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- Franz Kafka was born into a German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, Austrian Empire, in 1883. His father, Hermann Kafka, was a business owner and a domestic tyrant, frequently abusing his son. Kafka later admitted to his father, "My writing was all about you...". He believed that his father broke his will and caused insecurity and guilt, that affected his whole life. Their tensions come out in "The Trial" and in "The Castle" in form of a hopeless conflict with an overwhelming force. His mother, Julie Lowy, came from an intellectual, spiritual family of the Jewish merchant and brewer Jakob Lowy. Although her influence was diminished by his dominating father, she shared her son's delicate nature. Kafka had a few relationships with women and was engaged, but never made a family.
He finished the German National Gymnasium in 1901, and graduated from the German University in Prague as Doctor of Law in 1906. He worked for insurance companies for the rest of his life. His profession shaped the formal, cold language of his writings which avoided any sentimental interpretations, leaving it to the reader. In 1908 Kafka published eight short stories compiled under the title "Meditation". In 1911 he became interested in Yiddish theater, that absorbed him more than abstract Judaism. In 1912 he began writing "The Judgment", which was more than an autobiography, providing a therapeutical outlet for his wrecked soul. The same year he started "Metamorphosis" about a traveling salesman, who transformed into a giant bug. In 1914 he wrote "In the Penal Colony" and "The Trial", which is regarded to be his best work. His style remains unique, though literary connections may be traced to Edgar Allan Poe, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Nikolay Gogol, as well as to Chinese parables, to the Bible and Talmud.
As a Jew Kafka experienced social tensions and isolation from the German community, so very few of his writings could find readers during his life. His three sisters later died in the Nazi concentration camps. He suffered from clinical depression, social anxiety, insomnia, and tuberculosis, complicated by laryngitis, that caused him the loss of his voice before his death in 1924. He was comforted by his girlfriend Dora Diamant, who had broken away from her Hasidic shtetl in Poland. She was 19 when they met in 1923 and Kafka wrote to her parents, asking for their permission to marry her. Their answer was negative, because Kafka presented himself as a non-religious Jew. He asked Dora to destroy his manuscripts after his death, but she kept about 20 notebooks of his writings and 35 private letters, that were reportedly confiscated by the Gestapo in 1933 and are not yet recovered. His university friend Max Brod became his editor, biographer and literary agent, who preserved and published most of Kafka's works posthumously, including the unfinished novels "The Trial", "The Castle", and "America". - Writer
- Additional Crew
Born in Manchester, England on November 24 1849, Frances Eliza Hodgson was the eldest daughter in a family of two boys and three girls. After her father's death when she was three years old, the Hodgsdons experienced severe financial difficulties. As a young girl, she would scrawl little stories on sheets of old notebooks, as she was unable to afford proper writing materials. In 1865 the family moved to Tennessee where they lived in a log cabin and the teenage Frances set up a little school. She began submitting stories to women's magazines and in a time when most women did not have careers, Frances Eliza Hodgsdon was a literary success. In 1873 she married Dr. Swan Burnett and they had two sons -- Lionel, born 1874, and Vivian, born 1876 -- but the marriage was not a happy one. Her younger son, Vivian, clamoured for something for little boys to read, so Frances wrote "Little Lord Fauntleroy" and modeled the main character after him. In 1890 tragedy struck when her eldest son, Lionel, died of influenza. Frances and Swan separated and finally divorced in 1898, and she went on to remarry Stephen Townshend. Frances moved to Long Island, New York in 1901 and there began to write her two most famous stories -- "A Little Princess" and "The Secret Garden", inspired by her poor childhood and her love for gardening. She became rather eccentric in her old age, but delighted in her grandchildren. Frances Hodgson Burnett died on 29 October 1924.- Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Kiev Province, now the Ukraine, to Polish parents Apollo Korzeniowski and Ewa Bobrowska. His father was a political activist and he and his family were exiled after he was suspected of involvement with revolutionary activities. Conrad had no friends as a child and rarely associated with boys or girls. His mother had always been a sickly person and died of tuberculosis in 1865. Conrad's father sent him to live with his uncle and pursue his education in France. Conrad's father died in 1869, also of tuberculosis. Conrad became an officer on British ships and spent two decades on various ships. Conrad was inspired to write "Heart of Darkness" after voyaging to Congo in 1890. In 1894, Conrad published his first novel and in 1896 he married Jessie George, an on-again off-again girlfriend. Conrad had few friends in adulthood, mainly fellow authors such as Stephen Crane and Henry James. Conrad died of a heart attack in 1924.
- Producer
- Additional Crew
- Director
Thomas H. Ince was born into a family of stage actors. He appeared on the stage at age six and worked with a number of stock companies, making his Broadway debut at 15. Vaudeville work was inconsistent, so he was a lifeguard, a promoter and part-time actor. His stage career was a failure but by 1910 he joined Biograph, and after one film, Carl Laemmle's Independent Motion Pictures hired Ince as a director. Ince went to Cuba to make films out of the reach of the Motion Pictures Patent Company -- the trust that attempted to crush all independent production companies and corner the market on film production -- but his output was small. In 1911 he joined the New York Motion Picture Corp. [NYMPC] and headed to California to make Westerns. Ince insisted that all scripts be thoroughly planned out before filming began, which would give him the opportunity to film several scenes at the same time with assistant directors. One of those directors was Francis Ford, the brother of John Ford.
