Henry B. Walthall
Actor · 1878 – 1936 · Shelby County, Alabama, USA
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Henry Brazeale Walthall (March 16, 1878 – June 17, 1936) was an American stage and film actor. He appeared as the Little Colonel in D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). In New York in 1901, Walthall won a role in Under Southern Skies by Charlotte Blair Parker. He performed in the play for three years, in New York and on tour. With the company of Henry Miller he gained recognition on Broadway in plays including Pippa Passes, The Only Way and William Vaughn Moody's The Great Divide (1906–08). His fellow cast member James Kirkwood introduced Walthall to D. W. Griffith, and at the conclusion of that engagement, Walthall joined the Biograph Company. His career in movies began in 1909 at Biograph Studios in New York with a leading role in the film A Convict's Sacrifice. This film also featured James Kirkwood, and was directed by D. W. Griffith, a director that played a huge part in Walthall's rise to stardom. As the industry grew in size and popularity, Griffith emerged as a director and Walthall found himself a mainstay of the Griffith company, frequently working alongside such Griffith regulars as Owen Moore, Kate Bruce, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Mae Marsh, Bobby Harron and Jack and Mary Pickford. He followed Griffith's departure from New York's Biograph to California's Reliance-Majestic Studios in 1913. After a few months with Reliance, he joined Pathé for a short period. He decided to go into the producing business and formed The Union Feature Film Company, the first to be devoted entirely to full-length films. The venture was not successful, however, and he again became associated with Griffith's company. Given the relatively short length of films in the early years, Walthall frequently found himself cast in dozens of films each year. He gained national attention in 1915 for his role as Colonel Ben Cameron in Griffith's highly influential and controversial epic, The Birth of a Nation. Walthall's portrayal of a Confederate veteran rounding up the Ku Klux Klan won him large-scale fame, and Walthall was soon able to emerge as a leading actor in the years leading up to the 1920s, parting ways with Griffith. Walthall continued working in films through the 1920s, appearing in The Plastic Age with Gilbert Roland and Clara Bow. He portrayed Roger Chillingworth in Victor Seastrom's 1926 adaptation of The Scarlet Letter opposite Lillian Gish. Walthall continued his career into the 1930s. After his performance in director John Ford's 1934 film Judge Priest starring Will Rogers he enjoyed a golden period of his career. He portrayed Dr. Manette in A Tale of Two Cities (1935), starring Ronald Colman. In 1936 he appeared as Marcel in The Devil-Doll. He was gravely ill during his final film, China Clipper. Frank Capra wanted Walthall to portray the High Lama in his 1937 film, Lost Horizon. "Frail and failing, he died before we could test him," Capra wrote. Walthall has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 6201 Hollywood Boulevard.
Movies24
Movie7.2DramaActionTwo young men, one rich, one middle class, both in love with the same woman, become US Air Corps fighter pilots and, eventually, heroic flying aces during World War I. Devoted best friends, their mutual love of the girl eventually threatens their bond. Meanwhile, a hometown girl who's the lovestruck lifelong next door neighbor of one of them pines away.
Wings
1927 · 346 votes
Movie5.9DramaHistoryTwo families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.
The Birth of a Nation
1915 · 615 votes
Movie6.9ComedyDramaBroadway director Julian Marsh needs just one more hit show so he can retire and recover his health. It looks like he just may pull it off until temperamental star Dorthy Brock breaks her ankle on the eve of the show's premiere and has to be replaced by her understudy Peggy.
42nd Street
1933 · 224 votes
Movie6.9HistoryDramaSet against the conditions leading up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, French doctor Alexandre Manette serves an 18-year imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris, followed by his release to live in London with the daughter he has never met.
A Tale of Two Cities
1935 · 86 votes
Movie9.0CrimeA young man just released from prison can't find work because no employer will hire an ex-convict. Broke and hungry, he steals money off of a painter. The painter, however, takes pity on him and decides to help him get his life back together.
Parted Curtains
1920 · 1 votes
Movie7.0DramaJust before he propelled the crime melodrama to new, macabre heights in The Unholy Three, Browning directed this partially lost morality tale pertaining to a different kind of horror: that of a middle-class family living beyond their means and falling prey to moneylenders. Produced by and starring Ruth Roland for FBO Studios, a small operation that later became RKO Pictures, Dollar Down follows Roland as the spendthrift daughter of a manufacturing firm’s general manager (Henry Walthall), who pawns a ring purchased on credit to throw an extravagant party and sends the family’s livelihood into a tailspin. Because its last reel completely disintegrated before it could be copied, the film remains an ultra-rare curio that nonetheless captures an important chapter in Browning’s career before his successful string of films made for MGM.
Dollar Down
1925 · 1 votes
Movie6.4ComedyRomanceJaunty young policeman Danny Dolan falls in love with waterfront cafe waitress Helen Riley.
Me and My Gal
1932 · 40 votes
Movie6.8HorrorScience FictionRespected Parisian banker Paul Lavond is framed for robbery and murder by crooked associates and sent to prison. Years later, he escapes with a friend, a scientist who was working on a method to reduce humans to a height of mere inches (all for the good of humanity, of course). Lavond, however, is consumed with hatred for those who betrayed him, and takes the scientist's methods back to Paris to exact painful revenge.
