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Monte Blue (January 11, 1887 – February 18, 1963) was a movie actor who began his career as a romantic leading man in the silent film era, and later progressed to character roles.
Blue was born as Gerard Montgomery Bluefeather in Indianapolis, Indiana. His father was half French, half Cherokee Indian. One of five children, his father died and his mother could not raise five children alone. Along with another brother, they both admitted to the Indiana Soldiers' and Sailors' Children's Home. This did not stop him working his way through to Purdue University.
When growing up, Blue built up his physique to become a football player (he grew to six feet three inches tall). He not only played football, but he was also a fireman, railroad worker, coal miner, cowpuncher, ranch hand, circus rider, lumberjack, and finally, a day laborer at the studios of D. W. Griffith.
He had no theatrical experience when he came to the screen. In his first movie, The Birth of a Nation (1915), he was a stuntman and an extra in the movie. In his next movie, he starred in another small part in the movie, Intolerance (1916). Gradually moving to supporting roles for both D. W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille, Blue earned his breakthrough role as Danton in Orphans of the Storm, starring sisters, Lillian Gish and Dorothy Gish. Then he rose to stardom as a rugged romantic lead along with top leading actresses such as Clara Bow, Gloria Swanson, and Norma Shearer. His most prolific female screen partner was Marie Prevost with whom he made several films in the mid 20s at Warner Brothers. Blue's finest silent screen performance was as the alcoholic doctor who finds paradise in MGM's White Shadows in the South Seas (1928). Blue became one of the few silent stars to survive the talkie revolution. However, he lost his investments in the stock market crash of 1929.
He rebuilt his career as a character actor, working until his retirement in 1954. One of his more memorable roles was the sheriff in Key Largo. He divorced his first wife in 1923 and married Tova Jansen in 1924. He had two children, Barbara Ann and Richard Monte. During the later part of his life, Monte Blue was an active Mason and the advance man for the Hamid-Morton Shrine Circus; while on business in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he had a heart attack because of complications from influenza, dying at age 76.
Monte Blue has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6286 Hollywood Blvd.
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Harry C. Myers (5 September 1882 – 25 December 1938), sometimes credited as Henry Myers, was an American film actor and director. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and died in Hollywood, California from pneumonia. He was married to the actress Rosemary Theby.
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Alan Hale Sr. (born Rufus Edward Mackahan; February 10, 1892 – January 22, 1950) was an American movie actor and director, most widely remembered for his many supporting character roles, in particular as a frequent sidekick of Errol Flynn, as well as films supporting Lon Chaney, Wallace Beery, Douglas Fairbanks, James Cagney, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart and Ronald Reagan, among dozens of others. Hale was born Rufus Edward Mackahan in Washington, D.C. He studied to be an opera singer and also had success as an inventor. Among his innovations were a sliding theater chair (to allow spectators to slide back to admit newcomers rather than standing), the hand fire extinguisher, and greaseless potato chips.
His first film role was in the 1911 silent movie The Cowboy and the Lady. He played "Little John" in the 1922 film Robin Hood, with Douglas Fairbanks and Wallace Beery, reprised the role 16 years later in The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone, then played him yet again in Rogues of Sherwood Forest in 1950 with John Derek as Robin Hood's son, an unprecedented 28-year span of portrayals of the same character in theatrical films. Hale played Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), featuring in a pivotal confrontation with the Earl of Essex, portrayed by Flynn.
His other films include the 1922 epic The Trap with Lon Chaney, 1928's Skyscraper; as well as Fog Over Frisco with Bette Davis; Miss Fane's Baby Is Stolen with Baby LeRoy and William Frawley; The Little Minister with Katharine Hepburn; and It Happened One Night with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert; all released in 1934; the 1937 film Stella Dallas with Barbara Stanwyck; High, Wide, and Handsome with Irene Dunne and Dorothy Lamour; The Fighting 69th with James Cagney and Pat O'Brien; They Drive By Night with George Raft and Humphrey Bogart; Manpower with Edward G. Robinson, Marlene Dietrich, and George Raft; Virginia City with Errol Flynn, Randolph Scott, and Humphrey Bogart; and as the cantankerous Sgt. McGee in the 1943 movie This Is the Army with Irving Berlin. He also co-starred with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland in the successful western film Dodge City (1939) where he played the slightly dimwitted but likeable and comical Rusty Hart, sidekick to Flynn's character, Sheriff Wade Hatton. Hale co-starred with Errol Flynn in 13 movies.
Hale directed eight movies during the 1920s and 1930s and acted in 235 theatrical films.
Gordon Griffith (July 4, 1907 – October 12, 1958) was an American assistant director, film producer, and one of the first child actors in the American movie industry. Griffith worked in the film industry for five decades, acting in over 60 films, and surviving the transition from silent films to talkies. During his acting career, he worked with Charlie Chaplin, and was the first actor to portray Tarzan on film.
Griffith died of a heart attack in Hollywood at the age of 51.
[biography (excerpted) from Wikipedia]
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Glen Cavender (September 19, 1883 – February 9, 1962) was an American film actor. He appeared in 259 films between 1914 and 1949.
The Spanish–American War soldier was born in Tucson, Arizona, and died in Hollywood, California. He started his acting career in vaudeville shows. Cavender belonged to the original Keystone Cops and was a regular in numerous Mack Sennett comedies. He also worked as a director for three Mack Sennett films between 1914 and 1916. During the 1920s, Cavender worked for the film studios Educational and Christie and appeared in Buster Keaton's film classic The General (1926) as the antagonistic Union Captain Anderson. The advance of sound film in the late 1920s damaged his career and, formerly a well-known actor, Cavender only played minor roles until his retirement in 1949.