In 1912, NYMPC and other independent studios merged to form Universal Pictures. Ince built a city of motion picture "sets" on a stretch of land in Santa Monica Mountains called "Inceville" where he shot many of the outdoor locales for his films. At the end of 1912, Ince hired William Desmond Taylor to act in his film Counterfeiters (1914). In 1913 Ince made over 150 films, mostly Westerns and Civil War dramas. He would also employ directors Frank Borzage, Fred Niblo, Jack Conway, and Henry King. In 1914 Ince hired William S. Hart as an actor who could also direct his own films. Ince made the epic The Battle of Gettysburg (1913) and thereafter concentrated on longer films as he moved from director to producer. He employed thousands of technicians and made movies on an assembly-line method. In 1915 he joined D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennett to form the Triangle Motion Picture Company built in Culver City on Washington Boulevard (now the site of Sony Pictures). Fortunately, Hart was a profitable star who kept the company afloat. In 1916 Ince produced and directed the anti-war film Civilization (1915), which cost $100,000 and returned $800.000. Always looking for new talent, Ince signed Olive Thomas, the rising young star of the Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic, to star in his films.
At the end of World War I, Ince broke with Triangle and joined his nemesis Adolph Zukor to form Paramount/Artcraft and built yet another studio in Culver City which had a southern mansion facade of Mount Vernon (and later was bought by David O. Selznick). Ince developed a series of comedies pairing Douglas MacLean and Doris May, and their first picture, 23 1/2 Hours' Leave (1919), was successful. When William S. Hart's contract ended, however, he left the company and Zukor forced Ince out of Paramount/Artcraft. In December 1919 Thomas Ince, Mack Sennett, Marshall Neilan, Maurice Tourneur, Allan Dwan and other directors joined to form Associated Producers, an independent film alliance. 'Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle' had been approached, but he had no desire to join the group. In 1922 Associated Producers merged with First National. On February 1, 1922, Paramount director William Desmond Taylor was shot to death in his bungalow and one of the suspects, although never a serious one, was Mack Sennett, who stated that he spent the night at the home of Ince.
In 1924 Ince was one of several Hollywood people aboard the yacht of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst when he suddenly fell ill. Ince was rushed aboard a train bound for Del Mar where his wife, her son, and a physician met him and accompanied him home where he died. The Los Angeles Times supposedly released the headline "Movie producer Shot on Hearst yacht!" but other papers including the New York Times said that Ince died of heart failure. One of the stories that sensationalized Ince's sudden death said that Hearst shot Ince and that the bullet wasn't meant for Ince but for Charles Chaplin, whom Hearst had long suspected of carrying on a secret affair with his mistress, actress Marion Davies. Supposedly, Hearst inadvertently walked into Davies' cabin and caught her and Chaplin in bed together and fired several shots, missing Chaplin but hitting Ince. Another rumor circulated that columnist Louella Parsons was also on board that day and witnessed the shooting, although other sources say Parsons was in New York at the time. Supposedly, in exchange for keeping quiet, Hearst promised Parsons a lifetime job as the Hollywood reporter for his newspaper chain (she was already employed by Hearst in 1923 as a reporter). Ince biographers have disputed the Hearst conspiracy and argued that Ince had been ill for some time with ulcers and had suffered from angina with a previous heart attack.- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Gabriel-Urbian Faure was born May 12, 1845, in Pamires, Mid-Pyrenees, France. He was the youngest of 6 children born to Toussaint and Marie Faure. From the age of 9 he studied piano and organ with Camille Saint-Saëns at the Ecole Niedermeyer. Saint-Saene encouraged young Faure to play piano music by Franz Liszt. In 1865 Faure was awarded first prize for composition, for his 'Cantique de Jean Racine', opus 11. In 1870 he served in the army during the Franco-Prussian war, and during the Paris Commune he was a music teacher in Switzerland, where his school Ecole Niedermeyer was relocated. Back in Paris he became organist at Saint-Sulpice.
Faure became a regular at the salon of Camille Saint-Saëns and the salon of Pauline Garcia-Viardot. There he met many prominent Parisian intellectuals: writers Gustave Flaubert and Ivan Turgenev, composers Hector Berlioz and Georges Bizet. With those contacts Faure initiated the formation of the 'Societe Nationale Musique' around the figure of Camille Saint-Saëns. Faure also took over the position of organist at the Eglise de la Madeleine in 1877, when Saint-Saens retired. At that time Faure became engaged to Marianne Viardot, the daughter of Pauline Viardot, but the engagement was broken off by Marianne.
Faure was sincerely in love, but heartbroken and so depressed, that he could not stay in the same salon. He canceled all social obligations and left Paris for a long journey. He went to Weimar, where he met Franz Liszt and expressed his gratitude by playing his own compositions to Liszt. Then Faure traveled to Cologne to listen to the operas of Richard Wagner, whom he admired. Faure's impressions from 'Der Ring des Nibelungen' were strong, but not enough to influence his own compositions.
Back in Paris he renewed his activity at 'Societe Nationale Musique'. He married Marie Frement in 1883, and the couple had two sons. He had to support his family. The lack of any musical success kept him working as the organist at the Eglise de la Madeleine, and also teaching piano and harmony, which took up all his time. His own compositions were sold to his publisher at 50 francs per piece with thw copyright. At that time Faure composed the exquisitely delicate 'Requiem' (1888), his most important choral work. He could not find a venue to perform his large-scale compositions. That made him even more depressed.
After ten years of hardship, Faure finally got promoted to the government position of the Inspector of Music Conservatoires in the French provinces. In 1896 he became chief organist at the Eglise de la Madeleine. He also replaced Jules Massenet as professor of composition at the Conservatoire de Paris. His students there included Maurice Ravel, Nadia Boulanger, George Enescu, and Charles Koechlin, who later orchestrated Faure's popular suite 'Pelleas et Melisande'. In 1890s Faure wrote piano duet 'Dolly Suite' and a vocal piece 'La bonne chanson' for Emma Bardac, the wife of Claude Debussy.
