During his long career, David Butler was an actor, writer, director, and producer. He was born in San Francisco on December 17, 1894. He began his acting career in 1910 and was an extra in Intolerance (1916). From 1919 through 1929 he appeared in almost 60 films, including a showy part in 7th Heaven (1927). As his acting career was ending, his directing career began and continued steadily in movies and television until 1967. He directed films with many major stars including Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, Shirley Temple, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Doris Day. He also was the story writer and/or producer for a few of his films. He died June 14, 1979 in Arcadia, California.
Orville Caldwell, who plays Tony in The Patsy, was born in Oakland, California on Feb. 8, 1896. He first appeared in movies in 1923, as Warren Wade in The Lonely Road. From 1923 to 1938, he made nineteen movies, although he was inactive from 1928 to 1935. The Patsy was his twelfth movie and probably featured his biggest role. Almost all of his talkie appearances did not include screen credit. In the 1940s, he went into politics and was elected Los Angeles’ deputy mayor in 1940. He died September 24, 1967 in Santa Rosa.
Born November 9, 1868 in Coburg, Ontario, Canada, Marie Dressler started her acting career at the tender age of fourteen by joining a theater group. She performed on stage, in light opera and on vaudeville. She debuted on Broadway in 1892. Her first attempt at a film career began in 1914, when she appeared in Tillie’s Punctured Romance for Mack Sennet. Appearing with her in the movie were Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand. Marie was already in her mid-forties. In total, she made six movies between 1914 and 1918, three of which were about Tillie, the simple country girl, which made use of Marie’s rough appearance and personality. However, her silent film career never took off, and she was blacklisted on stage for her part on the famous actor’s strike of 1917. For ten years, she languished, doing little or no acting.
In 1927, MGM screenwriter, Francis Marion got her a small role in Joy Girl and later, a co-starring part as Mrs. Callahan in The Callahans and the Murphys (1927). Of the six silents she made between 1927 and 1929, The Patsy is probably the best. Even at that point, she displays some of the mannerisms that later endeared her to audiences everywhere. Her big break came in 1930, when she played Marthy in Greta Garbo’s first talking picture, Anna Christie. The same year, she won an Academy Award for the role of Min in Min And Bill. She was later nominated for an another Academy Award for the title role of Emma in 1932. By 1933, she was the top box office draw in Hollywood. Her last roles were in 1933, including juicy parts in Tugboat Annie and Dinner at Eight. Interestingly, she has an unbilled cameo in Marion Davies’ 1933 musical with Bing Crosby, Going Hollywood. Marie Dressler died of cancer July, 28 1934 in Santa Barbara, the most unlikely star Hollywood ever produced.
Lawrence Gray was born July 28, 1898 in San Francisco. In his first movie, The Dressmaker From Paris (1925), he played Alan Stone. He appeared in several well known movies before The Patsy, including Are Parents People? (1925) with Florence Vidor and Betty Bronson, and The Coast of Folly (1925) with Gloria Swanson. The Patsy was his nineteenth screen appearance. He continued to make movies until 1936. Starting with the advent of sound, he made mostly second feature films. After his acting career ended, he spent his last thirty-three years in Mexico as a coordinator between the Mexican and US film industries. He died February 2, 1970 in Mexico City.
Dell Henderson (The Patsy, Show People)
Over the course of forty-two years, Dell Henderson acted in, directed, produced and wrote for movies. His filmography indicates he acted in 183 movies, directed fity-nine, wrote fifteen, and produced one. In 1908, he appeared in his first film, Monday Morning In A Coney Island Police Court. He made movies with D. W. Griffith, including Lines of Light on a Sullen Sea (1909), The Battle of Elderbush Gulch (1914) and an uncredited appearance in Intolerance (1916). He began his directorial career in 1911 with Comrades. He directed movies until 1927, ending with Rambling Ranger, a Jack Hoxie film. He wrote movies between from 1910 to 1928, thirteen of them from 1910 to 1912. Among the more prominent movies he appeared in are The Crowd, Show People, It’s a Gift, The Awful Truth, and State of the Union. Henderson has substantial roles in three of King Vidor's best films, The Crowd, The Patsy, and Show People. His unlovely face and figure precluded starring parts, and he was always a supporting player. His parts in The Patsy and Show People demonstrate his comic abilities. His roles In the last ten years of his career are mostly uncredited. He made his last movie, Louisa, in 1950. He was born July 5, 1883 in St. Thomas, Ontario and died December 2, 1956 in Hollywood.
Lloyd Hughes (Love Never Dies)
Lloyd Hughes was 20 years old when he made his first film, in 1918. By the end of the Silent Era he had over 40 films to his credit. Love Never Dies was his 16th film appearance.
He made a handsome and serviceable leading man for many important female stars, including Mary Pickford, Bebe Daniels, Doris Kenyon, Mae Murray, and especially Colleen Moore, with whom he made several films.
