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Jed Prouty (April 6, 1879 – May 10, 1956) was an American film actor. Originally from Boston, Massachusetts, Prouty was a vaudeville performer before becoming a film actor. Mostly appearing in comedies, he occasionally performed a serious character role, for instance a small part as an oily publicist in A Star is Born (1937).
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Spring Byington (October 17, 1886 – September 7, 1971) was an American actress. Her career included a seven-year run on radio and television as the star of December Bride. She was a key MGM contract player, appearing in films from the 1930s through the 1960s.
Russell Gleason (February 6, 1908 – December 25, 1945) was an American actor who began his career at the very beginning of the talking film era. Born into an acting family, one of his earliest roles was in the 1930 classic film, All Quiet on the Western Front.
While still in the middle of a successful acting career, Gleason joined the U.S. Army in late 1943, during World War II. While awaiting deployment to Europe in December 1945 in New York City, Gleason fell to his death from a hotel window. He was the son of actors Lucille and James Gleason.
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Joseph Henry Kolker (November 13, 1874) [some sources 1870] Berlin, Prussia, Germany – July 15, 1947, Los Angeles, California) was an American stage and film actor and director.
Kolker came to America at the age of five and his family settled in Quincy, Illinois. Kolker, like fellow actors Richard Bennett and Robert Warwick, had a substantial stage career behind him before entering silent films.
On stage he appeared opposite such leading ladies as Edith Wynne Matthison, Bertha Kalich and Ruth Chatterton. Kolker is best remembered for his motion picture appearances and for appearing with Barbara Stanwyck in the ground-breaking Pre-Code film Baby Face (1933) as the elderly CEO of the company whom Stanwyck's character seduces. Another well remembered part is as Mr. Seton, father of Katharine Hepburn and Lew Ayres in the 1938 film Holiday directed by George Cukor.
Kolker entered films as an actor in 1915 and eventually ended up trying his hand at directing. Kolker's best known directorial effort is Disraeli (1921), starring George Arliss which is now a lost film with only one reel remaining. Prints however exist in Europe and Russia.
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Edward Earle (16 July 1882 – 15 December 1972) was a Canadian-American stage, film and television actor. In a career which lasted from the early 1900s to 1966, he appeared in almost 400 films between 1914 and 1956. He was born in Toronto and died in Los Angeles, aged 90.
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Wilfred Lucas (January 30, 1871 – December 13, 1940) was a Canadian-born American stage actor who found success in film as an actor, director, and screenwriter.
Wilfred Lucas made his Broadway debut in 1904, playing in both the The Blue Grass Handicap and The Superstition of Sue. Following his 1906 role in the highly successful play The Chorus Lady, he was recruited to the fledgling Biograph Studios by D. W. Griffith.
At the time, the film business was still looked down upon by many members of the theatrical community. In her 1925 book titled When the Movies Were Young, Griffith's wife, actress Linda Arvidson, told the story of the early days at Biograph Studios. In it, she referred to Lucas as the "first real grand actor, democratic enough to work in Biograph movies." In 1908 Lucas made his motion picture debut in Griffith's The Greaser's Gauntlet, appearing in more than 50 of these short (usually 17 minutes) films over the next two years.
In 1910 while still acting, he wrote the script for Griffith's film Sunshine Sue, which was followed by many more scripts by 1924. Lucas also began directing in 1912 with Griffith on An Outcast Among Outcasts, and directed another 44 films over the next 20 years.
In early 1916 he starred as John Carter in Acquitted, about which Photoplay wrote, "No single performance in the records of active photography has surpassed his visualization of the humble book-keeper in Acquitted." Later in 1916 he appeared in D.W. Griffith's film Intolerance.
Part of the group of Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood, Lucas became friends and sometimes starred with Mary Pickford, Sam De Grasse, and Marie Dressler. Canadian-born director Mack Sennett hired him to both direct and act in a large number of films at his Keystone Studios.
Lucas made the successful transition from silent film to sound. While working in Hollywood, in 1926 he returned to the stage, performing in several Broadway plays. He later appeared as a foil for Laurel and Hardy in their feature films Pardon Us and A Chump at Oxford.
During his long career, Wilfred Lucas appeared in more than 375 films. Although for a time he was cast in leading roles, he became very successful as secondary and minor characters, making a good living in the film industry for more than three decades.
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Ruth Clifford (February 17, 1900 – November 30, 1998) was an American actress of leading roles in silent films, whose career lasted from silent days into the television era. Clifford got work as an extra and began her career at 15 at Universal, in fairly substantial roles. She received her first film credit for her work in Behind the Lines (1916).
By her mid-twenties, she was playing leads and second leads, including the role of Abraham Lincoln's lost love, Ann Rutledge, in The Dramatic Life of Abraham Lincoln (1924). But sound pictures found her roles diminishing, and throughout the next three decades she played smaller and smaller parts.
She was a favorite of director John Ford (they played bridge together), who used her in eight films, but rarely in substantial roles. She was also, for a time, the voice of Walt Disney's Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck.
Clifford's obituary in the Los Angeles Times noted that she "became a prime source for historians of the silent screen era".
Robert Lowery (born Robert Lowery Hanks, October 17, 1913 – December 26, 1971) was an American motion picture, television, and stage actor who appeared in more than 70 films. He was the second actor to play Batman, appearing as the character in the 1949 film serial Batman and Robin.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Robert Lowery, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Frederick Alvin Kelsey (August 20, 1884 – September 2, 1961) was an American actor, film director, and screenwriter. Kelsey directed one- and two-reel films for Universal Film Manufacturing Company. He appeared in more than 400 films between 1911 and 1958, often playing policemen or detectives. He also directed 37 films between 1914 and 1920. Kelsey was caricatured as the detective in the 1943 MGM cartoon Who Killed Who? directed by Tex Avery. He was born in Sandusky, Ohio and died at the Motion Picture Country Home in Hollywood, California, aged 77.
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Hal K. Dawson (October 17, 1896 – February 17, 1987) was an American actor. The films he performed in include: Dr. Socrates, My American Wife, Libeled Lady, Wells Fargo,, Broadway Melody of 1940, Star Dust, The Doctor Takes a Wife, Washington Melodrama, Week-End in Havana,, Guest Wife, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Chicken Every Sunday, Bonzo Goes to College and The Benny Goodman Story.
He died on February 17, 1987, in Loma Linda, California aged 90.
Edwin August (born Edwin August Phillip von der Butz; November 10, 1883 – March 4, 1964) was an American actor, director, and screenwriter of the silent era. He appeared in more than 150 films between 1909 and 1947. He also directed 52 films between 1912 and 1919. August co-founded Eaco Films in 1914. He wrote novels under the pen name Montague Lawrence.
[biography (excerpted) from Wikipedia]
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Cyrus Willard Kendall (March 10, 1898 – July 22, 1953) was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 140 films between 1935 and 1950.
Kendall's heavy-set, square-jawed appearance and deep voice were perfect for wiseguy roles such as policemen and police chiefs, wardens, military officers, bartenders, reporters, and mobsters.
He was born in St. Louis, Missouri and died in Woodland Hills, California.