From 1905 to 1920 Faure was the powerful director of the Conservatoire de Paris. He made some reforms and dismissed unnecessary stuff for the purpose of rational spending of the funding from the government. His song opera 'Penelope' (1913) is noteworthy. His works of the late years were affected by his hearing loss, which inevitably caused his retirement. He was the music critic at Le Figaro from 1903-1921. Faure died from pneumonia on November 4, 1924, and was laid to rest in the Cemetiere de Passy in Paris.- Actor
- Director
Billy Armstrong was born on 14 January 1891 in Bristol, England, UK. He was an actor and director, known for The Bank (1915), Up in Alf's Place (1919) and Down on the Farm (1920). He was married to Marion Parker. He died on 1 March 1924 in Sunland, California, USA.- Additional Crew
- Writer
- Actor
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (22 April 1870 - 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia, and later the Soviet Union, became a one-party socialist state governed by the Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments to the ideology are called Leninism.- Music Department
- Composer
- Writer
Italian composer, one of the greatest exponents of operatic realism, who virtually brought the history of Italian opera to an end. His mature operas include "La Bohème" (1896), "Tosca" (1900), "Madama Butterfly" (1904), and "Turandot" left incomplete.- Thomas Woodrow Wilson was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of Princeton University and as the governor of New Jersey before winning the 1912 presidential election. As president, Wilson changed the nation's economic policies and led the United States into World War I in 1917. He was the leading architect of the League of Nations, and his progressive stance on foreign policy came to be known as Wilsonianism.
- Eva May was born Eva Maria Mandel on May 29, 1902 in Vienna, Austria. Her mother was actress Mia May and her father was producer and director Joe May. Eva made her film debut in her father's 1914 German film The Black Triangle. At the age of sixteen she married director Erik Lund. The couple worked together in numerous films including The Foolish Heart, Black Pearls, and The Bride Of The Incapacitated. She was directed by her father again in the 1920 drama The Legend Of Holly Simplicity,. The press called her "The German Mary Pickford". Unfortunately Eva developed a reputation for being difficult to work with. The young actress was also jealous of her mother's beauty and greater success. She divorced Erik in 1922 and married director Lothar Mendes. They split up a year later.
In 1923 she costarred with Lya De Putti in Die Fledermaus and with Conrad Veidt in Paganini. Her third marriage, to director Manfred Noa, only lasted a few months. Eva started dating producer Rudolf Sieber. When he left her for Marlene Dietrich she slashed her wrists. It was one of several suicide attempts she had made. Then she fell in love with director Fritz Mandl (who was also her second cousin). She was devastated when he refused to marry her. On September 10, 1924 the twenty-two year old committed suicide by shooting herself in the head. In her hand she clutched a photo of Fritz Mandl. Eva left a note that said "Fritz family object - always there is something to mar my happiness - Life is not worth living". Thousands of friends and fans attended her funeral in Vienna. She was cremated and her ashes were given to her parents. - Edward Peple was born on 10 August 1867 in Richmond, Virginia, USA. He was a writer, known for Beloved Bachelor (1931), Richard the Brazen (1917) and The Spitfire (1914). He died on 28 July 1924 in New York, New York, USA.
- Writer
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Born the daughter of a Methodist minister, Gene was the youngest of 12 children. Gene got her start when she sent bird and animal photographs to "Recreation" magazine. The magazine was so impressed, they asked her to write for them. She also wrote for "Outing" magazine. At this point, she turned to writing fiction.- The beautiful Lillian Drew was born in Chicago in 1886. Lillian became a highly popular musical comedy theatre star from the mid 1900's, often appearing with her husband actor E.H. Calvert. Later Lillian a gorgeous brunette starred in more than 90 drama and comedy films and became known as Lily of the Essanay, she made her first film playing the role of Edith Towne in 'The Broken Heart' with Ruth Stonehouse in 1913, she perhaps best remembered as Elvira in 'The Fable of Elvira and Farina and the Meal Ticket' co-starring Gloria Swanson in 1915. In 1920 she suffered a nervous breakdown and appeared in only one more movie 'Children of Jazz' directed by Jerome Storm and starring Ricardo Cortez at Famous Players Film Co in 1923. At the time of her death in February 1924 she was recovering from both a car crash and a difficult breakup with her husband. Lily dead in Chicago age 38 from veronal poisoning, the death was eventually ruled an accident
- Anatole France, the 1921 Nobel laureate for literature, was born Jacques Anatole Thibault in Paris on April 16, 1844, the son of a Paris book dealer. He attended the Parisian boys' school Collège Stanislas, where he received a classical education, and later matriculated at the École des Chartes. For 20 years after finishing his education, he worked at various positions, including the post of assistant librarian of the French Senate from 1876 to 1890, before devoting himself full-time to writing. He was able to write even when he worked, and in his life-time in which he became the premier French man of letters, he produced a vast output of novels, as well as works in every genre. A story-teller in the French classical style, his literary precursors were Voltaire and Fénélon. His urbane skepticism and enlightened hedonism were in the spirit and tradition of the French enlightenment of the 18th century. His epicurean philosophy was limned in his 1895 book of aphorisms, "The Garden of Epicurus."
France's first great success was the novel "Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (1881), which was honored by the Académie Française. France later became a member of the Académie in 1896. He published an autobiographical novel in 1885, "Le Livre de mon ami" ["My Friend's Book"], which he followed up with "Pierre Nozière" (1899), "Le Petit Pierre" (1918), and "La Vie au fleur" (1922) ["The Bloom of Life"].