He was an actor who would not overshadow his co-stars. His career in the Thirties followed a downward trajectory similar to his Love Never Dies co-star Madge Bellamy. By the mid-Thirties he is either well down the cast list or uncredited. His last film was a bit part in Romance of the Redwoods in 1939. He died in 1958 in San Gabriel, California, at the age of 60.
Claire McDowell (Love Never Dies)
Most of Claire McDowell's film career was spent as a supporting actress. She was born in New York in 1877 and began her career on stage. Her first film credit is The Devil (1908) made by Biograph, directed by D.W. Griffith, in a cast with Harry Solter, Florence Lawrence, Arthur Johnson and Mack Sennett. By 1920 she had appeared in over 200 films, from one or two reelers and on to feature films. From 1920 to 1929, she appeared in six to eight films per year. Neither cute nor pretty, her matronly looks intensified as she aged, and many of her roles were as mother to a main character, such as in Douglas Fairbanks' The Mark of Zorro (1920). After 1929, she appeared in several film every year, mostly in uncredited bit parts. Her last appearance was an uncredited part in the Clark Gable and Greer Garson dud Adventure (of the infamous tagline "Gable's back and Garson's got him"). Her filmography lists 360 film appearances, mostly in short films, with about 100 silent and talkie features. She died in Hollywood in 1966, not quite 90 years old.
Claire McDowell (right) in a motherly role in D.W. Griffith's 1911 short His Trust.
Polly Moran spent a lifetime in entertainment. She was born in Chicago in 1883 and played vaudeville in her early years . She joined the Mack Sennett Studio in 1915. With Sennett, burlesque was her forte. Her style was broad, expressive, and gesticulating. The popularity of this comic type was fading by 1918 when she left the Sennett studio. From 1924, she spent ten years at MGM where she made a successful series of comedies with Marie Dressler. After leaving MGM, she appeared in about 15 films. Over her career, she played numerous small parts as comic maids, widows, or mothers. She died in Los Angeles in January, 1952.
Paul Ralli had a short screen career. His filmography lists four credited and one uncredited role betwee 1927 and 1933. He was born in 1903 in Cyprus, Greece and died in Van Nuys, California in 1953. His handsome features gave him the dark, romantic look popular in the late 1920's. In Show People, his character is a spoof of this "Latin-lover" type.
Donald Ogden Stewart (Not So Dumb)
Donald Ogden Stewart’s writing career began in New York among the literary wits of the 1920’s, continued successfully in Hollywood as a screenwriter/doctor of troubled scripts, and ended with blacklisting and exile in London (1950’s). Stewart was born in Columbus, Ohio (November 30, 1894), attended Yale (graduated 1916), and moved to New York in the early 1920’s. He associated with most of the major American literary figures of his time: Edna Ferber, Alexander Woolcott, Ernest Hemingway, Gilbert Seldes, and John Dos Passos. He was a member of the Algonquin Hotel Round Table, went to Pamplona with Hemingway, and, in Paris, played at being the life of the party. His literary output consisted of humorous books of etiquette and parodies of novels, especially about Midwesterners touring Europe. In 1925 he met director King Vidor and discovered the joys of Hollywood. In his autobiography Stewart recalls an easy life, rich friends old and new, and lots of time-off parties. He continued writing humorous articles and books. His brief acting career occurred at the end of the decade. Philip Barry wrote an important part for him in his play Holiday (1928). King Vidor cast him as the escaped lunatic in the film Not So Dumb (1930).
Stewart’s career as a professional humorist ended about 1930, when he began a new career as a screenwriter. Between 1930 and 1950 he worked on the scripts of many important films, including Laughter (1930), Red Dust (1932), Dinner At Eight (1933), Holiday (1938), and The Philadelphia Story (1939). Despite his success as a screenwriter Stewart felt creatively stifled. His rewrites of the works of others were done to please his employers. He felt that he had surrendered his freedom in pursuit of wealth and pleasure. The hardships of the depression fueled his desire to be on the side of the underdog and aid the entrance of the working class into the good life. These ideals led him to romanticize socialism and idealize the Soviet Union as the first socialist republic. Even as he continued to work on screenplays he began to lose friends because of his approval of Stalin.
After World War II he worked on a few more screenplays, but his pro-Soviet stance, before and after the war, resulted in his blacklisting in 1950. Producers did not offer him scripts, and his screenwriting ceased. To avoid being called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Stewart moved to England, where he did some uncredited work on a few more screenplays. In the U.S., he was labeled a security threat and lost his passport for a while. He remained in London, where he died in August, 1980, never having returned to live in his native land. In his autobiography, "By a Stroke of Luck" (1975), Stewart describes the tension he felt between his professional and public success and his private yearnings and ideals.
Jane Winton was born October 10, 1905 in Philadelphia. She started her film career in 1925 with Tomorrow’s Love. She appeared in thirty-nine films, making her last in 1936. She played roles in Don Juan (1926), Sunrise (1927), The Beloved Rouge (1927), and Hell’s Angels (1930). Her talkies are mostly ‘B’ features. She died September 22, 1959 in New York.