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- Stephenson was a firm, dignified, worldly presence in Hollywood's classic history-based films of the 30s and 40s. The tall British character actor Henry Stephenson could be both imposing and benevolent in his patrician portrayals, usually expounding words of wisdom or offering gentlemanly aid. He was born Henry S. Garroway in Granada, British West Indies on April 16, 1871 and studied at Rugby in England. His reputation was built solidly on the stage both in America and in England, making his Broadway debut around the turn of the century with "A Message from Mars" in 1901. While he did make a few silent pictures (from 1917), film audiences began taking a notice only in later years. After transferring a successful Broadway role to film with Cynara (1932), Stephenson settled in Hollywood where he distinguished himself in a variety of pictures for RKO, MGM and Warner Bros., among others. He appeared quite frequently in royal support for Warners' top star of the time, Errol Flynn, including Captain Blood (1935) as Lord Willoughby, The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) as Sir Charles Macefield, The Prince and the Pauper (1937) as the Duke of Norfolk, and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) as Lord Burghley. His last film was the sentimental yarn Challenge to Lassie (1949). Long married to character actress Ann Shoemaker, Stephenson died on April 24, 1956 in San Francisco, California at age 85, and was survived by his widow and daughter.
- Fannie Ward was a star of light comedies on Broadway and in vaudeville. Internationally famous, she was at the height of her career in the first decade of the 20th century. She debuted on Broadway at 19 in "Pippino" (1890). She went on to starring roles in "The Marriage of William Ashe", "Madam President" and "The Shop Girl". Although she was a good deal older than ideal for the role of the young spendthrift wife of a Wall Street tycoon, she made her screen debut in Cecil B. DeMille's production of The Cheat (1915). The film is a spectacular DeMille morality tale and features a shocking scene in which Ward's character is branded and nearly raped by a dapper but sinister Japanese ivory baron played by Sessue Hayakawa. She went on to star in several successful melodramas, the plots of most of which revolved around her near loss of virtue to a selection of nefarious characters. She was married to actor Jack Dean, who also appeared in at least 15 of her 26 films. Known as "The Youth Girl," she was continually cast in roles that were 20 to 30 years younger than her actual age. By the time she retired from the screen in 1920, she was just too old to carry it off anymore, and "The Youth Girl" sobriquet had become more of a joke than an honest tribute. After retiring from the screen, she opened a beauty palace in Paris called "The Fountain of Youth."
- Prince Randian was born in the Demarara district, British Guyana in 1871, the child of British Indian slaves. Born with tetra-amelia syndrome (the lacking of all four limbs), little is known about his early life or how he was discovered, but it seems his incredible adaptability did not go unnoticed. Reputedly, he was brought to the United States by P.T. Barnum in 1889 at the age of 18, performing as an "oddity" or "freak" at dime shows, museums and primarily at Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York
For his act, Randian was billed as "the human caterpillar who crawls on his belly like a reptile." He wore a one-piece wool garment that fit tightly over his body, giving him the appearance of a caterpillar, snake or potato. He was efficient at moving from place to place by wriggling his hips and shoulders in a snake-like motion. He would demonstrate his astonishing ability to fend for himself regardless of his handicap. He would shave himself by securing a razor in a wooden block, paint with a brush or write with a pen by using his lips, and most famously, roll and light his own cigarette in his only film appearance, Freaks (1932) (1932). Randian was also said to have been a skilled carpenter, using his mouth and shoulders to manipulate his tools, and he kept all of the props and materials used in his act in a wooden box that he reportedly constructed, painted and installed a lock by himself using a saw, knife and hammer. "Someday," he used to say, "I'll build myself a house."
Randian could speak English, German and French in addition to Hindi, his native language. He married early in life to a Hindu woman known only as Princess Sarah, who remained devoted to him throughout his long 45-year career in the sideshow. The couple had four daughters, plus a son who later became his manager. They settled at 174 Water Street in Paterson, New Jersey.
Prince Randian died of a heart attack at 7:00 PM on December 19, 1934, shortly after his comeback performance at Sam Wagner's 14th Street Museum in New York. He was 63 years old. - Matronly or grandmotherly, Alma Kruger appeared onscreen between 1935-47. She was 64 years old when she made her film debut in William Wyler's These Three (1936). She then proceeded to appear in over 40 films in the space of little more than a decade, appearing in, among others, Mother Carey's Chickens (1938), His Girl Friday (1940), Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (1944), and Saboteur (1942). She was likely best-known as head nurse "Molly Byrd" in the Dr. Kildare and Dr. Gillespie films of the 1930s/40s. She died at age 88 in 1960.
