Tuesday, December 8, 2020

Born Today December 8: Wallace Worsley

 

1878-1944

 

Classically trained stage actor, turned film actor, turned director Wallace A. Worsley was born on this day in Wappinger's Falls, New York.  Worsley's work is best known as a director of several very famous films of the 1920's, including The Hunchback of Notre Dame from 1923, but he got his start in the business in 1917 as an actor. His first film appearance came in Paws of the Bear; it was directed by Reginald Barker, with William Desmond and Clara Williams taking the leads. He only appeared in eight films in two years, the last of which was an Oscar Apfel romantic feature: A Man's Man (1918). He also made his directorial debut in 1918, directing himself (for the only time) in the now lost war intrigue An Alien Enemy. Over the next ten years, he would direct nearly 30 films, the vast majority of which came between 1918 and 1923.  Along the way he worked with a number of well known actors and movie stars, including: John Gilbert, Clara Bow, Noah Beery, Irene Rich, Blanche Sweet, Jack Pickford, Lionel Atwill, Clara Kimball Young and Lewis Stone.  He was director who liked to work with actors multiple times, and one of his earliest repeat collaborators was actress Louise Glaum. Of course, his most famous repeat collaboration came with The Man of a Thousand Faces: Lon Chaney. And it largely due to Chaney that Worsley is remembered as a horror director; conversely and ironically, it is largely down to Worsley that Chaney is thought of as a horror actor (obviously, with a little help from Tod Browning😉). Their first film working together came in 1920 with the The Penalty, a crime horror film in which Chaney plays a deformed criminal mastermind with no legs named Blizzard. They next worked together on The Ace of Hearts the following year; while not a horror film, it does include a secret society intrigue (Chaney also appeared that same year in the Worsley directed crime drama Voices of the City). In 1922, Worsley directed Leah Baird in When Husbands Deceive, a film that she adapted for the screen from her own short story.  Also in 1922 Worsley made for Goldwyn Pictures A Blind Bargain, another horror film--this time featuring an actual monster in the form of an Ape Man--starring, you guessed it, Lon Chaney in a dual role of both mad scientist and his monstrous assistant. This film is famously lost, and after Tod Browning's London After Midnight (also starring Chaney), the second most sought after lost silent horror.  After this point, Worsley's work slowed considerably, but also represents the time in his career that contains his most famous work, the above mentioned Hunchback Of Notre Dame, released in September of 1923--and with it's original length of well over 2 hours, it was an epic of a film!  He also directed another Leah Baird penned film in 1923: Is Divorce a Failure?  He directed just three more films after this; one in 1924 (The Man Who Fights Alone), one in 1926 (the Clara Bow film Shadow of the Law) and his last film The Power of Silence, released in October of 1928.  He then retired but remained in Hollywood. He passed away there at the age of 65 on the 26th of March and is interred at the famous Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale (his whole family is now interred there together). Worsley was married to silent actress Julia Taylor and together they had two sons, one of whom followed his parents into the film business (their other son sadly died at 13 in 1933).  Namesake Wallace Worsley Jr. worked as second unit director and/or production manager on such films as: The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, Deliverance, The Coal Miner's Daughter, and E.T., not to mention a myriad of television series.  

 

[source: Kathy Salazar (Find A Grave)]

 


IMDb


Wikipedia

 

Find A Grave entry 

 

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