1883-1964
Known mostly for his work with Fox, Adrian Owen Johnson was born on this day in Knoxville, Tennessee. Though he had older half siblings, the fact that he was the only child of his military father's third and last marriage, and that his father died when he was just three years of age, meant that Johnson effectively grew up without brothers or sisters. Despite losing his father at such a young age, the fact that his father came from a very well connected family meant that he had educational options in life that most children in his situation would not have. He eventually completed a college degree and at some point began to write scenarios for films. Though when he is remembered in film history, it his connections to Fox and some it's most famous Theda Bara's films, he actually got his start in the business at Metro, moving over briefly to Mirror Films. Dates are hard to pin down owed to very little information about his life having been preserved. There is some evidence that his earliest scripts may date from 1913 or 1914 and that he landed his job at Fox sometime (probably late) in 1915--the earliest film credit that has his name actually attached to it dates from 1916: The Marriage Bond, a melodrama directed for Mirror by Lawrence Marston. The earliest Fox film that we have definite credits for that has his name attached as a screenwriter is Romeo and Juliet, released in October of 1916. The film starred Theda Bara, was, obviously, an adaptation of Shakespeare, and is amongst the many Fox/Bara productions lost (as far as any knows, the only known copy was burned in the infamous Fox fire of 1937 in New Jersey). His last adaptation for Fox came in 1919 with Checkers based on Henry Martyn Blossom novel. Along the way, he was a writer on some of Fox's most famous lost films of the 1910's, including the J. Gordon Edwards films Camille (1917), Salome (1918) & the nearly two hour long Madame Du Barry (1917). He was also a writer on the World War I Fox production Why America Will Win and what can only be assumed was a "silent screw-ball comedy" Tell it to the Marines (1918). In this modern age, the most historically significant film that he adapted for the screen was Cleopatra. Dating from 1917, and also directed by Edwards, this was amongst the more famous films that Theda Bara starred in outside the "vamp" role in her Fox career. The film is one is one of the biggest laments of lost silent cinema history. It is this film that was the subject of a "video reconstruction" by Phillip Dye in 2017. Johnson's first screenplay post Fox, was an adaptation of a popular Cosmo Hamilton novel at a new production company: The Miracle Of Love (1919). He next went on to work for Marion Davis' production company. His first screenplay of the 1920's was for her; a crime vehicle April Folly, an adaptation of a Cynthia Stockley serialized story, it is a film very much still available for viewing. From this point forward, Johnson wrote for a variety of production houses, including a couple for British companies (see, for example, Carnival (1921) and His Wife's Husband). One of his later screenplays was for a film that starred Baby Peggy who passed away not quite a year ago; The Darling of New York (December 1923) was her first feature and was written with director King Baggot. The Look Out Girl was his last screenplay to be produced in the 1920's. The film, a mystery/crime melodrama, was a late presentation of A. Carlos (himself more than a bit of a mystery) and his Carlos Productions; it was directed by Dallas Fitzgerald and starred Jacqueline Logan as "the look out girl" turned bride to a wealthy doctor. He was involved in five screenplays--to varying degrees--in the 1930's. The first of these was The Jazz Cinderella (September 1930)--starring Myrna Loy and Jason Robards Sr.--where he was involved with a bank of writers working for Chesterfield Motion Pictures Corp. He worked for them for one more film in 1931, another domestic crime film The Lady from Nowhere with Alice Day. The last film that he that he is known to have worked on for sure was a "custody melodrama" Found Alive, released in April of 1933. After 1935, he was associated with just one other title and rather infamous one at that...at least where I come from in northern Florida. He is thought to have provided some of the narration dialogue for the "documentary" Killers of the Sea in 1937 (shot in Panama City, Florida--people remembered Captain Caswell locally). Johnson stayed in Los Angeles for the rest of his life, where he sold a "full proof" screenwriters guide via mail. He was married to silent film actress Margaret Cloud and they remained married until his death on the 14th of September in 1964 at the age of 81. He was cremated; his wife followed him in death six years later.
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