- Actor
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The youngest of three sons, he was born in Norfolk, Ontario, Canada and was educated at McGill University then In 1904 he moved to New York where he appeared in a number of plays on Broadway including The Blue Grass Handicap, The Superstition of Sue and successful The Chorus Lady after which he was invited by D.W. Griffith to join Biograph Studios where he made his film debut in The Greaser's Gauntlet (1908) followed by some 50 other films. Then, in 1910, he wrote his first film script, Sunshine Sue (1910), which was followed by many more. In 1912, he turned to directing with An Outcast Among Outcasts (1912) with a further 40 or so in the next 20 years. Acting wasn't neglected, with his appearing in Griffith's classic Intolerance (1916). Mack Sennett hired him to direct and star in a number of films at his Keystone Studios. He made the successful transition from silents to sound and frequently returned to his roots on Broadway. He married twice, first to actress Alice Louise Perine in October 1898 and had two children After their divorce and while working at Biograph Studios, he met and married actress/screenwriter Bess Meredyth (1890-1969) with whom he had a son.- Elspeth Dudgeon was born on 4 December 1871 in London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for The Old Dark House (1932), Becky Sharp (1935) and Mystery House (1938). She died on 11 December 1955 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Scott Seaton was born on 11 March 1871 in Sacramento, California, USA. He was an actor, known for The House Without a Key (1926), Rich Men's Sons (1927) and The Other Tomorrow (1930). He was married to Maude Clarice Redmon, Lillian Elizabeth L'Abbe Petterson and Ruby Henrietta Ramdohr. He died on 3 June 1968 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Joe Roberts was born on 2 February 1871 in Albany, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Our Hospitality (1923), The Primitive Lover (1922) and Three Ages (1923). He was married to Lillian Stuart Feld Roberts and Nina Mildred Straw Shannon. He died on 28 October 1923 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- DeWitt Jennings was born on 21 June 1871 in Cameron, Missouri, USA. He was an actor, known for Exit Smiling (1926), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and The Squaw Man (1931). He was married to Margaret Ethel Conroy. He died on 1 March 1937 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.
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German-born Gertrude Hoffman began her film career in Germany in 1918, but she didn't start her Hollywood career until she was past 60 years of age, making her American film debut in 1933. She worked steadily and made quite a few films over the next 20 years, though many of her parts were unbilled. She is probably best remembered as Mrs. Odets, the sassy next-door neighbor to Gale Storm in My Little Margie (1952), who was always up for a "caper" in one of Margie's many crazy schemes. She died in Hollywood of a heart attack in 1968.- Actor
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Edmund Breese was born on 18 June 1871 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Duck Soup (1933), Platinum Blonde (1931) and The Hurricane Express (1932). He was married to Genevieve Landry and Harriet A. Beach. He died on 6 April 1936 in New York City, New York, USA.- Actor
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Seymour Hicks was an extremely successful actor and theatrical impresario who flourished from the late 19th century into the 1930s. He was best remembered for his portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol".
Born on January 30, 1871 on the Isle of Jersey, he first trod the boards as a professional at the age of sixteen. He became a musical-comedy star in London in 1894 in "The Shop Girl", which he followed up with "The Circus Girl" (1896) and "A Runaway Girl" (1898), both of which co-starred his wife Ellaline Terriss, whom he had married in 1893.
After the turn of the century, Hicks began writing musical comedies that he and his wife appeared in. These efforts were met with great success. With his earnings from his successful career, he built the Aldwych Theatre in 1905 and the Seymour Hicks Theatre in 1906. (The Hicks was renamed the Globe Theatre in 1909 and eventually the Gielgud Theatre in 1994.) The first production at the Aldwych, Hicks' own musical comedy "The Beauty of Bath", was a hit. Jerome Kern was the composer and P.G. Wodehouse gained his first paying job as a writer on the musical. Wodeouse would be credited with the lyrics to two songs on another Hicks musical, "The Gay Gordons", in 1907.
(Hicks also was instrumental in "discovering" the young Alfred Hitchcock. When the director Hugh Croise walked off the set of the 1923 short Always Tell Your Wife (1923), based on a play by Hicks, starring Seymour Hicks, and produced by his Seymour Hicks Productions, the actor enlisted Hitchcock to finish directing it. It was only the second directing gig for Hitchcock, and though he was uncredited, it was his first film to be screened. (Hitch's first movie, Number 13 (1922), was never completed.))
By the time of the "Always Tell Your Wife" movie, Hicks had successfully navigated the change in theatrical tastes brought about by the Great War. He had begun writing and appearing in light, escapist comedies and satiric farces. Many of the farces he put on in the 1920s were adapted from French plays. Eventually, as his star waned, he worked in music halls.