The Devil-Doll
1936 · 124 votes
Movie6.5DramaHorrorAfter a brief view of Edgar Allan Poe's family background, his grandfather, David Poe, Sr., an Irish immigrant to America, and his father, David Poe, Jr., the poet's life is depicted from the death of his mother and his subsequent adoption by John Allan, to his own tortured death in 1849. Expelled from the University of Virginia for incurring too many debts, Poe nonetheless courts and marries Virginia Clemm but is disowned by his foster father. While residing in Fordham, New York, Poe tries to earn a living as a writer but meets with little financial success. Overwhelmed by their impoverished state, Virginia dies and Poe sinks into a profound depression. Always a victim of alcohol and subject to hallucinations, Poe first imagines that his neighbor, Helen Whitman, is Virginia, then plunges himself into an elaborate delusion in which his wife's spirit, various other spectres and a raven finally drive him to his own death.
The Raven
1915 · 6 votes
Movie5.9ActionWesternTwo young girls are sent away to live with their uncle, which sets off a chain of events resulting in an Indian attack on the town.
The Battle at Elderbush Gulch
1913 · 35 votes
Movie6.3DramaSharecropper's son Marvin tries to help his community overcome poverty and ignorance.
The Cabin in the Cotton
1932 · 21 votes
Movie5.7RomanceDramaMississippi, 1830's. Tom Rumsford comes back to Magnolia Landing, his parents'estate. Having been brought up in the North by Quaker relatives, he just hates violence and accordingly refuses a duel. As this is the only way in the South to settle a dispute between gentlemen, Tom's father is so infuriated by his behavior that Tom has no other choice but leave. Away from Magnolia Landing, Tom learns bravery and returns seven years later as "the notorious Colonel Blake", the terror of the Lower Mississippi.
The River of Romance
1929 · 3 votes
- MovieDrama
Bert Stafford, who is in love with Sylvia Randolph, his mother's ward, despises Duncan Irving, a poor boy who is the object of Sylvia's affections.
Classmates
1914
Movie6.2WesternIn this fictionalized biography, young Pancho Villa takes to the hills after killing an overseer in revenge for his father's death.
Viva Villa!
1934 · 33 votes
- Movie7.0Drama
Driven from home because of his father’s temper, 20-year-old Frank Bradbury struggles to control his own strong emotions. When a schoolmate harasses his sweetheart, Rose Claybourne Frank attacks him and is expelled from university. After becoming engaged to Rose they return to his home, seeking his father's consent for their engagement. Their mothers are hopeful for reconciliation, but Frank’s father is enraged. Frank arrives while the father is attacking his mother and Frank kills him with a paper weight. Brought to trial he is acquitted on the grounds of justifiable homicide and Rose and he marry.
Temper
1915 · 1 votes
Movie5.8DramaAn aviator ignores skeptics to make the first commercial flight from San Francisco to China.
China Clipper
1936 · 12 votes
Movie9.0WesternA silent Western about a rough rider, that winds up in jail and the adventure begins.
The Kickback
1922 · 1 votes
Movie6.1DramaHistoryIn the 7th-century B.C., the Assyrians storm the walls of the Jewish city of Bethulia, leaving its people frightened and ready to hand their homes over to the invaders. As the Assyrians close in, the citizens are cut off from the outside world, and they began to starve. Seeing her people's desperation, Jewish widow Judith poses as a harem worker, winning her entry into the Assyrian camp, where she plans to kill their general, Holofernes.
Judith of Bethulia
1914 · 32 votes
Movie10.0RomanceDramaTwo men, Philip Whittemore (Henry B. Walthall) and Thorpe (Harry Northrup) both go to the Northwest to gain the right-of-way for their railroad company from D'Arcambal (Emmett King). Whittemore arrives first and D'Arcambal refuses to meet with him until he saves his daughter, Jeanne (Pauline Starke) from going over the rapids. Then Thorpe arrives and tries to use force by kidnapping Jeanne and insisting that he is her father.
Flower of the North
1921 · 1 votes
Movie6.3DramaRomanceA dedicated young doctor places his patients above everyone else in his life. Unfortunately, his social register fianceé can't accept the fact that he considers an appointment in the operating room more important than attending a cocktail party. He soon drifts into an affair with a pretty nurse who shares his passion for healing.
Men in White
1934 · 14 votes
Movie6.3DramaRomanceRuby falls in love with small-time con man Eddie. During a botched blackmail scheme, Eddie accidentally kills the man they were setting up. Eddie takes off and Ruby is sent to a reformatory for two years.
Hold Your Man
1933 · 21 votes
Movie6.6HorrorMysteryThe abandoned Balfour House, the owner of which was found dead five years earlier, comes back to life with the arrival of two suspicious sinister-looking tenants. This film was lost in the 1965 MGM vault fire; only a few stills exist.
London After Midnight
1927 · 31 votes
Movie5.0DramaFantasyJohn Howard Payne leaves home and begins a career in the theater. Despite encouragement from his mother and his sweetheart, Payne begins leading a life of dissolute habits, which soon leads to ruin and misery. In deep despair, he recalls better days, and writes a song that later provides inspiration to several others in their own times of need.
Home, Sweet Home
1914 · 15 votes
Movie5.5HistoryDramaAn episodic dramatization of the 18th President of the United States' life, including his early years, affair with Ann Rutledge, courtship of Mary Todd, debates with Stephen A. Douglas, the election of 1860, his presidency during the Civil War, and finally his assassination at Ford's Theater in 1865.
Abraham Lincoln
1930 · 42 votes