France was the literary critic on the "Le Temps" newspaper, and his reviews were published in a four-volume collection entitled "La Vie littéraire" [On Life and Letters] between 1888 and 1892. It was in this period that France wrote historical fiction about past civilizations, focusing particularly on the transition from paganism to Christianity. He published "Balthazar" (1889), a story of the conversion of one of the Magi, and "Thaïs" (1890), about the conversion of an Alexandrian courtesan. In 1891, he published "L'Étui de nacre" ["Mother of Pearl"], the story of a hermit and a faun. It was during this period that the classicist France reacted strongly against Emile Zola's naturalism.
Approximately half of France's output appeared in periodicals and newspapers. The style of his novels was rooted in elegance and a subtle irony. "La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque" ["At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque], a historical novel about life in 18th century France, was published in 1893. It proved to be the most celebrated of France's novels; that same year, he used the central character of the novel, the Abbé Coignard, in "Les Opinions de Jérôme Coignard." The Abbé again appeared in "Le Puits de Sainte Claire" ["The Well of Saint Claire"], a collection of stories published in 1895.
With "Le Lys rouge" ["The Red Lily"], a tragic love story published in 1894, France returned to contemporary fiction. In 1896, he began a cycle of prose works focused on the character of Professor Bergeret, one of his most famous literary creations, in the "Histoire contemporaine," published between 1896 and 1901.
He protested the unjust conviction of Captain Alfed Dreyfuss for treason and the anti-semitism of the French establishment that permitted his persecution, and developed an empathy for socialism. After the Dreyfus Affair, in which he came out in support of Zola, Dreyfus' great champion, France's work became more engaged socially and slanted increasingly towards political satire. In 1908, he published a satire about the Dreyfus Affair, "L'Île des pingouins" ["Penguin Island"]. Also that year, his biography of Joan of Arc was published. His other major works of his later period include "Les Dieux ont soif (1912) ["The Gods are Athirst"], a novel about the French Revolution, and "La Révolte des anges" (1914) ["The Revolt of the Angels].
Anatole France was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921, "in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament." In the presentation Speech by E.A. Karlfeldt, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, the author of historical novels about the transition from paganism to Christianity was praised for limning "a faith purified by healthy doubts, by the spirit of clarity, a new humanism, a new Renaissance, a new Reformation."
Karlfeldt would go on to praise rance as "the faithful servant of truth and beauty, the heir of humanism, of the lineage of Rabelais, Montaigne, Voltaire, [and ]Renan," but first, he would honor him as embodying the best of French civilization and letters:
"Sweden cannot forget the debt which, like the rest of the civilized world, she owes to French civilization," Karlfeldt said. "Formerly we received in abundance the gifts of French Classicism like the ripe and delicate fruits of antiquity. Without them, where would we be? This is what we must ask ourselves today. In our time Anatole France has been the most authoritative representative of that civilization; he is the last of the great classicists. He has even been called the last European. And indeed, in an era in which chauvinism, the most criminal and stupid of ideologies, wants to use the ruins of the great destruction for the building of new walls to prevent free intellectual exchange between peoples, his clear and beautiful voice is raised higher than that of others, exhorting people to understand that they need one another. Witty, brilliant, generous, this knight without fear is the best champion in the sublime and incessant war which civilization has declared against barbarism. He is a marshal of the France of the glorious era in which Corneille and Racine created their heroes.
France used the occasion to himself honor the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, the Swedish Prime Minister Karl Hjalmar Branting, a diplomat who worked for disarmament and helped draft the Geneva Protocol, a proposed international security system mandating arbitration between belligerent nations. France also denounced the Versailles Treaty as being unjust and a continuation of the Great War and called for the instillation of common sense among diplomats lest Europe meet its doom. After France received his Prize from the King of Sweden, after all the laureates had again ascended the rostrum, France turned to Professor Walther Nernst, the German Nobel laureate for chemistry, and shook his hand cordially for an extended time. The gesture profoundly moved the crowd as the symbolism of the meeting of the heart (literature) and the head (science) and of two nations so recently engaged in waging a ruinous war against each other was not missed. The audience applauded the gesture as a symbol of reconciliation between France, the nation, and Germany.
Anatole France's writings were put on the Index of Forbidden Books of the Roman Catholic Church in the 1920s. Between 1925 and 1935, France's collected works were published in 25 volumes.
Anatole France died on October 12, 1924 in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, France and was buried in the Ancient Cemetery of Neuilly, Hauts-de-Seine. - Director
- Writer
- Actor
Louis Delluc was born on 14 October 1890 in Le Buisson-de-Cadouin, Dordogne, France. He was a director and writer, known for Fumée noire (1920), L'inondation (1924) and The Woman from Nowhere (1922). He was married to Ève Francis. He died on 22 March 1924 in Paris, France.- James Byron Warner was the younger brother of H.B. Warner and the son of Charles Warner, a prominent English stage actor, whose own father James Warner, whom J.B. was named after, was also a famous actor.
Born in Nebraska in 1895, the handsome J.B. joined the Warner family profession, though--unlike his older brother--he never appeared on the Broadway stage. He made his debut as "Jim Warner" in Knickerbocker Star Features' Crooked Road (1916) before appearing as "James Warner" in 1917 in two pictures for Falcon Features, The Secret of Black Mountain (1917) and The Lady in the Library (1917). Moving west to California, he signed with Universal Pictures in 1920 and began appearing in such horse operas as The Tough Tenderfoot (1920), billed now as "James B. Warner." In his third film at Universal, Blazing the Way (1920), he had top billing. It was his last headliner at Univeral.
After a couple of pictures for independent outfits, Warner appeared as a supporting player to western superstar Tom Mix in For Big Stakes (1922) at Fox. For Metro Pictures he headlined the western Big Stakes (1922), directed and produced by Clifford S. Elfelt. Beginning with his second film at Metro, Flaming Hearts (1922), he was billed as "J.B. Warner", a name likely to evoke his more famous brother, who was a top player in the movies and on the Broadway stage.
