Early life

"A lot of people think that because my father was an actor, I come from this big show-business background," Hutton told Bruce Cook of ''American Film'' magazine in 1981. "But that's not how I grew up at all. My mother took us to Cambridge because she wanted to get her M.A. She wound up teaching in Connecticut, but the way she saw it, after a while, if we all stayed there, my sister and I would just wind up as the proprietors of the local drugstore or something, so that was why she took us to Berkeley – to get us into the world, I guess. Now she's given up teaching and she's into printing miniature books."

When he was 16, Hutton sought out his father, living with him in Los Angeles while attending Fairfax High School. There, while playing Nathan Detroit in a school production of ''Guys and Dolls'', Hutton realized he wanted to become an actor. With encouragement from both of his parents, Hutton carefully built himself a career in television.

Career

However, Hutton soon fell victim to the "Oscar Jinx." His next feature film, ''Taps'' (with George C. Scott, Sean Penn, and Tom Cruise), while popular with audiences, received mixed reviews from critics. During the next several years, his motion pictures, such as ''Iceman'', ''Daniel'', ''Turk 182'', ''Made In Heaven'', and ''Q & A'', all flopped at the box office. His only substantial hit was 1985's ''The Falcon and the Snowman'' which teamed him again with Sean Penn.

During the late 1980s and into the 1990s, Hutton began to take featured parts in films, most notably in ''Everybody's All-American'' with Jessica Lange and Dennis Quaid and ''French Kiss'' with Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline. In 1989, he made his Broadway stage debut opposite his ''Ordinary People'' co-star Elizabeth McGovern in the A.R. Gurney play ''Love Letters''. He followed this with another Broadway role in the Craig Lucas hit comedy, ''Prelude to a Kiss'', which also starred Mary-Louise Parker and Barnard Hughes.

Moving on to television, he starred as Nero Wolfe's assistant and leg-man Archie Goodwin in the A&E; television series ''A Nero Wolfe Mystery'' (2001–2002); he also served as an executive producer, and also directed several episodes of the series. His other directing credits include the family film ''Digging to China'' (1998). In 2001 Hutton starred in the television miniseries ''WW3'', and in 2006 he had a lead role in the NBC series ''Kidnapped'', playing Conrad Cain, the wealthy father of a kidnapped teenager. He appeared in 15 feature films from 2006 to 2008.

Hutton is currently starring in the television series ''Leverage'', where he plays former insurance investigator Nate Ford who leads a group of thieves who act as modern-day Robin Hoods.

Other pursuits

Hutton starred in a Groupon commercial during the 2011 Super Bowl which drew public ire from the parodization of the Tibetan resistance movement. The commercials were pulled from rotation on February 10 after continued negative response from the public and activist groups.

Personal life

Hutton became a Freemason at Herder Lodge No. 698 in New York City in 2005. Hutton dated Angelina Jolie for a few years before she married Billy Bob Thornton.

Filmography

Actor

Director

References

External links

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Daniel Defoe (; ca. 1659–1661 to 24 April 1731), born Daniel Foe, was an English writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel ''Robinson Crusoe''. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and is among the founders of the English novel. A prolific and versatile writer, he wrote more than 500 books, pamphlets and journals on various topics (including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural). He was also a pioneer of economic journalism.

Biography

Early life

Although Defoe was a Christian, he decided not to become a dissenting minister and entered the world of business as a general merchant, dealing at different times in hosiery, general woollen goods and wine. Though his ambitions were great and he bought both a country estate and a ship (as well as civet cats to make perfume), he was rarely out of debt. In 1684, Defoe married Mary Tuffley, the daughter of a London merchant, and received a dowry of £3,700. With his debts and political trouble, their marriage was most likely a difficult one. It lasted, however, fifty years and together they had eight children, six of whom survived. In 1685, he joined the ill-fated Monmouth Rebellion but gained a pardon by which he escaped the Bloody Assizes of Judge George Jeffreys. William III was crowned in 1688, and Foe immediately became one of his close allies and a secret agent. Some of the new king's policies, however, led to conflict with France, thus damaging prosperous trade relationships for Defoe, who had established himself as a merchant. In 1692, Defoe was arrested for payments of £700 (and his civets were seized), though his total debts may have amounted to £17,000. His laments were loud and he always defended unfortunate debtors but there is evidence that his financial dealings were not always honest.

