1885-1931
Prolific silent film actor and director Harry F. Millarde was born on this day in Cincinnati, Ohio. He started in the film business as an actor at Kalem, making his debut in the Robert Vignola directed The Message of the Palms, a 1913 melodramatic short. He would appear in a remarkable number of shorts during that year, even taking top billing in male leads, such as his role as "the mark" in Kalem's own "vamp" tale The Vampire, opposite Marguerite Courtot as the sweetheart and Alice Hollister as the vamp [October, 1913] (he would appear in another "vampire" film the following year, only in a supporting role; The Vampire's Trail also featured Hollister as the "loose woman," with Tom Moore in the male lead). Although he worked with other director's in his prolific two years of acting at Kalem, the vast majority of the films in which he acted were either directed by Vignola or Kenean Buel. In 1915 he also began to direct. His first film, The Curious Case of Meredith Stanhope, was a short melodrama, in which he also took the male lead opposite the same Alice Hollister mentioned above. For the rest of the year he continued to direct himself, but he had his eye on directing exclusively and only directed one film in which he personally appeared in 1916: The Lotus Woman. He acted in just two additional films during his career, neither of which he directed: Elusive Isabel (1916, directed by Stuart Paton) and Man and Woman (1920, directed by Charles Logue & B.A. Rolfe). Once he dedicated his career to directing he made 40 films between 1916 and 1927. By the beginning of 1917, he had parted ways with Kalem and directed at IMP, Universal and Victor, before settling in at Fox. There he began directing June Caprice, whom he would marry in 1920, their first film together was Every Girl's Dream (August 1917). While at Fox, he briefly became a producer, when he produced two films that he also directed: The Town That Forgot God and My Friend The Devil, both released in 1922. After this he directed just five more films. His last film for Fox was The Fool based on a Channing Pollock play and released in November of 1925. His final two films in 1927 were for MGM, the second of which was his last film: On Ze Boulevard, a crime comedy starring Lew Cody. Millarde died of a heart attack four years later, after a battle with some type of heart disease that likely caused the end of his directing career. He died in his in Bayside home (Queens borough) in New York City on the 2nd of November in 1931, just ten days shy of his 46th birthday. He left behind his wife and young daughter who was just nine at the time. She would go on to be the New York area cover girl Toni Seven. He was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx.
[Source: Bronx Aquarium (Find A Grave)]
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