Born Today May 7: George Archainbaud

1890-1959

French born director George Archainbaud was born on this day in Paris.  He got his start in his native country in the theater.  He immigrated to the United States in 1915 to serve as an assistant to Émile Chautard, who had been hired by Lewis J. Selznick's World Film Company.  They went to work immediately in Fort Lee.  The first film that he worked on with Chautard was Sudden Riches (1916).  He made is debut as full director in 1917 with As Man Made Her.  He even dabbled in writing (see One Week Of Love (1922) and The Common Law (1923)).  With the demise of Selznick's role in the company that he founded, David O. Selznick, his famous son, who had been able to independently found his own production company apart from his father, was able to add Archainbaud to his list of up and coming talented directors.  This is how Archainbaud made his way west to Hollywood.  Though by the late 1920's he was no longer working for Selznick, going to work instead for Tiffany-Stahl Productions; it is a sad fact that the vast marjority of late silent films that he directed for them are lost.  The first film that he worked that had sound elements was a melodrama: The Voice Within in 1929--it is among the long list of his films that were lost.  It featured a few talking sequences utilizing the RCA Photophone System.  By 1929, he was working for Columbia and the first full sound film that he directed was The College Coquette in 1929.  In the 1930's he went to work for RKO, and by the 1940's he was at Paramount.  He made his television directorial debut pretty early on, directing several episodes of the series The Lone Ranger.  By this time he had begun to specialize in the directing westerns.  In the 1950's, he was a much sought out director of western television shows, in fact the last thing he directed was and episode of The Texan entitled Letter Of The Law.  In 1921, he married silent film actress Katherine Johnston to whom he remained married until his death on the 20th of February 1959 of a heart attack.  He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in California.  Follow the link below to Internet Movie Database to view the impressive list of silents that he directed.

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Born Today November 21: Jobyna Ralston

1899-1967

Born Jobyna Lancaster Raulston in South Pittsburgh, Tenn., her unusual first name came from her parents naming her after the then very famous stage actress Jobyna Howland, who would go on to have her own successful turn in silent films.  Ralston's mother was a portrait photographer, who from the beginning had plans for her daughter to go into show business; she was literally raised to have some sort of an entertainment career.  She was on the professional stage by the age of 9, and went on to attend acting school  in 1915 in New York City.  Her Broadway debut came at the age of 21, when she began landing dancing chorus roles in musicals and small acting roles in plays.  Famous comedian Max Linder noticed her in one of these productions and persuaded her to go to Hollywood.  She had her film debut in 1919 in the short comedy Starting Out In Life and was credited as "Juliana Ralston."  She did not keep the Juliana part, proudly going back to her famous first name, but she kept the respelling of the last name.  in 1921 she played the "Heroine" in the famously lost first Marx Brothers film Humor Risk.  She then began to work in comedy one reel shorts of Hal Roach, and had a very prolific career throughout the 1920's.  In 1922 she abandoned the live stage altogether.  She starred in her first partial sound film in The Big Hop (1928), which had a mono musical score.  Her first full sound film came in The College Coquette a year later. Her greatest achievement came in 1927 when she had a billed roll in Wings which was the only silent film to technically win a "Best Picture" Oscar in the silent era, starring the likes of Clara Bow and Gary Cooper.  She quit acting in the early 1930's after having a child; she made only two films in that decade.  Her film career was almost entirely confined to the silent era.  During this time she worked with a myriad of Hollywood silent elite talent.  See links below.  She passed away at the age of 67 on 22 January 1967 in Wood Hills, Los Angeles.  Her grave marker states that she was born in 1900; her birth records indicate that 1899 was the correct year.

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