Hobart Bosworth--pioneering movie director, writer, producer and
actor--was born Hobart Van Zandt Bosworth on August 11, 1867, in
Marietta, OH. He was a direct descendant of Miles Standish and John and
Priscilla Alden on his father's side and of New York's Van Zandt
family, the first Dutch settlers to land in the New World, on his
mother's side. Bosworth was always proud of his lineage.
After his mother died his father remarried and the young Hobart took a
dislike to his stepmother. Convinced that he was "ill used and cruelly
treated," as he told an interviewer in 1914, he ran away from home for
to New York City. He signed on as a cabin boy on the clipper ship
"Sovereign of the Seas" and was soon out at sea.
After his first voyage, a five-month affair that took him from New York
to San Francisco, he spent his wages on candy. Sleeping it off on a
bench in the park in back of Trinity Church, the young boy did not know
that the organ music he was listening to as he dozed was being played
by his very own uncle. A Captain Roberts, who found stevedore work for
the lad, told him of his uncle's presence in San Francisco. He
continued as a sailor, as the sea was in his family's blood, eventually
spending three years at sea. "All my people were of the sea and my
father was a naval officer," he told an interviewer. He spent 11 months
on an old-fashioned whaler plying the Arctic region, then was employed
doing odd jobs in San Francisco. After turns as a semi-professional
boxer and wrestler, Bosworth tried ranching in Southern California and
Mexico, where he learned to become an expert horseman. Finally, his
interest in art led him to the stage.
Thinking he'd like to become a landscape painter, a friend suggested
that Bosworth work as a stage manager to raise the money to study art.
Acting on his friend's advice, Bosworth obtained a job with McKee
Rankin as a stage manager at the California Theatre in San Francisco.
With the money he made, he undertook the study of painting. Eventually
he was pressed into duty as an actor with a small part with three
lines. Though he botched the lines, he was given other small roles.
Bosworth was 18 years old and on the cusp of a life in the theater.
He signed on with Louis Morrison to be part of a road company for a
season as both an actor and as Morrison's dresser, playing
William Shakespeare's
"Cymbeline" and "Measure for Measure" (during his time with the
company, Hobarth and another writer wrote a version of "Faust" that
Morrison used for 20 years in repertory). By 1887 he was acting at the
Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco, and became proficient enough on stage
to give Shakespearean recitals in costume the following year. He had
acted almost all of the famous characters in the Shakespearean canon by
the time he was 21 years old, though he admitted that he was the worst
Macbeth ever.
Bosworth eventually wound up in Park City, UT, where he was forced to
work in a mine, pushing an ore wagon in order to raise money. He
escaped the pits to tour with magician Hermann the Great as the
conjurer's assistant for a tour through Mexico. For the first time in
eleven years, the 21-year-old Bosworth met his father. Hobarth
recalled, "[H]e looked at me and said 'Hum! I couldn't lick you now,
son.'" They never met again.
Bosworth arrived back in New York in December 1888, and was hired by
Augustin Daly to play Charles the Wrestler in "As You Like It." He did
so well in the role that Daly kept him on. Bosworth remained with
Daly's company for 10 years, in which he played mostly minor parts.
Seven times while he was with the company it made foreign tours,
playing in Berlin, Cologne, London, Paris and other European cities.
Eventually, being kept in small parts eroded his confidence, and
Bosworth left Daly to sign on with
Julia Marlowe, who cast him in leads in
Shakespearean plays. Just as Bosworth began to taste stage stardom in
New York, he was struck down with tuberculosis, a very serious ailment
in the 19th century. Bosworth was forced to give up the stage, as he
was not allowed to toil indoors. Though he made a rapid recovery, he
returned to the stage too quickly and suffered a relapse. For the rest
of his working life he had to balance his acting with periods of rest
so as to keep his T.B. under control.
Bosworth re-established himself as a lead actor on the New York stage,
appearing opposite the famous actress
Minnie Maddern Fiske (Mary Augusta
Davey) in the 1903 Boradway revival of
Henrik Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler." He also
appeared that year on the Great White Way as the lead in "Marta of the
Lowlands," which was produced by
Harrison Grey Fiske, Mrs. Fiske's
husband. The role propelled him to Broadway stardom. However, he was
forced again to give up the stage when he lost 70 pounds in ten weeks.
Moving to Tempe, AZ, to partake of the salubrious climate improved his
chances of battling T.B., and eventually he got the disease under
control. While he was not actually an invalid, he was forced to live
like one and remain in a warm climate lest he suffer a relapse. The
T.B. robbed him of his voice, but since he was no longer on stage, it
didn't matter. There was a new medium for actors: motion pictures.
