1883-1966
Actress of the the stage and silent screen Gail Kane (Abigale) was born on this day in Philadelphia (and if you are familiar with her, you may being doing a double take on that birth year there...apparently she fudged her age by two years, stating to producers that her birth year was 1885-her real birth year appears on her tombstone). Though known as a silent star for a brief time, she spent as much, or more, of her acting career on the stage as she did before the camera. I find it interesting, that as an accomplished stage actor, her entire film career came during the silent era--she never made a talkie. Most stage actors who tried film acting in the silent era did not find it to their liking and went back to the stage; many came back in the 1930's with the coming of sound. Not so with Kane. Of course, this is not a mystery--she simply retired from acting altogether to raise her child in Maine; so even her stage career did not last into the age of sound film. This is also of interest to me, because her ambitions to follow a career in acting apparently surfaced while she was still in school, and it became a path that she was absolutely determined to follow. By the time she made her film debut in 1913, she was near 30 by her telling (in reality she was 30--but I don't blame her bit for shaving off a little on her age--my own grandmother did the same); that came in the independent western Arizona, which was shot on location on Staten Island by the All-Star Feature Corporation. Her stage career, much of which was on Broadway, ran concurant with her film career. This might provide another good reason for her retiring in her early 40's--she and her husband spent most of their time in the Augusta, Maine area--which was convienent for the New York theater scene....but certainly not for Hollywood film shoots! She also performed in London and had parts in plays produced by George Cohan. As for her film career, she was billed as an ingenue from the beginning. For example, the tagline for The Great Diamond Robbery (1914) read "Miss Gail Kane is today one of America's leading photoplay actresses"--it was just her second film appearance. Ultimately she would take roles in close to 35 films between 1913 through 1927. In the first years of her film career, she was directed by a number famous directors, including Travers Vale (The Men She Married), Emile Chautard (The Heart of a Hero), George Fitzmaurice (Via Wireless) and Maurice Tourneur (The Pit & The Velvet Paw). She also played identical twins in The Scarlet Oath; one the first times that this acting technique was employed and one that remains almost completely unique to film, since, obviously, this is much harder to pull off in live performance. In 1917 she signed a contract with Mutual out in Hollywood and began making films with their production house American Film Company, the first of which was Whose Life?. After some skirmishes in Hollywood that involved contract breach by Mutual, she was back to making films in New Jersey the following year. When Men Betray (1918) was made for the independent company Graphic Films, shot on location in Lakewood, New Jersey and written and directed by Graphic founder Ivan Abramson. Although not written widely about, Kane started her own production company in 1918 and the production house produced two films in which she appeared that year: Love's Law and The Daredevil, both directed by Francis J. Grandon. As her stage career picked up in the New York area, her film career slowed. She only appeared in one film in 1920: Empty Arms; and only two films in 1921: Idle Hands and Wise Husbands. Her most prolific time on the stage however came during the years 1923 and 1927, when she appeared in no films at all after she had a role in the Lillian Gish film The White Sister. During this time, she acted in at least 6 major stage productions--most of them on Broadway. One hitch came on cold night in February 1927, when the New York police raided (probably illegally) two major productions on supposed violations of local "morality laws." Arrested along with Kane were the likes of Winifred Fraser, Basil Rathbone, Mae West and a distraught Helen Menken (my, I would give anything to travel back and time to be a fly on the wall when those coppers got West downtown!!). After this incident, Kane made just one more film appearance, and swore off the stage altogether. For the first time in her career, she took the role of an older woman, playing "Mrs. Weyeth" in a World War I set drama Convoy which was released in April of 1927 (it is among the list of films listed as lost). She then retired for good with her little family to Augusta, Maine, where she remained for the rest of her life. Kane passed away from natural causes on the 17 of February 1966 at the age of 82; she is buried next to her husband, whom she lost in 1939, at Augusta's Saint Marys Cemetery.
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| [Source: Dapper (Find A Grave)] |
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| [Source: Dapper (Find A Grave)] |
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