Following his release, he probably travelled in Europe and Scotland and it may have been at this time that he traded wine to Cadiz, Porto and Lisbon. By 1695 he was back in England, using the name "Defoe", and serving as a "commissioner of the glass duty", responsible for collecting the tax on bottles. In 1696 he was operating a tile and brick factory in what is now Tilbury, Essex and living in the parish of Chadwell St Mary.

Pamphleteering and prison

Defoe's first notable publication was ''An Essay upon Projects'', a series of proposals for social and economic improvement, published in 1697. From 1697 to 1698 he defended the right of King William III to a standing army during disarmament after the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) had ended the Nine Years' War (1688–97). His most successful poem, ''The True-Born Englishman'' (1701), defended the king against the perceived xenophobia of his enemies, satirising the English claim to racial purity. In 1701 Defoe, flanked by a guard of sixteen gentlemen of quality, presented the ''Legion's Memorial'' to the Speaker of the House of Commons, later his employer, Robert Harley. It demanded the release of the Kentish petitioners, who had asked Parliament to support the king in an imminent war against France.

The death of William III in 1702 once again created a political upheaval as the king was replaced by Queen Anne, who immediately began her offensive against Nonconformists. A natural target, Defoe's pamphleteering and political activities resulted in his arrest and placement in a pillory on 31 July 1703, principally on account of a pamphlet entitled ''The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church'', purporting to argue for their extermination. In it he ruthlessly satirised both the High church Tories and those Dissenters who hypocritically practised so-called "occasional conformity", such as his Stoke Newington neighbour Sir Thomas Abney. Though it was published anonymously, the true authorship was quickly discovered and Defoe was arrested. According to legend, the publication of his poem ''Hymn to the Pillory'' caused his audience at the pillory to throw flowers instead of the customary harmful and noxious objects and to drink to his health. The historicity of this story is questioned by most scholars, although John Robert Moore later said that "no man in England but Defoe ever stood in the pillory and later rose to eminence among his fellow men". Thomas Cochrane, the 10th Earl of Dundonald and famous Royal Navy officer, was sentenced to the pillory but was excused for fear his popularity would cause a riot. After his three days in the pillory, Defoe went into Newgate Prison. Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, brokered his release in exchange for Defoe's co-operation as an intelligence agent for the Tories. In exchange for his cooperation with the rival political side, Harley paid some of Defoe's outstanding debts, improving his financial situation considerably. Within a week of his release from prison, Defoe witnessed the Great Storm of 1703 which raged from 26 to 27 November. It caused severe damage to London and Bristol and uprooted millions of trees and killed over 8,000 people, mostly at sea. The event became the subject of Defoe's ''The Storm'' (1704), a collection of witness accounts of the tempest. Many regard it as one of the world's first examples of modern journalism. In the same year he set up his periodical ''A Review of the Affairs of France'' which supported the Harley Ministry, chronicling the events of the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1714). The ''Review'' ran three times a week without interruption until 1713. Defoe was amazed that a man as gifted as Harley left vital state papers lying in the open, and warned that he was almost inviting an unscrupulous clerk to commit treason; his warnings were fully justified by the William Gregg affair. When Harley was ousted from the ministry in 1708 Defoe continued writing it to support Godolphin, then again to support Harley and the Tories in the Tory ministry of 1710 to 1714. After the Tories fell from power with the death of Queen Anne, Defoe continued doing intelligence work for the Whig government, writing "Tory" pamphlets that actually undermined the Tory point of view.

Not all of Defoe's pamphlet writing was political. One pamphlet (originally published anonymously) entitled ''A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal the Next Day after her Death to One Mrs. Bargrave at Canterbury the 8th of September, 1705,'' deals with interaction between the spiritual realm and the physical realm. It was most likely written in support of Charles Drelincourt's ''The Christian Defense against the Fears of Death'' (1651). It describes Mrs. Bargrave's encounter with an old friend Mrs. Veal, after she had died. It is clear from this piece and other writings, that while the political portion of Defoe's life was fairly dominant, it was by no means the only aspect.

