1878-1938*
Stage acting star turned movie actor Conway Tearle was born Frederick Conway Levy on this date in New York City. Both of his parent were professional performers; with his mother being Marriane Conway--known affectionately as "Minnie" and his father was actually famous, being the British born concert cornetist and composer Jules Levy (his grandmother on his mother's side was actress Sarah Crocker Conway, who was in turn descended from extremely famous Shakespearean British thespian William A. Conway, who acted in some of the biggest houses in his native London and in New York City; Minnie's own father was a successful theater owner in Brooklyn). Needless to say, he was well schooled in theatrical arts by his teen years, from both experiences with his family and a formal education in the U.S. and the U.K. He started on the stage, just as his ancestors had, but by the 1920's, he was one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood. His name change also comes from familial connections. After his own parents divorced, his mother remarried British Shakespearean actor Osmond Tearle--hence his name change as a stage actor. This was particularly helpful for work in London; and Conway was said to have gotten a big break when he substituted out of the blue (no under-study situation this!) for an actor playing Hamlet who became violently ill during the first act of that rather long play; this was in a production in Manchester, England. Conway was just 21 at the time and had been able to recite most of Shakespeare's important plays since around the age of 12. Tearle stayed in stage work on both sides of the Atlantic until the second decade of the 20th century. When he did make his film debut, it wound up coming in a title that has come down to us as historically important: it was the film debut of Ethel Barrymore. The film was The Nightingale and was released in October of 1914. For an actor who was mostly a stage performer, he made a surprisingly large number of film appearances in the 1910's (close to twenty). His appearances in the 1920's picked up, mostly because he was eventually given a contract for $1750 a week...that was a jaw dropping amount for the day (think about this for a second, adjusted for inflation, that would almost $26,000 today!!). For the most part, Tearle was cast the romantic lead in melodramas and romance films (a few were even a little exintricc, see for example, Black Oxen a romantic drama with a science fiction twist). A few of his films were directed by truly talented directors: Maurice Tourneur (The White Moth 1924), George Archainbaud (The Common Law 1923), Phil Rosen (The Heart of a Siren 1925) & Tod Browning (The Mystic 1925), and he was at various times directed by one or the other Ince Brothers. He also was a favorite actor of director Frank Lloyd. (Oh, and her is a little fun trivia, Tearle was in a film [The Sporting Life] in 1926 directed by Alan Hale, father of The Skipper himself Alan Hale Jr.] He also appeared in the few films that experimented with new technologies; such as: Altars of Desire (Two-strip Technicolor-1927) and Gold Diggers of Broadway (a Warner's early musical with full mono sound by Vitaphone-1929)--after this point he never appeared in another film without full sound. His last film appearance in the 1920's came in the Edward Sloman directed independet adventure film The Lost Zeppelin released in December of 1929. His first film of the new decade was back at First National, the studio that had so highly paid him in the early 1920's. A starred opposite Loretta Young in The Truth About Youth, which was released in November of 1930. In all he was the star of over twenty film in the decade, along with numerous performances in plays. The last film in which he appears is in George Cukor's Romeo and Juliet (1936), in the role of Escalus--Prince of Verona. To my knowledge, this is the only film of Shakespeare's plays that he appeared in--despite that Shakespeare was one of his stage specialties. He last acting role did indeed come on the stage, in a new comedy by playwright Barlette Cormack 1937, The play did open in New Jersey and was set (with modifications due to Tearle's declining health) on Broadway, but alas it never made it there--the whole production was scraped due the actor's condition. It did feature a part of a young, bright up and comer: Lucille Ball. Tearle retired back to his home in Hollywood after this, dying there of a heart attack on the 1st of October in 1938 at the age of 60. He was cremated, it is presumed wife at the time of his death--actress Adele Rowland--kept the urn. Tearle was married four times in life; his second marriage was to Josephine Park. It's thought that he had to children. But, he did have two younger half brothers who were also actors (products of his mother's second marriage): Godfrey Tearle and Malcolm Tearle--both of whom were celebrated stage actors. Conway Tearle had one writing credit to his name for the story used in the 1921 film Society Snobs, a film in which he starred. He also showed up in a number of Screen Snapshots in the mid 1920's.
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*please forgive the typos and errors--blogger has become unspell checkable and difficult to edit.
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