At Metro J.B. headlined six westerns, all of them produced by Elfelt. He then moved on to Sunset Productions, where he starred in eight low-budget westerns produced by Anthony J. Xydias, most of which were released in 1924.
Warner's career remains a "What if", as the handsome young actor never did mature into one of the "wax works" of the silent era his brother H.B. played in Billy Wilder's 1950 Hollywood classic, Sunset Boulevard (1950). Not yet 30, J.B. died on November 9, 1924, in Los Angeles, California, from tuberculosis. - Music Department
- Writer
- Composer
Every professional recording artist today owes their livelihood to some degree to Victor Herbert. Working closely with John Philip Sousa, Irving Berlin and others, he was the driving force in founding the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) on February 13, 1914. He became its vice-president and director until his death in 1924. The organization has historically worked to protect the rights of creative musicians and continues to do this work today. In 1917, Herbert won a landmark lawsuit before the United States Supreme Court that gave composers, through ASCAP, a right to charge performance fees for the public performance of their music. Herbert was born in Dublin, Ireland to Protestants Edward Herbert (d. 1861) and Fanny Herbert (née Lover). At age three and a half, shortly after the death of his father, young Herbert and his mother moved to live with his maternal grandparents in London, England, where he received encouragement in his creative endeavours. His grandfather was the Irish novelist, playwright, poet and composer Samuel Lover. The Lovers welcomed a steady flow of musicians, writers and artists to their home. Herbert joined his mother in Stuttgart, Germany in 1867, a year after she had married a German physician, Carl Schmidt of Langenargen. In Stuttgart, he received a strong liberal education at the Eberhard-Ludwigs-Gymnasium, which included musical training. Herbert had ambitions to become a physician himself, but medical education in Germany was prohibitively expensive and he fell back on his first real interest as a child, music. Initially studying the piano, flute and piccolo, he ultimately settled on the cello, beginning studies on that instrument with Bernhard Cossmann from age 15 to 18. Herbert then attended the Stuttgart Conservatory. After studying cello, music theory and composition under Max Seifritz, Herbert graduated with a diploma in 1879. He was engaged professionally as a player in concerts in Stuttgart. His first orchestra position was as a flute and piccolo player, but he soon turned solely to the cello. By the time he was 19, Herbert had received engagements as a soloist with several major German orchestras. He played in the orchestra of the wealthy Russian Baron Paul von Derwies for a few years and, in 1880, was a soloist for a year in the orchestra of Eduard Strauss in Vienna. Herbert joined the court orchestra in Stuttgart in 1881, where he remained for the next five years. There he composed his first pieces of instrumental music, playing the solos in the premieres of his first two large-scale works, the Suite for cello and orchestra, Op. 3 (1893) and the Cello Concerto No. 1, Op. 8. In 1883, Herbert was selected by Johannes Brahms to play in a chamber orchestra for the celebration of the life of Franz Liszt, then 72 years old, near Zurich. In 1885 Herbert became romantically involved with Therese Förster (1861-1927), a soprano who had recently joined the court opera for which the court orchestra played. Förster sang several leading roles at the Stuttgart Opera in 1885 through the summer of 1886. After a year of courtship, the couple married on August 14, 1886. On October 24, 1886, they moved to the United States, as they both had been hired by Walter Damrosch and Anton Seidl to join the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Herbert was engaged as the opera orchestra's principal cellist, and Förster was engaged to sing principal roles with the Met. During the voyage to America, Herbert and his wife became friends with their fellow passenger and future conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, Anton Seidl, and other singers joining the Met.
Herbert was a prolific composer, producing two operas, one cantata, 43 operettas, incidental music to 10 stage productions, 31 compositions for orchestra, nine band compositions, nine cello compositions, five violin compositions with piano or orchestra, 22 piano compositions, one flute and clarinet duet with orchestra, numerous songs, including many for the Ziegfeld Follies, and other works, 12 choral compositions, and numerous orchestrations of works by other composers, among other compositions. Some of his best-known works were created for Broadway working with the even more prolific librettist Harry B. Smith. Many of his Broadway productions, such as The Red Mill (1906), Sweethearts (1913), Sally (1920) and Orange Blossoms (1921) were major hits, while others, such as When Sweet Sixteen (1911) were financial disasters. Herbert also composed The Fall of a Nation (1916), one of the first original orchestral scores for a full-length film (a credit often erroneously given to Max Steiner while working for Radio Pictures in the 1930's). The score was thought to be lost, but it turned up in the film-music collection of the Library of Congress. It was given a recording in 1987. During the last years of his career, was frequently asked to compose ballet music for the elaborate production numbers in Broadway revues and the shows of Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern, among others. Throughout his career he was regarded as extremely unpretentious and supportive of his peers. He was also a contributor to the Ziegfeld Follies every year from 1917 to 1924 (see 'Other Works').
As a composer, Herbert is chiefly remembered for his operettas. Of his instrumental works, only a few remained consistently within the concert repertoire after Herbert's death in 1924. However, some of his forgotten works have enjoyed a resurgence of popularity within the last few decades. A statue of him commissioned by ASCAP, by sculptor Edmund Thomas Quinn (1868-1929) was dedicated in 1927 still stands in New York City's Central Park.- Kate Lester was born on 12 June 1857 in Souldham Trope, England, UK. She was an actress, known for The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), The Gay Lord Quex (1919) and His Royal Highness (1918). She died on 12 October 1924 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Actress
- Writer
Eleonora Duse was born on 3 October 1858 in Vigevano, Lombardy, Italy. She was an actress and writer, known for Cenere (1917). She was married to Tebaldo Marchetti. She died on 21 April 1924 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.- Director
- Cinematographer
William Matthew Tilghman served as a lawman for 35 years. In his career he rode with the Earps, was a lawman in Dodge City, Kansas, and battled the Dalton gang and the Wild Bunch. In the early 1900s he became fed up with the way Hollywood glamorized the outlaws of the west and, along with his friends E.D. Nix and Chris Madsen, set out to make a movie of how it really was back then. They starred in the film, Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws (1915), as themselves and arranged to have a member of the Dalton gang named Arkansas Tom released from prison to act as a technical consultant. They met with some difficulty in getting the film shown--theater owners didn't want to show it because there were no name actors in it. Hollywood told them to put Tom Mix in it if they wanted it to sell, but Tilghman refused.
