Born Today August 12: Martha Hedman

1883-1974

Famed Broadway stage actress Martha [Abagail] Hedman was born on this day in Ostersund, Sweden.  She studied acting under an apprenticeship in her native Sweden with the wife of well respected playwright and novelist August Strindberg.  She made her stage debut in 1905 in Helsinki, Finland.  For the next six years she appeared in a variety of different types of plays from Sweden to Germany. She was noticed by American theatrical producer Charles Frohman in 1915; he brought her to the United States and she began a successful stage career that would lead to stardom on Broadway.  By 1915 she was acting in a production by Aurthur Hammerstein.  It was at this time that she appeared in the only film of her career.  Just as in the case of Elsie Ferguson, it would be famed director Maurice Tourneur who convinced her to appear in front of the camera.  The film was The Cub (1915).  The experience was clearly not one that she wanted to repeat again; so she returned to the stage.  She had a very successful career there up until her retirement in 1921.  She briefly returned to the stage in 1942 for one last performance.  After this, she penned one book.  Hedman did not return to her birth country, but chose instead to spend her retired years here states-side.  She died in DeLand, Florida on the 20th of June at the ripe old age of 90!  There is not information about her burial or her cremation.

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Born Today August 11: Octave Feuillet

1821-1890

French writer Octave Feuillet was born on this day in St. Lô, France (located in Normandy).  His father was a very prominent lawyer and was the Secretary-General of La Manche, but was quite hypersensitive to any sort of stress.  Since Feuillet's mother died when he was an infant, his father's fits of invalid sensitivity no doubt influenced him as a youngster (in truth, we would recognize many of his father's symptoms today as probably bi-polar).  It didn't help that Feuillet inhereited some of these difficulties from his father, though reportedly, no where to the degree of the elder Feuillet.  With grand thoughts of shaping his young son's career path, Octave was sent off to study in Paris, with the notion that he would go into diplomatic service.  Though he greatly excelled in his studies and earned high marks, he wanted to become, instead, a writer.  When he informed his father of his chosen path, he was promptly disowned.  Octave returned to Paris and lived hand to mouth as a struggling young journalist.  When his father's health began to decline he was summed back to his birthplace in Saint-Lô--against his will.  Being an obedient son, he went--but he always referred to his this time in his life as exile.  While there he married a cousin in 1851, who was also a writer.  Ironically, the situation elicited from him some of his best work.  In 1852 along, he produced two of his most important works for publication: a novel Bellah and, ironically, a comedic play La Crise.  The situation, though, basically caused him to have nervous breakdown, and his wife and mother-in-law were the only to people keeping him from total collapse.  After this, though weak from his "exile," he returned to Paris to oversee to stage production of play that he adapted from one of his own novels.  After the death of his father while he was in Paris, his whole family moved to the city, and happier times ensued.  By 1968 he was made librarian of Fontainebleau palace; however by 1862, upon the death of his eldest son, his own health and mental state had been in decline.  By the time he was made librarian, he decided that he could no longer tolerate Paris and left for the Normandy countryside, where he purchased a house and started as rose garden that would become locally famous.  He spent  most of the rest of his life tending it.  His mental health though deteriorated to the point where he sold the house, and spent the last lonely years of his life wandering about in Paris, though he was able to finish one last work, a novel Honneur d'artiste, published the year of his death.  He died in Paris on the 29th  of December 1890 at the age of 69.  There is no information as to his burial.  His writing has been described as "Romantic Realism."  The first film made using his work as source material came in 1913 with the French production Le roman d'un jeune homme pauvre--produced by Pathé Frères.  The English langauge film made from his work came the next year with The Romance Of A Poor Young Man, made by Biograph (based on that same work).  In all, 11 films utilizing his work were made during the silent era, with the last of these  dating from 1927 and was a remake of the original film from 1913.  The first film produced in the sound era came in 1932 with A Parisian Romance made here in the United States.  The most recent use of his work came in the form of a French broadcast television series Les amours de la belle époque in 1980 in an episode again devoted to his novel Le roman d'un jeune homme pauvre.