Later life and writings

From 1719 to 1724, Defoe published the novels for which he is famous (see below). In the final decade of his life, he also wrote conduct manuals, including ''Religious Courtship'' (1722), ''The Complete English Tradesman'' (1726) and ''The New Family Instructor'' (1727). He published a number of books decrying the breakdown of the social order, such as ''The Great Law of Subordination Considered'' (1724) and ''Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business'' (1725) and works on the supernatural, like ''The Political History of the Devil'' (1726), ''A System of Magick'' (1726) and ''An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions'' (1727). His works on foreign travel and trade include ''A General History of Discoveries and Improvements'' (1727) and ''Atlas Maritimus and Commercialis'' (1728). Perhaps his greatest achievement with the novels is the magisterial ''A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain'' (1724–27), which provided a panoramic survey of British trade on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. Daniel Defoe died on 24 April 1731, probably while in hiding from his creditors. He was interred in Bunhill Fields, London, where his grave can still be visited. Defoe is known to have used at least 198 pen names.

Novels

Defoe also wrote a three volume travel book, Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-27) that provided a vivid first-hand account of the state of the country. Other non-fiction books include The Complete English Tradesman (1726) and London the Most Flourishing City in the Universe (1728). Defoe published over 560 books and pamphlets and is considered to be the founder of British journalism.

Defoe's novel ''Robinson Crusoe'' (1719) tells of a man's shipwreck on a deserted island and his subsequent adventures. The author based part of his narrative on the story of the Scottish castaway Alexander Selkirk, who spent four years stranded on the island of Juan Fernandez. He may have also been inspired by the Latin or English translation of a book by the Andalusian-Arab Muslim polymath Ibn Tufail, who was known as "Abubacer" in Europe. The Latin edition of the book was entitled ''Philosophus Autodidactus'' and it was an earlier novel that is also set on a deserted island. Tim Severin's book ''Seeking Robinson Crusoe'' (2002) unravels a much wider range of potential sources of inspiration. Severin concludes his investigations by stating that the real Robinson Crusoe figure was Henry Pitman, a castaway who had been surgeon to the Duke of Monmouth. Pitman's short book about his desperate escape from a Caribbean penal colony for his part in the Monmouth Rebellion, his shipwrecking and subsequent desert island misadventures was published by J. Taylor of Paternoster Street, London, whose son William Taylor later published Defoe's novel. Severin argues that since Pitman appears to have lived in the lodgings above the father's publishing house and since Defoe was a mercer in the area at the time, Defoe may have met Pitman and learned of his experiences as a castaway. If he didn't meet Pitman, Severin points out that Defoe, upon submitting even a draft of a novel about a castaway to his publisher, would undoubtedly have learned about Pitman's book published by his father, especially since the interesting castaway had previously lodged with them at their former premises.

Severin also provides sufficient evidence in his book that another publicised case of a real-life marooned Miskito Central American man named only as Will may have caught Defoe's attention, inspiring the depiction of Man Friday in his novel. The novel has been variously read as an allegory for the development of civilisation, as a manifesto of economic individualism and as an expression of European colonial desires but it also shows the importance of repentance and illustrates the strength of Defoe's religious convictions. It is also considered by many to be the first novel written in English.Early critics, such as Robert Louis Stevenson admired it saying that the footprint scene in ''Crusoe'' was one of the four greatest in English literature and most unforgettable; more prosaically, Dr.Wesley Vernon has seen the origins of forensic podiatry in this episode. It has inspired a new genre, the Robinsonade as works like Johann David Wyss's ''The Swiss Family Robinson'' (1812) adapt its premise and has provoked modern postcolonial responses, including J. M. Coetzee's ''Foe'' (1986) and Michel Tournier's ''Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique'' (in English, ''Friday'') (1967). Two sequels followed, Defoe's ''The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe'' (1719) and his ''Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe'' (1720). Jonathan Swift's ''Gulliver's Travels'' (1726) in part parodies Defoe's adventure novel.

Defoe's next novel was ''Captain Singleton'' (1720), a bipartite adventure story whose first half covers a traversal of Africa and whose second half taps into the contemporary fascination with piracy. It has been commended for its sensitive depiction of the close relationship between the eponymous hero and his religious mentor, the Quaker William Walters. This appears homoerotic to many modern readers.