In 1924, some businessmen from the town of Cromwell, Oklahoma, contacted Tilghman, hoping to persuade him to accept the position of town sheriff. Cromwell was a virtual cesspool of crime: bootlegging, gambling and prostitution (many of the prostitutes being underage) were among the illegal activities going on, all under the protection of a corrupt federal Prohibition agent named Wiley Lynn. Cromwell was a booming oil town, and its citizens wanted Tilghman to run the "bad element" out of town in order to preserve its future; they didn't want the town to dry up when the oil did. Tilghman was reluctant at first, but finally took the job and promised to clean up the town. He made good on his promises, closing down gambling houses, arresting bootleggers and moonshiners and sending the prostitutes home to their families. This upset those in town who were running the various crime rings, including Wiley Lynn. One night as Tilghman was having dinner with friends at Ma Murphy's restaurant, Lynn showed up. He claimed he had a warrant, and was coming in to clear out the underage girls who worked there, dancing with lonely men. He was brandishing a pistol, and according to witnesses was either drunk or high on cocaine. As Tilghman and his deputy attempted to disarm Lynn, he pulled out a .22-caliber pistol and shot Tilghman in the mid-section. He escaped, while Tilghman lay dying on the boardwalk. A doctor was summoned, and a friend fetched Tilghman's young wife and children. The doctor was unable to save him, and Tilghman died on a table in Ma Murphy's, surrounded by his friends and family (in 1925 Wiley Lynn was tried for and acquitted of Tilghman's murder, but was dismissed from federal service. In 1932 he was shot and killed by an agent of the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation).- Ben Deeley, also known as J. Bernard Deeley and N. Bernard Deeley, according to various sources, grew up in Folsom, California. As a teenager, he competed to sign up 100 subscribers to the Sacramento Bee, which would earn him a free bicycle. He entered vaudeville in the 1900s, appearing in several blackface acts. For sixteen years, he wore blackface as the title character in an act entitled "The New Bell Boy." He also wrote the lyrics to several songs, including "The Alamo Rag" and "We've Kept the Golden Rule." Deeley entered films in 1914, beginning with comedy shorts. In early 1924, he returned to vaudeville, again in a blackface act.
He met his first wife, Maria Wayne, while doing vaudeville in Los Angeles. But they separated, and Wayne entered films. Deeley divorced her in Chicago, citing abandonment. He had already met actress Barbara La Marr, and they had appeared in a vaudeville act together. He married La Marr in New Jersey in 1918. But this marriage was also doomed. La Marr had married Philip Ainsworth in 1916, but they soon sued each other for divorce. Ainsworth was then sent to San Quentin, after passing bad checks. Eight months later, La Marr married Deeley. La Marr then contended her marriage to Deeley was not legal since she had not lived a year in Illinois. They separated, and La Marr filed for divorce, but eventually dropped the suit. She then sought an annulment, which was granted in 1920. Things got worse for Deeley when an attorney, Herman Roth, was arrested on extortion charges. The lawyer had threatened La Marr, telling her he planned to amend a divorce complaint he had filed on behalf of Deeley so as to include seven names of prominent film personalities (including Roscoe Arbuckle) as correspondents. Before these issues could be straightened out, Deeley died of double pneumonia in Los Angeles, on September 23, 1924. He was 46. - E. Nesbit was born on 15 August 1858 in London, England, UK. E. was a writer, known for Masterpiece (1971), The Railway Children Return (2022) and The Phoenix and the Magic Carpet (1995). E. was married to Thomas Tucker and Hubert Bland. E. died on 4 May 1924 in New Romney, Kent, England, UK.
- Emanuel Reicher was born on 18 June 1849 in Bochnia, Galicia, Austrian Empire [now Malopolskie, Poland]. He was an actor, known for Crown of Thorns (1923) and Heimat und Fremde (1913). He was married to Lina Harf and Hedwig Kindermann (aka Hedwig Reicher, actress). He died on 15 May 1924 in Berlin, Germany.
- Writer
- Director
- Soundtrack
Àngel Guimerà was born on 6 May 1847 in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. He was a writer and director, known for El padre Juanico (1923), Lowlands (1954) and Tierra baja (1912). He died on 18 July 1924 in Barcelona, Cataluña, Spain.- Harry Booker was born in 1850 in Kentucky, USA. He was an actor, known for The Hottentot (1922), Skirts (1921) and Her First Kiss (1919). He died on 28 June 1924 in San Diego, California, USA.
- Fred Williams was born in 1849 in New York, USA. He was an actor, known for The Dazzling Miss Davison (1917), A Fallen Idol (1919) and The Half Million Bribe (1916). He died on 4 August 1924 in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York, USA.
- George Mallory was born on 18 June 1886 in Mobberly, England, UK. He was married to Ruth Thackeray Turner. He died on 8 June 1924 in North Col on Mount Everest, Tibet.