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Born Today August 10: Elsie Ferguson

1883-1961

Giant of the stage and silent screen Elsie Louise Ferguson was born on this day in Manhattan.  Ferguson was the daughter of a very prominent lawyer and grew up in a very privileged household.  This did not stop her from developing an interest in the stage early on in her life.  She finally made her stage debut as a chorus girl at the age of seventeen.  Her beauty made her an instant favorite, and she quickly stepped into larger and larger roles.  By 1909, she had become an accomplished player after much tutelage and was a full blown star.  She was popular enough to take part of in a War Bonds effort during World War I with wild success.  So, it was hardly surprising that film studios began to take an active interest.  After repeatedly declining contracts from several companies, it was finally accomplished French born director Maurice Tourneur who convinced her to take the starring role in his Barbary Sheep in 1917.  The experience was not a good one for her; she is later quoted as saying "I shall never forget my state of mind during the making of Barbary Sheep.  My experience before the camera was the most painful thing I have ever known in my life.  It seemed to me that the little black box became a monster that was leering and scoffing at my feeble efforts to register emotion before it.  I went home in tears.  But the next morning I returned."  Nonetheless, she stuck with screen acting, especially during the late 1910's.  During this time, her beauty, along with her specialty of playing aristocratic roles earned her the nickname "The Aristocrat Of The Screen."  Though in the 1920 she signed a multi-film contract deal with Paramount, it was only for four films in two year period.  As any successful stage actor of the time, silent film acting was more of grind than an art for them.  In 1925, she chose to retire from the film business and return to Broadway.  The last film that she made before the retirement was The Unknown Lover.  With the coming of the talking film, she decided to try to revive her film career in the 1930's, but at the age of 47, the studio system deemed her too old to bill in the roles that she wanted.  Her last film appearance came in Scarlet Pages in 1930, where she convincingly portrays a hard nose female lawyer who chooses work over a home life (the film does descend into hopeless melodrama).  She then returned to the stage, but even her performances there began to slow.  Her last appearance on Broadway came in 1943 at the age of 60, a performance met with very warm critical praise.  She then retired from acting altogether and lived on an estate purchased in the area of New London, Conn.  She died there on the 15 of November at the age of 78.  She is buried there in the town of Old Lyme in Duck River Cemetery.

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Born Today August 9: Benjamin Chapin

Chapin was known for his resemblance to Abraham Lincoln.

1872-1918

Silent film actor Benjamin Chapin, best known for his portrayal of President Abraham Lincoln, was born on this day in Bristolville, Ohio.  Chapin never played any other role in films other than that of Lincoln--all of which he made himself.  He rented out studio space especially for the projects.  The first of these was The Lincoln Cycle in 1917 (a film that he also wrote).  His first actual foray into the world of motion pictures had come earlier than this though; in 1913 he was a producer on the Tom Ince/Allan Dwan film In Love and War.  Starting in 1918, he began to direct his Lincoln film projects himself; the first of these was A Call To Arms.   Paramount would go on to release part of his Lincoln series under the title The Son Of Democracy, which is also the last film title in his project as well, but I do not believe that all of his films were ever released in the first place.  This would all be cut short when Chapin died from tuberculosis at the age of 45 on the 2nd of June 1918 in Liberty, New York.  There is no information as to his interment.  Chapin also played Lincoln on the Broadway stage as well.

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Born Today August 8: E. K. Lincoln

1884-1958

Silent film actor and sometime director E.K. (Edward Kline) Lincoln was born on this day in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.   Lincoln started out as a stage actor.  The first film that he appeared in was The Loyalty of Sylvia in 1912.  All of his acting career occurred in the silent era. He made his directorial debut in 1922 with Man Of Courage, in which he also starred.  By this time, he was a big enough star to be featured in Screen Snapshots, Series 3, No. 13 (1922).  After 1922, his acting career began to wind down considerably; with his final retirement from acting in 1925.  The last film that he appeared in was My Neighbors Wife (1925).  During his tenure as an actor, he was also responsible for building a film studio in Grantwood, New Jersey.  I cannot find any information has to what he did after he quit film acting, but two real possibilities are 1) a studio executive (he certainly would not be the first to make that transition successfully), or 2) a return to stage acting.  What ever the case, he remained in California up until the time of his death on 9 January 1958 in Los Angeles at the age of 73.  He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale.