''Colonel Jack'' (1722) follows an orphaned boy from a life of poverty and crime to colonial prosperity, military and marital imbroglios and religious conversion, always driven by a quaint and misguided notion of becoming a gentleman.

Also in 1722, Defoe wrote ''Moll Flanders'', another first-person picaresque novel of the fall and eventual redemption of a lone woman in 17th century England. The titular heroine appears as a whore, bigamist and thief, lives in The Mint, commits adultery and incest, yet manages to retain the reader's sympathy.

''Moll Flanders'' and Defoe's final novel ''Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress'' (1724) are examples of the remarkable way in which Defoe seems to inhabit his fictional (yet "drawn from life") characters, not least in that they are women. The latter narrates the moral and spiritual decline of a high society courtesan.

A work that is often read as if it were non-fiction is his account of the Great Plague of London in 1665: ''A Journal of the Plague Year'', a complex historical novel published in 1722. In November 1703, a hurricane-like storm hit London, now known as The Great Storm. (It remains one of the greatest storms in British history.) Yet another of the remarkable events in Defoe's life, the storm was the subject of his book ''The Storm''. Defoe describes the aftermath of the incident, “The streets lay so covered with tiles and slates from the tops of the houses [. . .] that all the tiles in fifty miles round would be able to repair but a small part of it." Later, Defoe also wrote ''Memoirs of a Cavalier'' (1720), set during the Thirty Years' War and the English Civil War.

Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707

In despair, he wrote to William Paterson the London Scot and founder of the Bank of England and part instigator of the Darien scheme, who was in the confidence of Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, leading minister and spymaster in the English Government. Harley accepted Defoe's services and released him in 1703. He immediately published ''The Review'', which appeared weekly, then three times a week, written mostly by himself. This was the main mouthpiece of the English Government promoting the Act of Union 1707.

In 1709 Defoe authored a rather lengthy book entitled, ''The History Of The Union Of Great Britain''; an Edinburgh publication printed by the Heirs of Anderson.

The book was not authored anonymously and cites Defoe as twice taking credit for being its author. An evolution expounded in the book which attempts to explain the facts leading up to the Act of Union 1707 dates all the way back to the 6 December 1604 when King James was presented with a proposed embellishment for unification. This so-called "first draft" for unification took place a full one-hundred years before the signing of the 1707 accord, which respectively preceded the commencement of ''Robinson Crusoe''' by another full ten years.

Defoe began his campaign in ''The Review'' and other pamphlets aimed at English opinion, claiming that it would end the threat from the north, gaining for the Treasury an "inexhaustible treasury of men", a valuable new market increasing the power of England. By September 1706 Harley ordered Defoe to Edinburgh as a secret agent to do everything possible to help secure acquiescence in the Treaty of Union. He was conscious of the risk to himself. Thanks to books such as ''The Letters of Daniel Defoe'' (edited by G. H. Healey, Oxford 1955), which are readily available, far more is known about his activities than is usual with such agents.

His first reports included vivid descriptions of violent demonstrations against the Union. "A Scots rabble is the worst of its kind", he reported. Years later John Clerk of Penicuik, a leading Unionist, wrote in his memoirs that,

Defoe being a Presbyterian who had suffered in England for his convictions, was accepted as an adviser to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and committees of the Parliament of Scotland. He told Harley that he was "privy to all their folly" but "Perfectly unsuspected as with corresponding with anybody in England". He was then able to influence the proposals that were put to Parliament and reported back:

For Scotland he used different arguments, even the opposite of those he used in England, for example, usually ignoring the English doctrine of the Sovereignty of Parliament, telling the Scots that they could have complete confidence in the guarantees in the Treaty. Some of his pamphlets were purported to be written by Scots, misleading even reputable historians into quoting them as evidence of Scottish opinion of the time. The same is true of a massive history of the Union which Defoe published in 1709 and which some historians still treat as a valuable contemporary source for their own works. Defoe took pains to give his history an air of objectivity by giving some space to arguments against the Union but always having the last word for himself.

He disposed of the main Union opponent, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun by ignoring him. Nor does he account for the deviousness of the Duke of Hamilton, the official leader of the various factions opposed to the Union, who seemingly betrayed his former colleagues when he switched to the Unionist/Government side in the decisive final stages of the debate.