It was in 1901 that Hicks first played the role of Ebenezer Scrooge, the role for which he was most famous. He appeared in "A Christmas Carol" thousands of times on stage and made two movie versions of the Charles Dickens classic, a silent film (Old Scrooge (1913)) in 1913 and a talkie (Scrooge (1935)) in 1935.
By the mid-'30s, he was a well-established and highly respected actor and theatrical impresario. He became the 13th actor to become knighted in 1934, which came three years after the French Republic awarded him the Legion of Honor in recognition of his services in promoting French theater in England. (In 1915, he had won the French Croix de Guerre for entertaining Allied troops in France during in World War One and would win his second Croix de Guerre in World War II for the same service to the Allies.)
Seymour Hicks died on April 6, 1949 in Hampshire, England. He was 78 years old. He had continued appearing on stage and in movies until the year before his death.- Theodore Dreiser was one of the great American writers, and a transitional figure between Victorian America and the "modern" age that was inaugurated after the cessation of hostilities after WWI and the publication of Sinclair Lewis' "Main Street" in 1920. A naturalist with a committed social conscience (Dreiser was a socialist in a time when socialists were an established third party and had many mayoral posts and seats in state legislatures before the post-WWI "Red Scare" wiped out socialism in the U.S.), Theodore Dreiser is a seminal figure in the evolution of American letters to a more mature literature.
Born on August 27, 1871 in Terre Haute, Indiana, he was the twelfth of thirteen children Born to John Paul & Sarah Dreiser, ten of whom survived infancy. Theordore's Dreiser's father, John, was a German immigrant and a strict Baptist. His mother Sarah came from a Mennonite community who later converted to Roman Catholicism. His older brother Paul Dresser became a famous songwriter.
Theodore Dreiser attended Indiana University from 1889 to 1890, but flunked out and became a journalist in Chicago and St. Louis. He married the former Sara White in 1898, but the marriage failed and they separated in 1909. Dreiser never divorced his wife.
His first novel "Sister Carrie" was published in 1900. It is considered a classic and a seminal piece of American literature. The publisher did not promote the novel, likely due to its controversial subject matter (adultery, extramarital sex), and the book sold poorly. He did not score a best-seller for a quarter-of-century, until "An American Tragedy" in 1925. (The novel was made into George Stevens 1951 masterpiece A Place in the Sun (1951).
Theodore Dreiser died on December 28, 1945, not long after he had joined the Communist Party, a move that Ernest Hemingway said was that of an old man trying to save his soul. - Lesya Ukrainka was born on 25 February 1871 in Novograd-Volynsky, Volhynian Governorate, Russian Empire [now Novohrad-Volynskyi, Zhytomyr Oblast, Ukraine]. She was a writer, known for Lisova pisnya (1961), The Enticement of Don Juan (1985) and Lisova pisnya. Mavka (1981). She died on 1 August 1913 in Surami, Tiflis Governorate, Russian Empire [now Shida Kartli, Republic of Georgia].
- Maurice Moscovitch was born on 23 November 1871 in Odessa, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire [now Ukraine]. He was an actor, known for The Great Dictator (1940), Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) and Love Affair (1939). He died on 18 June 1940 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actor
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Agostino Borgato was born on 30 June 1871 in Venice, Italy. He was an actor and director, known for Il ponte dei sospiri (1921), Supremo olocausto (1918) and Il cuore di Musette (1919). He died on 14 March 1939 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Evelyn Selbie was born on 6 July 1871 in Ohio, USA. She was an actress, known for The Silver Treasure (1926), Dangerous Paradise (1930) and The Prisoner's Story (1912). She died on 7 December 1950 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Like many pioneers, the work of 'Winsor McCay' has been largely superseded by successors such as Walt Disney and Max Fleischer but he more than earns a place in film history for being the American cinema's first great cartoon animator. He started out as a newspaper cartoonist, achieving a national reputation for his strips 'Little Nemo in Slumberland' and 'Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend'. Inspired by his son's flick-books, he spent four years and produced four thousand individual drawings in making his first animated cartoon 'Little Nemo', completing it in 1911. But his biggest cartoon success was 'Gertie the Dinosaur' (1913), which was the centrepiece of a vaudeville act in which the live McCay would interact with his cartoon character. For this, he single-handedly produced ten thousand individual drawings, laboriously re-drawing the background every time. It is often wrongly cited as the first animated cartoon, but it was certainly the first successful one, and influenced dozens of imitators. His 1918 production 'The Sinking of the Lusitania' was even more ambitious: comprising 25,000 drawings, it was the first feature-length American cartoon, and the second one made anywhere. He retired from film-making in the 1920s, but would subsequently describe himself as "the creator of animated cartoons". This honour, strictly speaking, belongs to the Frenchman Emile Cohl - but McCay was certainly the first to bring them to a wide audience.- Actor
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Richard Carle was born on 7 July 1871 in Somerville, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for The Ghost Walks (1934), Ninotchka (1939) and Seven Sinners (1940). He was married to Laura Casner and Ella Samantha Clifford. He died on 28 June 1941 in North Hollywood, California, USA.- Charles Mendl was born on 14 December 1871 in London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Notorious (1946). He was married to Elsie de Wolfe. He died on 15 February 1958 in Paris, France.
