From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Grant Withers (January 17, 1905, Pueblo, Colorado – March 27, 1959, North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California), born Granville G. Withers, was a prolific American film actor with a sizeable body of work.
With early beginnings in the silent era, Withers moved into talkies establishing himself with an impressive list of headlined features as a young and handsome male lead.
As his career progressed, his importance diminished, but he did manage a 10-year contract at Republic Pictures. His friendships with both John Ford and John Wayne secured him a spot in nine of Wayne's films, but later roles dwindled to supporting parts, mainly as villains in B-movies, serials, and finally television. He appeared in the late 1950s in two episodes of the syndicated western series 26 Men, set in Arizona, where he had earlier eloped with Loretta Young.
His life in film, five unsuccessful marriages, and a tragic end had all the makings of its own Hollywood drama.
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Émile Chautard (7 September 1864 – 24 April 1934) was a French-American film director, actor, and screenwriter, most active in the silent era. He directed 107 films between 1910 and 1924. He also appeared in 66 films between 1911 and 1934. Chautard was born in Paris. After a significant career beginning as a stage actor at the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe and moving up to the head of film production at Éclair Films' Paris studio in 1913, Chautard emigrated to the United States around 1914. From 1914 to about 1918, Chautard worked for the World Film Company based in Fort Lee, New Jersey. At World, along with a group of other French-speaking film technicians including Maurice Tourneur, Léonce Perret, George Archainbaud, Albert Capellani and Lucien Andriot, he developed such films as the 1915 version of Camille, and taught a young apprentice film cutter at the World studio: Josef von Sternberg. In 1919 Chautard hired von Sternberg as his assistant director for The Mystery of the Yellow Room, for his own short-lived production company. Choosing Hollywood over a return to France, Chautard went to work for Famous Players-Lasky and other studios. He received some high-profile assignments, for instance a Colleen Moore vehicle and two features for Derelys Perdue, but he was a generation older than other directors in Hollywood's French colony. After 1924 Chautard did not direct again, but continued to make film appearances, in the von Sternberg film Blonde Venus (1932), where he appears for his former protege as "Night club owner Chautard". Chautard died in Los Angeles, California. He is interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
From Wikipedia
Jane Winton (October 10, 1905 - September 22, 1959) was a movie actress, dancer, opera soprano, writer, and painter. She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
During the 1920s she began her stage career as a dancer with the Ziegfeld Follies.
After coming to the west coast Winton became known as the green-eyed goddess of Hollywood. Her film appearances include roles in Tomorrow's Love (1925), Why Girls Go Back Home (1926), Sunrise, The Crystal Cup and The Fair Coed (1927), Burning Daylight, Melody of Love and The Patsy (1928), Scandal and Show Girl in Hollywood (1929), and The Furies and Hell's Angels (1930).
Winton played Donna Isobel, the mother of the title character, in Don Juan (1926). The film starred John Barrymore and Mary Astor. The movie was billed as the first film made in Vitaphone, a new invention which synchronized sound with motion pictures. Modern talking pictures began with the Vitaphone.
After leaving Hollywood, Winton performed various operatic roles both in the United States and abroad. In 1933 she was with the National Grand Opera Company for their production of I Pagliacci. She sang Nedda. She starred in the operetta Caviar. In England she became noted for her singing and work in radio.
Jane Winton died in 1959 at the Pierre Hotel in New York City.
Lillian Worth (stage name), born Lillian Burgher Murphy, (June 24, 1884 – February 23, 1952) was an American actress. She appeared in 58 films between 1913 and 1937.
Lillian Murphy was born on June 24, 1884, in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Katherine Stahler and John B. Murphy. After she married in 1905, she began using her husband's surname as her stage name; and by 1909 she, as Lillian Wiggins, had gained public attention and favorable reviews for her performance in the theatrical production Beauty Spot By early 1913, she was a leading actress at Pathé's West Coast studio in Edendale, Los Angeles, where she starred in Western films. Pathé transferred Wiggins a few months later to its East Coast studio in Jersey City, New Jersey, and then in October 1913 to its new Southern studio in St. Augustine, Florida. In March 1914, Pathé once again relocated her, dispatching her to Europe, where she worked at the company's Paris studio before moving to London. There she made films first for British and Colonial Kinematography Company and then for Motograph Film Company.