Defoe made no attempt to explain why the same Parliament of Scotland which was so vehement for its independence from 1703 to 1705 became so supine in 1706. He received very little reward from his paymasters and of course no recognition for his services by the government. He made use of his Scottish experience to write his ''Tour thro' the whole Island of Great Britain'', published in 1726, where he admitted that the increase of trade and population in Scotland which he had predicted as a consequence of the Union, was "not the case, but rather the contrary".

Defoe's description of Glasgow (Glaschu) as a "Dear Green Place" has often been misquoted as a Gaelic translation for the town. The Gaelic ''Glas'' could mean grey or green, ''chu'' means dog or hollow. ''Glaschu'' probably actually means 'Green Hollow'. The "Dear Green Place", like much of Scotland, was a hotbed of unrest against the Union. The local Tron minister urged his congregation "to up and anent for the City of God". The 'Dear Green Place' and "City of God" required government troops to put down the rioters tearing up copies of the Treaty, as at almost every mercat cross in Scotland.

When Defoe visited in the mid 1720s, he claimed that the hostility towards his party was, "because they were English and because of the Union, which they were almost universally exclaimed against".

Bibliography

References

External links

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Lillian Diana Gish (October 14, 1893 – February 27, 1993) was an American stage, screen and television actress whose film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912 to 1987.

She was a prominent film star of the 1910s and 1920s, particularly associated with the films of director D.W. Griffith, including her leading role in Griffith's seminal ''Birth of a Nation'' (1915). Her sound-era film appearances were sporadic, but included memorable roles in the controversial western ''Duel in the Sun'' (1946) and the offbeat thriller ''Night of the Hunter'' (1955). She did considerable television work from the early 1950s into the 1980s, and closed her career playing, for the first time, opposite Bette Davis in the 1987 film ''The Whales of August''.

The American Film Institute (AFI) named Gish 17th among the greatest female stars of all time. She was awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 1971, and in 1984 she received an AFI Life Achievement Award.

Early life

The first several generations of Gishes were Dunkard ministers. Her great-great-great grandfather came to America on the ship ''Pennsylvania Merchant'' in 1733 and received a land grant from William Penn. Her great-great grandfather was in the American Revolutionary War and is buried in a cemetery in Pennsylvania for such soldiers, a bit of an oddity because Dunkards are supposed to be more pacifist than Amish or Quakers. Letters between her and a Pennsylvania college professor indicate that her knowledge of her family background was limited.

In 1912, their friend Mary Pickford introduced the sisters to D. W. Griffith, and helped get them contracts with Biograph Studios. Lillian Gish would soon become one of America's best-loved actresses. Although she was already nineteen, she gave her age as 16 to the studio.

Career

Having appeared in over 25 short films and features in her first two years as a movie actress, Lillian became a major star, becoming known as "The First Lady of the Silent Screen" and appearing in lavish productions, frequently of literary works such as ''The Scarlet Letter''. MGM released her from her contract in 1928 after the failure of ''The Wind'' (1928), now recognized by many as among her finest performances and one of the most distinguished works of the late silent period.

She directed one film, ''Remodeling Her Husband'' (1920), when D. W. Griffith took his unit on location—he told Gish that he thought the crew would work harder for a girl. Gish never directed again, telling reporters at the time that directing was a man's job.

With her debut in talkies only moderately successful, she acted on the stage for the most part in the 1930s and early 1940s, appearing in roles as varied as Ophelia in Guthrie McClintic's landmark 1936 production of ''Hamlet'' (with John Gielgud and Judith Anderson) and Marguerite in a limited run of ''La Dame aux Camélias''. Of the former, she said, with pride, "I played a ''lewd'' Ophelia!".

Returning to movies, Gish was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1946 for ''Duel in the Sun''. The scenes of her character's illness and death late in that film seemed intended to evoke the memory of some of her silent film performances. She appeared in films from time to time for the rest of her life, notably in ''Night of the Hunter'' (1955) as a rural guardian angel protecting her charges from a murderous preacher played by Robert Mitchum. She was considered for various roles in ''Gone with the Wind'' ranging from Ellen O'Hara, Scarlett's mother, which went to Barbara O'Neil, to prostitute Belle Watling, which went to Ona Munson.