The Grantwood Studio

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Born Today August 7: Billie Burke

1884-1970

Stage and Film actor Billie Burke was born as Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke in Washington D. C. on this day.  Burke's father Billy, from whom so obtained her nickname, was a professional clown and singer who worked for Barnum & Bailey Circus; young Mary travelled with him on tours.  Somehow, her family wound up settling in London, England.  There she was exposed to the theater and evertually made her own stage debut in 1903.  This lead to her debut on Broadway back in New York and to her stardom there.  Her specialty was musical comedy.  While playing on Broadway, she met and married the extremely influential stage producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.  She made her silver screen debut in 1915 acting in Peggy (the film was released in 1916).  From that time on, until the very early 1920's, she made regular appearances in film.  Finding silent film work unfufilling, she returned to the stage in 1921; but when the family fortune was wiped out by the stock market crash in 1929 (and with the coming of talking pictures), she returned to the silver screen.   Her next film appearance came in the full sound early talkie Glorifying The American Girl in 1929 in a bit part.  Her next film, A Bill Of Divorcement (1932)--a George Cukor film, fully realized her Hollywood revival, and she once again became a film star.  One role that she is well remembered for today is that of Mrs. Clara Topper in the "Topper" film franchise (which started in 1937).  The one role that she is by far and away most famous for is that of Glinda--The Good Witch Of The North in The Wizard Of Oz.  She went into radio work as well, at one point having her own show.   Burke made her television debut in 1950 in the early horror series Lights Out (itself developed from a radio show) in the episode Dr. Heidegger's Experiment.  She continued to work until about 10 years before her death at the age of 85.  Her two last appearances in film came in Sergeant Rutledge and Pepe.  Burke died from natural causes on the 14th of May in Los Angeles.  She is buried in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.  

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Born Today August 7: Harry O. Hoyt

1885-1961

Silent writer and director Harry O. Hoyt was born on this day in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  He graduated in 1910 with a degree from Yale University.  Two years later he went into the film industry.  The first of his scenarios to be made into a film was in 1913 An Unjust Suspicion produced by The Biograph Company.  He made his directorial debut in 1915 with For High Stakes, a film that he also penned, for the Kalem Company.  Though he had steady writing work throughout the silent era, mostly concentrated in the 1910's; and he directed some 28 titles, he is mostly remembered for only one of these:  The Lost World (1925).  It is one of the most famous surviving science fiction silents, featuring some very impressive stop-motion animation for it's time.  The film stars Wallace Beery and Bessie Love and is based on the writing of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  The first film that had sound to feature one of his screenplays was a Phil Rosen directed drama The Rampant Age (1930).  The first sound film that he directed came in 1933 with Jungle Bride, a film penned by Leah Baird, starring Anita Page.  He continued to write through out the rest of his career, but there would be a long hiatus between his directorial jobs after the above mentioned film.  He did not go back to directing until 1947 with the technicolor short Harness Racing.  From this point on, he directed only 4 more titles, all of them shorts.  One of them was Cinderella Horse (1948), which would turn out to be the last of his writing jobs.  The last film that he directed was The Will To Win in 1951.  He then retired from industry; living out the rest of days in his adopted state of California.  He died on 29 July in Woodland Hills, just shy of his 76th birthday.  There is no information as to his interment or cremation.  Below is the full tint restored print of The Lost World by the George Eastman House.

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Born Today August 5: Robert G. Vignola

1882-1953

Silent director and actor Robert G. Vignola was born Rocco Giuseppe Vignola in Trivignano, Italy on this day.  His family left for the U.S. when he was 3 years old.  They settled in upstate New York, where he grew up.  He made his stage acting debut at the age of 19 and entered the film business in 1906 at the age of 24.  Though, he would go on to be one of the most prolific directors in the silent age, he entered the business as an actor.  His first film was The Black Hand (1906) made for the Amercian Mutoscope and Biograph company--it would be one of the first fictionalized films actually based on true events.  For it's time, at 10 minutes long, it was also one the longest films put out to date.  As a film actor, he has some 62 credits to his name, up through the year 1915.  Some of these, he directed himself in.  Indeed, he made his directorial debut early on in 1911, shadow directing Rory O'More.  He added writing credits to his in 1913, co-penning the scenario for The Vampire (widely believed to be the very first "Vamp" film).  He directed or co-directed 87 films, almost all of which were in the silent era, and included bit uncredited parts by the likes of Clark Gable and Rudolph Valentino in at least two titles. Some of his films have been lost, but a surprising number of them survive and are available widely for viewing.  A very large number of his earliest directed films were made under contract with the Kalem company.  Later on, he worked for a variety of different studios including Famous Players, MGM, and Paramount.  He directed 4 films in the 1930's, with Broken Dreams, starring Randolph Scott, being his very first sound film.  The last film that he directed was in 1937, A Girl From Scotland Yard.  He then retired from the industry, but continued to live in Hollywood.  He died there on the 25th of October 1953 at the age of 71.  He his buried near where in grew up, in Menands, New York in the Catholic cemetery of St. Agnes.  