- Actor
- Writer
John T. Prince was born on 11 September 1871 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Dr. Jack (1922), The Radio Detective (1926) and The Battling Orioles (1924). He was married to Kathleen Chambers. He died on 23 December 1937 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Writer
- Additional Crew
Marcel Proust was a French intellectual, author and critic, best known for his seven-volume fiction 'In search of Lost Time'. He coined the term "involuntary memory", which became also known as "Proust effect" in modern psychology.
He was born Valentin Louis Georges Eugéne Marcel Proust, on July 10, 1871, in Paris, France. His father, Achille Proust, was a famous doctor. His mother, Jeanne Weil, was from a rich and cultured Jewish family. Proust's interests in art and literature were encouraged by his mother, who read and spoke English. He was fond of Carlyle, Emerson and John Ruskin, whose two works he also translated into French. From age 9 Proust suffered from severe allergy and asthma attacks, and eventually developed a chronic lung disease which caused his disability and affected his career and mobility. He was lucky to survive such a life threatening condition due to professional help from his doctor father. Proust's physical disability imposed serious restrictions on his lifestyle, and he expressed himself in writing. He was blessed with talent and imagination and also with a very large inheritance, that allowed him to write without any pressure. During the most years of his adult life Proust was confined to his cork-wood paneled bedroom, where he was attended mostly by his close friend, pianist and composer Reynaldo Hahn.
Proust's main work, 'A la recherche du temps perdu' was begun in 1909 and finished in 1922, just before the author's death. It also became known in English as 'In Search of Lost Time' (aka.. Remembrance of Things Past). The novel's life-like complexity and delicate fabric of language is influenced by his reading of Lev Tolstoy, especially by 'War and Peace' and 'Anna Karenina', and it bears some structural and contentual resemblance of Tolstoy's major novels. It is spanning over 3000 pages in seven volumes and teeming with more than 2000 names. Proust's novel is set in the fictional town of Combray, near Paris, and covers all aspects of life of the upper class; nobility, sexuality, women, men, art and culture. It was praised from Graham Greene, W. Somerset Maugham and Ernest Hemingway, as being the greatest fiction of their time.
Marcel Proust died at age 51, of complications related to pneumonia and his chronic health condition, on November 18, 1922, and was laid to rest in Cimetiére du Pére-Lachaise, Paris, France. The town of Illiers, which became the model for imaginary town of Combray in the novel, was renamed Illiers-Combray in commemoration of the Proust's masterpiece.- Actor
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- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
James Gordon was born on 23 April 1871 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor and director, known for The Last of the Mohicans (1920), Hearts of Oak (1924) and Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1913). He was married to Rita and Mabel Van Buren. He died on 12 May 1941 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Eduard von Winterstein was born on 1 August 1871 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now Austria]. He was an actor, known for The Blue Angel (1930), Die Sonnenbrucks (1951) and Emilia Galotti (1958). He was married to Hedwig Pauly-Winterstein and Minna Mengers. He died on 22 July 1961 in Berlin, Germany.
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Segundo de Chomón became involved in film through his wife, who was an actress in Pathé films. In 1902 he became a concessionary for Pathé in Barcelona, distributing its product in Spanish-speaking countries and managing a factory for the coloring of Pathé films. He began shooting footage of Spanish locations for the company, then in 1905 moved to Paris where he became a trick film specialist. The body of work he created over five years was outstanding. Films such as The Red Spectre (1907), Kiri-Kis (1907), The Invisible Thief (1909) and A Panicky Picnic (1909) are among the most imaginative and technically accomplished of their age.
De Chomón created fantastical narratives embellished with ingenious effects, gorgeous color, innovative hand-drawn and puppet animation, tricks of the eye that surprise and delight, and startling turns of surreal imagination. It is curious why he is not generally known as one of the early cinema masters, except among the cognoscenti in the field. Perhaps it is because there is a smaller body of work than that created by Georges Méliès (his works can perhaps be described as a cross between that of Méliès and another who combined trickery with animation, Émile Cohl); perhaps it's because he was a Spaniard working in France for the key part of his film career that has meant that neither side has championed him as much as they might have done. De Chomón carried on as a filmmaker, specializing in trick effects, working for Pathé, Itala and others, and contributing effects work to two of the most notable films of the silent era, Giovanni Pastrone's Cabiria (1914) and Abel Gance's Napoleon (1927).