Gish made numerous television appearances from the early 1950s into the late 1980s. Her most acclaimed television work was starring in the original production of ''The Trip to Bountiful'' in 1953. She appeared as Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna in the short-lived 1965 Broadway musical ''Anya''. In addition to her later acting appearances, Gish became one of the leading advocates on the lost art of the silent film, often giving speeches and touring to screenings of classic works. In 1975, she hosted ''The Silent Years'', a PBS film program of silent films.

Gish received a Special Academy Award in 1971 "For superlative artistry and for distinguished contribution to the progress of motion pictures." In 1979, she was awarded the Women in film Crystal Award in Los Angeles In 1984, she received an American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award, becoming only the second female recipient (preceded by Bette Davis in 1977), and the only recipient who was a major figure in the silent era. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1720 Vine Street.

Her last film role was in ''The Whales of August'' in 1987 at the age of 93, with Vincent Price, Bette Davis and Ann Sothern, in which she and Davis starred as elderly sisters in Maine. Her final professional appearance was a cameo on the 1988 studio recording of Jerome Kern's ''Show Boat'', starring Frederica von Stade and Jerry Hadley, in which she affectingly spoke the few lines of ''The Old Lady on the Levee'' in the final scene. The last words of her long career were, "Good night, dear."

Some in the entertainment industry were angry that Gish did not receive an Oscar nomination for her role in ''The Whales of August''. Gish herself was more complacent, remarking that it saved her the trouble of "losing to Cher" (who did, in fact, win for her performance in ''Moonstruck'').

Personal life

She was involved with producer Charles Duell and drama critic and editor George Jean Nathan. In the 1920s, Gish's association with Duell was something of a tabloid scandal because he had sued her and made the details of their relationship public.

During the period of political turmoil in the United States that lasted from the outbreak of World War II in Europe until the attack on Pearl Harbor, she maintained an outspoken non-interventionist stance. She was an active member of the America First Committee, an anti-intervention organization founded by retired General Robert E. Wood with aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh as its leading spokesman. She said she was blacklisted by the film and theater industries until she signed a contract in which she promised to cease her anti-interventionist activities and never disclose the fact that she had agreed to do so.

She maintained a very close relationship with her sister Dorothy, as well as with Mary Pickford, for her entire life. Another of her closest friends was actress Helen Hayes; Gish was the godmother of Hayes' son James MacArthur.

Death

Legacy

Filmography

Books

Biographical and other:

Documentaries about Gish

See also

References

External links

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Mae Marsh (born Mary Wayne Marsh, November 9, 1894 – February 13, 1968) was an American film actress with a career spanning over 50 years.

Early life

Marsh worked as a salesgirl and loitered around the sets and locations while her older sister worked on a film, observing the progress of her sister’s performance. She first started as an extra in various movies, and played her first substantial role in the film ''Ramona'' (1910) at the age of 15.

“I tagged my way into motion pictures,” Marsh recalled in ''The Silent Picture''. “I used to follow my sister Marguerite to the old Biograph studio and then, one great day, Mr. Griffith noticed me, put me in a picture and I had my chance. I love my work and though new and very wonderful interests have entered my life, I still love it and couldn’t think of giving it up.”.”.

Career rise

Years later, Marsh recalled in an interview in ''The Silent Picture,'' “...and he called rehearsal, and we were all there and he said, ‘Well now, Miss Marsh, you can rehearse this.’ And Mary Pickford said, ‘What!’ and Mr. Griffith said, ‘Yes, Mary Pickford, if you don’t do what I tell you I want you to do, I’m going to have someone else do ''The Sands of Dee''. Mary Pickford didn’t play ''Man’s Genesis'' so Mae can play ''The Sands of Dee''.’ Of course, I was thrilled, and she was very much hurt. And I thought, ‘Well, it's all right with me. That is something.’ I was, you know, just a lamebrain.”.

Working with Mack Sennett and D.W. Griffith, she was a prolific actress, sometimes appearing in eight movies a year and often paired with fellow Sennett protégé Robert Harron in romantic roles. In ''The Birth of a Nation'' (1915) she played the innocent sister who waits for her brothers to come home from war and who, in one of the film's most racially charged scenes, leaps to her death rather than submit to the lustful advances of Gus, the so-called "renegade Negro" who is later killed by the Ku Klux Klan. In ''Intolerance'' (1916) she plays the wife who has her baby taken away after her husband is unjustly convicted of murder.

