largo in 1948. But, aside from a few roles in films noir, it was largely back to westerns for Monte. His television debut came in 1952 in the recurring role of Sheriff Hollister in, you guessed it, a western series, Sky King. From then on, aside from a few scant film roles, Blue stayed largely in the television business. He made appearances in the likes of: Death Valley Days, The Lone Ranger, Rawhide, and, of course, The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin. His last acting role came in the series Pony Express episode The Search in 1960. In the later half of his life, Blue as a very active Mason and he spent the last three years of his life basically working in this capacity. While in Milwaukee on business, he died suddenly of a heart attack brought on my by a virulent strain of flu on the 18th of February. He was returned to California and his ashes were interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park at Glendale.
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