1882-1972
Silent film director William Pitt Striker Earle was born on this day in New York City. He attended university locally at Columbia and worked as a still photographer. He became facinated by motion pictures and the story that he told was that he snuck onto the second Vitagraph studio lot located in Brooklyn to observe directors and camera operators at work. Whether this was a true story or not is anyone's guess at this point; but we do know that he wrote and directed his first film in 1915: For the Honor of the Crew, a short romantic melodrama about a Columbia rowing crew was made for Vitagraph. It was his only film that year and his only direction for a while that was not a co-diretion of some sort. His very next film bears mentioning not just because it was his first outing as a "junior director" but also that he was paired up with Vitagraph's female screenwriter Marguerite Bertsch for The Law Decides (May 1916), a melodrama that she wrote. His next solo outing as a director was on the completely forgotten Vitagraph short dramatizing forest fires in The Curse of the Forest (October 1916). For a large part of his career at Vitagraph, his directing partner was New Hyde Park native Wally Van, who also did not direct any films beyond the silent era. Later in 1916, he was the junior director on the the war feature Whom the Gods Destroy, co-directed by senior in-house Vitagraph director Herbert Brenon and Vitagraph founder J. Stuart Blackton. The film is historically important in that it is thought to have been the first film to depict a reigning British monarch, with Thomas R. Mills in the role of The King of England. But, the film was also personally important for Earle; I am sure that he knew Blackton from around the studio (Earle said that he met him in 1915--which is probably true), but he had not formally worked with him prior to this. Not only did it provide a stepping stone to his directing features at Vitagraph, but it is important on the even more personal level in that in many years later he marry Blackton's widow, actress Evangeline Russell (he was also responsible for Blackton interment at Forest Lawn Memorial Park after Blackton's untimely death and inability of his estate to afford a proper burial; the family such as they were were eventually interred there together). The work that he did on Whom the Gods Destroy, lead him to directing the feature The Courage of Silence (1917), starring Alice Joyce--also the the star of Destroy--who plays the "vampish" Mercedes in this "corrupting woman" melodrama. This proved to be Earle's biggest break to date, and his first solo feature direction. His next film was a another war feature also starring Joyce and featuring documentary footage of President Woodrow Wilson. Womanhood, the Glory of the Nation, a co-direction with Blackton, saw the debut credit of his older brother Ferdinand Earle who would also go on to direct for Vitagraph. By the end of 1917, he was one of Vitagraph's most prolific and important directors and had switched to directing ingenue Gladys Leslie. Unfortunately, Vitagraph was, by the time Earle arrived, already in financial trouble. The studio was overly dependent on European distribution, so obviously the outbreak and length of World War I was not just painful for the company, it was a death knell. It was not situation that could remain stable for a director, so in 1918, Earle went to work for the Selznick's at World Film. His first film for them was Heredity, released in August of that year. Following in 1919, he got his second writing credit, adapting a J. Breckenridge Ellis comedy novel with Arthur Edwin (his only credit) for Lillian Walker's production company: The Love Hunger was a comedy starring Walker who had also been an actress at Vitagraph. He next directed the Clara Kimball Young production The Better Wife (July 1919), a melodrama that starred Young, along with Nigel Barrie and her own actor father Edward. Also in 1919, he went to work for David O. Selznick's earliest production company, making The Broken Melody back in New York; the film was written by Ouida Bergère, another woman managing to do break-through work as a screenwriter at the time. His first film of the new decade was his second film for Selznick Pictures; Whispers (May 1920) starred Elaine Hammerstein of the famed New York theater family and was shot in Washington D.C. (except for at least one scene in Penn Station)--it is today most certainly a lost film. It would be the first of several films for Selznick that he directed starring Hammerstein, the last of which was The Way of a Maid (November 1921)--a copy of which is preserved in Library of Congress. He made just one more film for Selznick (Love's Masquerade--1922) before leaving the company to found his own production company. His first film under this new venture was Destiny's Isle, a romantic melodrama shot in Miami, he set himself up as the presenter, finding distribution through American Releasing Corporation, which was released it on the 30th of April in 1922. His next production was a romance set in ancient Egypt which he adapted himself (his third and final writing credit) from a story written by his second wife Blanche; The Dancer of the Nile was filmed in the California desert, and released through Film Booking Offices of America on the 28th of October in 1923. He would not make another film for two years and he only made a total of two more films in his directing career. Both of them were actually Mexican films and both were made for Amex films. Tras las bambalinas del bataclan was comedy released in 1925; while Milagros de la Guadalupana was a drama released in May of 1926. Both films were shot in Mexico (likely the northern part of the country). He reportedly lost all or most of his personal money in the crash of 1929, though he had stopped making films several years before this and seems to have nothing to do with his retirement from making films. After he left Selznick's company and attempting things on his own, he seems to have been forgotten as a filmmaker--though he was regarded as one of the very best that Vitagraph had produced. He had long since moved to California, where he stayed. He had though come from serious money back on the east coast, as both his father and grandfather were hotel owners and operators in New York of serious repute. I have no idea if that money eventually helped him out later in life, though he would go on to live a very long live in the Los Angeles area. As mentioned above he paid for the funeral expenses for his former boss J. Stuart Blackton in 1941. His second wife died in 1952, so in 1954 after striking up a friendship with Blackton's widow, he married her, and stayed married to her until her death in 1966. He passed away on the 30th of November in 1972, almost one month to the day before his 90th birthday. Also as mentioned above, they are all interred together at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, with a plaque emblazoned with the Earle surname.
SourceL AJM (Find A Grave)] 
[Source: AJM (Find A Grave)]
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