She signed a lucrative contract with Samuel Goldwyn worth $2,500 per week after ''Intolerance'', but none of the films she made with him were particularly successful. After her marriage to Lee Arms, a publicity agent for Goldwyn, in 1918, her film output decreased to about one per year.

Marsh's last notable starring role was as a flapper for Griffith in ''The White Rose'' in 1923 with Ivor Novello and Carol Dempster. She re-teamed with Novello in 1925 for the film version of his hit stage play, ''The Rat''.

'Talkies'

Marsh has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 1600 Vine Street.

Personal life

Silent filmography

References

External links

Robert "Bobby" Harron (April 12, 1893 – September 5, 1920) was an American motion picture actor of the early silent film era. Although he acted in scores of films, he is possibly best remembered for his roles in the D.W. Griffith directed films ''Intolerance'' and ''The Birth of a Nation''. He was also the older brother of film actor John Harron and actress Mary Harron.

Early life

The teenaged Robert Harron was often cast by Griffith in the role of the "sensitive" and "naïve" boy, who was overwhelmingly sympathetic and appealing to American film-goers in the very early years of American motion pictures and not far removed from Harron's real-life persona; Harron was often described as a quiet and soft-spoken youth. It was these traits that helped garner much public interest in the young actor, especially amongst young female fans. In 1912 alone, Robert Harron appeared in nearly forty films at Biograph.

Harron is probably best recalled for his roles in the three epic Griffith films: 1914's ''Judith of Bethulia'', opposite Blanche Sweet, Mae Marsh, Henry B. Walthall and Dorothy and Lillian Gish, 1915's controversial all-star cast ''The Birth of a Nation'', and 1916's colossal multi-scenario ''Intolerance'' opposite such popular stars of the era Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Miriam Cooper, Wallace Reid, Harold Lockwood, Carol Dempster and Mildred Harris. One of Harron's most popular roles of the era came in 1919 when he starred opposite Lillian Gish in the Griffith directed romantic film ''True Heart Susie''.

Robert Harron's film career continued to flourish throughout the 1910s and he was occasionally paired with leading actresses Mae Marsh and Lillian Gish with romantic plots, often in roles that cemented his "sensitive boy" image. Harron had, in fact, a burgeoning off-screen romantic relationship with Dorothy Gish.

Death

Supposedly the weapon was purchased during the afternoon from a street beggar as Harron did not believe in just handing out money unless something was bought. That was done because he wanted people to feel as if they actually earned the funds given. The prevailing theory about the shooting is that as Harron changed jackets for the evening's event, the gun fell out of the pocket and discharged when it struck the floor.

Although the death was officially ruled accidental, many historians believe that Harron committed suicide. However, many of those closest to the actor vehemently refuted that Harron, a devout Catholic, would ever have considered suicide. While on his deathbed, Harron reportedly confided to his boyhood priest that his gunshot wound was the result of an accident.

Nevertheless, in preparation for a 1993 film festival scheduled in honor Harron's birth centennial at MOMA, Joseph P. Fanning (the organizer and main lecturer) researched and obtained copies of the death certificate/medical records. These documents showed that, despite the publicized news reports, the angle of the wound and the width of the powder burns associated could not be the result of a mere accident. Thus, even with the lack of any witnesses, the evidence clearly indicated that Harron's death was the result of suicide. The main reason was determined to be the result of disappointment because Griffith, a substitute father, had passed Mr. Harron over for the male starring role in ''Way Down East''.

Robert Harron was 27 years old at the time of his death and had never married. His film career spanned nearly 15 years, and Harron had appeared in 220 films.

Harron was interred at Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, Queens, New York City.

Filmography

References

External links

Category:1893 births Category:1920 deaths Category:American child actors Category:American film actors Category:American silent film actors Category:American Roman Catholics Category:Burials at Calvary Cemetery (Queens) Category:American people of Irish descent Category:Actors from New York Category:People from Manhattan Category:Deaths by firearm in New York Category:Firearm accident victims Category:Accidental deaths in New York