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Born Today July 28: Tula Belle

1906-1992

Silent actress Tula Belle was born Borgny Erna Bull Høegh in Kristiania, Norway (now part of Olso) on the day. Her first film appearnace was in the short drama Mercy On A Crutch in 1915.  She did not work past the 1910's, save for her last film and the only one that she appeared in during the 1920's.  Her most important film appearances came in 1918 and 1919. The first of these was the Maurice Tourneur fantasy film The Blue Bird and Deliverance, which to my knowledge was the first biographical film made about the Helen Keller story (not partially lost). Her last film was Old Dad (1920), a joint Chaplin/Mayer production.  She then retired from the film business.  She stayed in California, however, and died in Newport Beach on the 13th of October at the age of 86.  There is no information available as to burial.  

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Born Today July 23: Harry Cohn

1891-1958

Producer and a studio mogul of the most abrasive sort Harry Cohn was born on this day in New York City.  Early in his life, he first worked as a streetcar conductor, and later as shipping clerk and  promoter for a sheet music business.  His older brother Jack had managed to find work at Universal, so he convinced the studio to hire his younger brother as well.  In 1919 the two, along with friend Joe Brandt, founded CBC (standing for Cohn Brandt Cohn) Film Sales Corporation.  In 1919, he also entered into active film production.  His first producer credit came on the Vitagraph film Passing The Buck.  Harry headed off to Hollywood to manage production there, while his brother Jack stayed in New York to handle the finances.  He quickly gained a reputation as crude, misogynistic, and aggressive.  Brandt was the first to fall victim to the stresses that Harry caused and eventually sold his share to Harry--leaving him 2/3rds owner over his brother, which pleased him, since he resented growing up in Jack's shadow (the is ample evidence that Harry raised the funds for the buyout with the mob).  When Harry took over as president of the studio, the company name was changed, and thus Columbia Pictures was born.  There is so much that one could write on the life of Harry Cohn which I will avoid as much as possible here (leaving that for the links).  Sticking to the silent era, I will point out that the vast majority of his direct producer credits date from that time period; with the later part of his life being spent as a straight out studio boss with way too much power.  After his first foray into the producer role with Vitagraph, he produced a slew of shorts, mostly with Hall Room Boys Photoplays in 1919.  Starting in 1920, C.B.C. started distributing these shorts.  The first of these was Oh, Baby! (1920).  The first film to tangentially carry the name "Columbia" was when CBC was in transition mode, during Harry's buy-out process in 1922; the film was More To Be Pitied Than Scorned.  The first full fledged, all out Columbia picture also came in 1922 with Only A Shop Girl, a feature length drama--it was an Estelle Taylor film.  By the later 1920's Columbia was increasingly sporting a list of impressive talent that even included the likes of director Frank Capra.  It would take Columbia until the second half of 1928 to began experimenting with sound.  For Cohn, his first production credit on a film that featured any sort of sound came with The Scarlet Lady, which featured a mono musical score by Western Electric.  His next production credit was an all silent film that features sequences with the 2-Strip Technicolor:  Court-Martial (1928).  For the most part though, Columbia, under Cohn's direction, tended to stay with the old black and white silent films longer than most other studios of the day.  Cohn's first full sound production credit came in 1929 with The Donovan's Affair, a Frank Capra film with sound by MovieTone.  But the studio would make several more partial sounds films, before abandoning them altogether in late 1929.  Cohn has a large number of production credits in 1930 and 1931; but they start to slow by 1932, crawling to a trickle by the mid 1930's.  By 1935 through 1938, he only had 1 credit for each of those years.  In 1939, he abandoned direct production work and set to being the tyrant mogul that he would become famous for.  Cohn was responsible for the Three Stooges filmed shorts that would make the studio a great deal of extra money.  In fact, he insisted that the studio continue to make Two-Reelers and serials long after other studios had given them up for out-dated.  He called these, fondly mind you, "those lousy little "B" pictures."  He had one more production credit to his name in 1947 on Orson Welles' The Lady From Shanghai; he served as executive producer on the film directly.  This probably had more to do with actress Rita Hayworth's appearance in the film than it did with Welles' known insistence on pure directorial freedom (though, to be sure, that must have been a factor as well).  He and Hayworth had a long, very acrid working relationship, and he never missed a chance to attempt to antagonize her.  Cohn died while visiting Phoenix, Arizona on 27 February.  He suffered a massive heart attack at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel after finishing a dinner there; he died in the ambulance en route to the hospital, he was 66 years old.  He was taken back to to Los Angeles for a funeral and burial.  There were many people at the funeral who apparently made it clear that they were there just to confirm that Harry Cohn was, indeed, dead.  He is interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

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