- Forrest Robinson was born on 2 August 1858 in Rochester, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Souls for Sale (1923), The Dawn of a Tomorrow (1915) and The Meanest Man in the World (1923). He was married to Mabel Bert. He died on 6 January 1924 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Owen Evans was born on 9 April 1878 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor, known for Freed by Fido (1917), Treed (1916) and Some Liars (1916). He died on 10 September 1924 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Irish-American gangster Charles Dion O'Bannion, nicknamed "Deanie", was, unlike many of his fellow contemporary gangsters, born and raised in the US. From the small Illinois town of Marca, his family moved to Chicago after his mother's death in 1901, settling in an Irish neighborhood on the city's North Side.
O'Bannion's childhood friends included future gangsters Hymie Weiss, George Moran--aka "Bugs Moran"--and Vincent Drucci (aka "The Schemer"), all members of an Irish strongarm robbery crew called The Market Street Gang. The gang came into its own during the infamous Chicago newspaper wars, in which the city's competing newspapers hired gangs of thugs to beat up business owners who didn't sell their paper or newspaper boys who sold the competition's paper. O'Bannion graduated from beating up newspaper boys to safecracking--for which he was eventually arrested--and drugging patrons' drinks in the dives he worked at, after which he and his gang would rob them when they passed out.
O'Bannion was still a small-time hood when Prohibition came into effect in 1920, and it was then he found his calling. He began by smuggling beer, whiskey and gin from Canada to the US, and was extremely successful at it. He built his own outfit, known as The North Side Gang, and made huge amounts of money supplying the wealthy Chicago area called the Gold Coast, along the lakefront, with illegal liquor. He still kept his hand in the strongarm business, however, and his mob became infamous for hijacking the trucks of rival bootleggers, beating up or killing the drivers and taking their loads. When he married in 1921, he indulged his passion for flowers--and got himself a legitimate front for his rackets--by buying a flower shop, which eventually became the main supplier of floral arrangements for the funerals of many of the gangsters killed in the city's internecine mob wars.
Italian gangster Johnny Torrio had called a meeting of Chicago's bootleggers in 1920 to divide up the city and put a stop to the bloody battles among the various gangs. O'Bannion attended the meeting and was awarded the North Side territory, including the very profitable Gold Coast section, in exchange for supplying the Torrio gang with muscle in its effort to ensure that their candidate won the election for mayor of nearby Cicero, thus ensuring a haven from which they could run their organizations without fear of prosecution.
The "agreement" only lasted for a few years before O'Bannion started chafing under Torrio's control. In addition, the city of Cicero had become a virtual gold mine for Torrio since he assumed control of it, and O'Bannion wanted in. Torrio mollified him by giving him a strip of the city in which to establish his speakeasies. O'Bannion used that to persuade other Chicago speakeasy owners to move their operations to his Cicero fiefdom, to which Torrio took strong offense, but O'Bannion refused Torrio's order to stop bringing in new speakeasies. In the meantime, a family of brutally violent Italian bootleggers called the Gemma Brothers began moving into O'Bannion's Chicago territory, and his complaints to Torrio about them went unheeded. Infuriated, O'Bannion began hijacking the Gemma gang's trucks. The Gemmas decided to kill O'Bannion and wipe out his mob, but were stopped by the other Italian gangs, who did not want a full-fledged gang war bringing heat on them. The last straw, though, was when Torrio discovered that O'Bannion had double-crossed him on a liquor deal that had cost him more than $500,000. He finally gave the Gemmas the go-ahead to kill O'Bannion.
On November 10, 1924, on the pretense of buying flowers for a fellow mobster's funeral, gangster Frankie Yale and two compatriots visited O'Bannion's flower shop. As O'Bannion extended his hand to greet Yale, the mobster suddenly grabbed his arm with both hands and the two gunmen pulled out pistols and emptied them into O'Bannion. He died instantly. - Marie Corelli was born on 1 May 1855 in London, England, UK. She was a writer, known for Leaves From Satan's Book (1920), The Treasure of Heaven (1916) and Innocent (1921). She died on 21 April 1924 in Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire, England, UK.
- Actor
- Writer
John M. East born John Marlborough East in London in 1860. John began on comedy and drama theatre from the 1880's. Popular gentleman character and support actor, appeared in more than 30 British silent drama and adventure movies, making his film debut as Tom Cribb in Harold M. Shaw's 'The House of Temperley' starring Ben Webster for the London Film Co in 1913. Perhaps his best known roles was as Little John in 'In the Days of Robin Hood' starring H. Agar Lyons in the title role made at the Natural Colour Kinematograph studios in 1913 and as Old Kipps in 'Kipps' starring George K. Arthur at the Stoll Film Co in 1921. He made his final movie as the Shepherd in 'Owd Bob' directed by Henry Edwards for Atlantic Union Film Co in 1924 John died that same year in London age 64. In the mid 1910's he became so well-known in the movies he received over 3000 votes in Picturegoer magazine's 1916 contest to establish the 'Greatest British Film Player. John was also a screenwriter and one of the co-founders of the Neptune Film Company in Borehamwood which is today the site of Elstree studios.- Carl Sauerman was born in 1868 in Stockholm, Sweden. He was an actor, known for My Wife (1918), The American Way (1919) and The Black Circle (1919). He died on 9 April 1924 in Brooklyn, New York, USA.
- Barney Bernard was born on 17 August 1876 in Rochester, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Potash and Perlmutter (1923), Phantom Fortunes (1916) and A Prince in a Pawnshop (1916). He was married to Rose Francis. He died on 21 March 1924 in New York City, New York, USA.
- Harry Ennis was an actor, known for A Messenger to Kearney (1912), When Edith Played Judge and Jury (1912) and The Trade Gun Bullet (1912). He was married to Sadie Olsen. He died on 12 October 1924 in Brooklyn, New York, USA.