Wiggins returned to the United States in September 1914 and the next year started performing in films for Deer Film Company. Following the dissolution of her first marriage, she married again in 1918. She, however, elected not to use her second husband's surname professionally; instead, she adopted the new stage name Lillian Worth, which is how she continued to be credited until 1937.
Lillian Worth was married twice. On May 3, 1905, she married Benjamin Platt Wiggins in Brooklyn, New York. The couple separated after a couple of years, and she filed for divorce in Reno, Nevada in 1911, although on that occasion she did not obtain the divorce. She filed again in Los Angeles, California, and was finally granted a divorce in 1914. She then married Erville Alderson, an American actor, on January 14, 1918, in Sydney, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. That marriage too ended in divorce in 1925.
Worth died at age 67 in Los Angeles, California, on February 23, 1952. In death records from that time, she is identified as Lillian Alderson despite the fact that she had divorced Erville Alderson 27 years earlier. Her gravesite is located at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles.
From Wikipedia
Francis Ford (born Francis Feeney, August 14, 1881 – September 5, 1953) was a prolific film actor, writer, and director. He was the mentor and elder brother of film director John Ford. He also appeared in many of John Ford's movies, including Young Mr. Lincoln and The Quiet Man.
Francis Ford was born in Portland, Maine. He was the son of John A. Feeney, who was born in the village of Spiddal, County Galway, Ireland in 1854. By 1878, John had moved to Portland, Maine and opened a saloon, at 42 Center Street, that used a false front to pose as grocery store. John opened four others in following years.
After service in the infantry in the Spanish-American War, Francis left home. He drifted into the film business in New York City, working for David Horsley, Al Christie, and the Star Film Company's San Antonio operation under Gaston Méliès. He adopted the name Ford from the automobile.
From San Antonio Francis began his Hollywood career working for Thomas H. Ince at Ince's Bison studio, directing and appearing in westerns.
Francis Ford's younger brother, John M. Feeney, was a successful fullback and defensive tackle on a Portland High state championship football team, nicknamed "Bull". In 1914 Bull followed Francis to Hollywood, changed his name to John Ford and would eventually surpass his elder brother's considerable reputation.
Francis Ford's son, Philip Ford, was also a film actor/director.
Woman at Court when Antonio arrive at Christines Throne (uncredited)
Dwight Frye
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Dwight Iliff Frye (February 22, 1899 – November 7, 1943) was an American stage and screen actor, noted for his appearances in the classic horror films Dracula, Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein.
Frye was born in Salina, Kansas. Nicknamed "The Man with the Thousand-Watt Stare," and "The Man of a Thousand Deaths," he specialized in the portrayal of mentally unbalanced characters, including his signature role, the madman Renfield in Tod Browning's 1931 version of Dracula. Later that same year he also played the hunchbacked assistant in the film Frankenstein. (This character, named Fritz, is often mistakenly referred to as Ygor, a character originated by Béla Lugosi in the later film Son of Frankenstein.)
Frye had a prominent role in the 1933 horror film The Vampire Bat, starring Lionel Atwill, Melvyn Douglas, and Fay Wray, in which he played Herman, a half-wit suspected of being a killer. He also had a memorable role in the classic Bride of Frankenstein, in which he played Karl. The part of Karl was originally much longer and many extra scenes of Frye were shot as a sub plot but were edited out of the final version to shorten the running time as well as to appease the censor boards. The most memorable of these "cut scenes" was that of Karl killing the Burgomaster portrayed by E. E. Clive. No known prints of these scenes survive today, but photographs of the scene were used to illustrate the scene's synopsis and are included in the recent Universal DVD release of the film.
During the early 1940s, Frye alternated between film roles and appearing on stage in a variety of productions ranging from comedies to musicals, as well as appearing in a stage version of Dracula. In 1924 he played the Son in a translation of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author.[1] There was a Dwight Frye Fan Club at one time,[2] but it is currently dormant. He also made a contribution to the war effort by working nights as a tool designer for Lockheed Aircraft. Frye's strong resemblance to former Secretary of War Newton D. Baker helped land him what would have been a substantial role in the biographical film Wilson, based on the life of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, but he died of a heart attack while riding on a bus in Hollywood a few days before filming was to have begun.
Frye was interred in Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.
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