- Actor
- Production Manager
Ernest Joy was born on 20 January 1878 in Iowa, USA. He was an actor and production manager, known for Cameo Kirby (1914), The Dancin' Fool (1920) and Joan the Woman (1916). He was married to Jessie Busley and Mabel Van Buren. He died on 12 February 1924 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Suzanne Sheldon was born on 24 January 1872 in Rutland, Vermont, USA. She was an actress, known for Kismet (1914). She was married to Henry Ainley. She died on 21 March 1924 in London, England, UK.
- Richard Morris was born on 3 January 1862 in Charlestown, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for The Spirit of the USA (1924), Granny (1913) and The Sea Lion (1921). He died on 11 October 1924 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Bobby Franks was born on 19 September 1909 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He died on 22 May 1924 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Sándor Bródy was born on 23 July 1863 in Eger, Hungary. He was a writer, known for Surrender (1927), A 300 éves ember (1914) and Leánybecsület (1923). He died on 12 August 1924 in Budapest, Hungary.
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Author and lyricist, educated at Holy Cross School and a charter member of ASCAP (1914). He served overseas during World War I, and later wrote songs for Broadway and London revues, plus special material for Bert Williams, Blossom Seeley, Frank Tinney, Savoy & Brennan, Trixie Friganza, and Mae West. He was also a columnist for Variety and Dramatic Mirror. His chief musical collaborators included Fred Fisher and Ray Walker. His popular-song compositions include "Any Little Girl that's a Nice Little Girl Is the Right Little Girl for Me", "Think It Over, Mary", "Take Me With You, Cutey", "That's How You Can Tell They're Irish", "Not Me", "Your Mother's Gone Away to Join the Army".- Andor Szakács was born in 1865 in Étfalva, Hungary [now Romania]. He was an actor, known for Baccarat (1919), Havasi Magdolna (1915) and A megbélyegzett (1917). He died on 21 March 1924 in Cluj, Romania.
- Frank Dayton was born in 1865 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for The Fall of Montezuma (1912), The Plum Tree (1914) and The Right of Way (1913). He was married to Jessa Hatcher (actress). He died on 17 October 1924 in New York City, New York, USA.
- Charles Pacific (Chick) Morrison was born on April 3, 1878 at Morrison, Colorado, USA, the son of Tom Morrison. Upon reaching adulthood Chick Morrison was a familiar figure throughout the western cattle country, being an expert cowboy as a trainer of animals, especially horses. Morrison often appeared in rodeos and riding contests, and at his Morrison home trained horses for trick and fancy riding as well as breaking wild horses.
In 1909 the Selig company came to Morrison to film some of their famous "Broncho Billy" series of two-reel thrillers. Chick Morrison gained director Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson's attention with his daring and expert horsemanship and his control over the animals, and Morrison was hired to double for the leading man in some of the more dangerous scenes. From that time on Morrison rapidly grew in prominence in the movie industry, moving to California with the Selig company. Morrison was rapidly advanced to playing leads, and his expertise as an animal trainer brought him into great demand for training animals for some of the largest pictures yet made. Later Morrison went to the Universal company, and then the Hal Roach company. While under contract to Hal Roach in Los Angeles Morrison was killed in production on June 20, 1924 when his favorite horse, Young Steamboat, fell over backwards upon him while a riding sequence was being filmed, killing Morrison instantly. Young Steamboat had been trained with difficulty in Morrison and had been known to be especially wild.
Brother Pete Morrison was another prominent Hollywood actor, and brothers Carl and Bob, and father Tom, were also connected with the movie industry and lived in Los Angeles. - Samuel Cooper Seale was born to John Cooper and Sara Yates Seale in Waiohinu, Kau, Hawaii. He met Cecil B. DeMille on the beach at Waikiki in 1915, and took his advice to go to Hollywood where he appeared in at least two of DeMille's movies. He enlisted in the Army with the outbreak of World War I and was shipped to France. He received an injury and was medically discharged and returned to the United States before the war's end. He may have been slightly injured while tied to a stake being carried by an elephant during the filming of The Son of Tarzan in 1920. For years rumors persisted that he died shortly after the film was completed from injuries received during the filming. In 1921 Searle gave up acting to become a sculptor and painter. His career as an artist was cut short by disease. He died of cancer at the age of 33 in Los Angeles, Calif., on Feb. 14, 1924.
- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Franz Schmelter was born in 1870 in Germany. He was a director and writer, known for Herr und Frau Schliephake (1916), Die Schlange der Kleopatra (1917) and Der Millionenschuster (1916). He died on 10 December 1924 in Heidelberg-Schlierbach, Germany.- Writer
- Music Department
- Composer
Ferruccio Busoni was born on 1 April 1866 in Florence, Tuscany, Italy. He was a writer and composer, known for Warrior (2011), Amour (2012) and Ida (2013). He was married to Gerda Sjöstrand. He died on 27 July 1924 in Berlin, Germany.- Andrew Irvine was born on 8 April 1902 in Birkenhead, England, UK. He died on 8 June 1924 in North Col, Mount Everest, Tibet.
- Actor
- Director
- Writer
L. Rogers Lytton was born on 9 April 1867 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He was an actor and director, known for The Third Degree (1919), The Fates and Flora Fourflush (1914) and A Regular Girl (1919). He died on 9 August 1924 in New York City, New York, USA.- Writer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Glen MacDonough (1870 - 1924) was an American author and composer, best known as the librettist of Victor Herbert's operetta, Babes in Toyland, and a lyricist for L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz . He was also one of the nine founders of ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers). MacDonough was born into show business, he was the son of theater manager Thomas B. MacDonough and actress/author Laura Don. Glen MacDonough wrote continuously until the year before his death in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1924. His last work was in 1923, Within Four Walls, a play.