Bosworth moved to San Diego, which had a reputation of having the most
perfect climate in the continental United States, and in 1908 was
contracted to make a film by the Selig Polyscope Co. Shooting was to be
down in the outdoors, and he did not have to use his voice, which was
in a poor condition. The arrangement was perfect for him. "I believe,
after all, that it is the motion pictures that have saved my life," he
recounted less than a decade later. "How could I have lived on and on,
without being able to carry out any of my cherished ambitions? What
would my life have meant? Here, in pictures, I am realizing my biggest
hopes." Signing with Selig, Bosworth eventually spearheaded the movie
company's move to Los Angeles. He is widely credited with being the
star of the first movie made on the West Coast. Due to his role in
pioneering California for the film industry, Bosworth often was
referred to as the "Dean of Hollywood." He wrote the scenarios for the
second and third pictures he acted in, and directed the third.
According to his own count, he eventually wrote 112 scenarios and
produced 84 pictures for Selig. Bosworth was attracted to
Jack London's work due to his
out-of-doors filming experience and the requirements of his health,
which obviated acting in studios. "In all my reading I have never come
across better material for motion picture plays than Jack London's
stories, and I hope to go right through the whole lot."
In 1913 he formed his own company, Hobart Bosworth Productions Co., to
produce a series of Jack London melodramas. He produced, directed and
starred in the company's first picture, playing Wolf Larsen in
The Sea Wolf (1913), with London
himself appearing as a sailor. The movie was released in the U.S. by
W.W. Hodkinson Corp. D.W. Griffith also
released a Jack London picture earlier that year,
Two Men of the Desert (1913),
but Bosworth followed up "The Sea Wolf" with
The Chechako (1914), with
Jack Conway playing the lead as Smoke
Bellew, the title character of the eponymous London novel the movie is
based on. "The Chechako" and some of the subsequent Boswoth-London
pictures were distributed through Paramount, the releasing arm of
Famous Players-Lasky.
Conway also starred in the Bosworth-directed follow-up
The Valley of the Moon (1914),
in which Bosworth had a supporting role. He also appeared as an actor
in John Barleycorn (1914), which
he co-directed with J. Charles Haydon.
He produced, directed, wrote and acted in
Martin Eden (1914) and
An Odyssey of the North (1914),
playing the lead in the latter, which was released by Paramount. He
finished up the series by producing, directing and playing the lead in
the two-part "Burning Daylight" series:
Burning Daylight: The Adventures of 'Burning Daylight' in Alaska (1914)
and
Burning Daylight: The Adventures of 'Burning Daylight' in Civilization (1914),
both of which were released by Paramount.
Bosworth hooked up with the Oliver Morosco Photoplay Co., making its
Los Angeles facility on North Occidental Boulevard his headquarters.
Subsequently Bosworth Inc. and Oliver Morosco Photoplay were absorbed
by Paramount in 1916. Between 1913 and 1921 Hobart Bosworth Productions
produced a total of 31 pictures, most of which starred Bosworth. The
company ceased operations after producing
The Sea Lion (1921).
The merger with Paramount ended the period in Bosworth's creative life
where he was a major force in the motion picture industry, which was
undergoing changes as the industry matured and solidified. He directed
his last picture even before the merger,
The White Scar (1915), which he
also wrote and starred in for Universal Film Manufacturing Co. After
his own production company wound up, Hobart Bosworth began playing
supporting roles as an actor. He divorced his first wife, Adele
Farrington, in 1919, the year after their son George was born.
He survived the transition to sound. Aside from appearing in Warner
Bros.' showcase film
The Show of Shows (1929), his
talking picture debut proper was in the short subject
A Man of Peace (1928) for
Vitaphone, while his first sound feature was Vitaphone's Ruritania
drama General Crack (1929),
starring John Barrymore.
Though he appeared in small roles in A-list films, including some
classics, Bosworth primarily made his living as a prominently billed
character actor in "B" westerns and serials churned out by Poverty Row
studios. In his roles in A and B pictures, he typically was typecast as
a fatherly type, such as dads, clergymen, judges, governors and the
like, though occasionally he got to play a heavy. His most memorable
roles included playing
John Gilbert's father in both
King Vidor's classic
Die Parade des Todes (1925) and
Clarence Brown's
Herrin der Liebe (1928),
and Conrad Nagel's father in
Du Barry, Woman of Passion (1930).
He also appeared in the Al Jolson vehicle
Mammy (1930), directed by
Michael Curtiz, and in the Little
Rascals' only feature film,
General Spanky (1936) (a flop).
In addition to Vidor, Brown and Curtiz, Bosworth worked with other
great directors, including Ernst Lubitsch
(in support of John Barrymore in
Der König der Bernina (1929)), D.W. Griffith
(playing Gen. Robert E. Lee in
Abraham Lincoln (1930)),
'Frank
Capra' (in
Das Luftschiff (1931)) and
Lady für einen Tag (1933)) and
John Ford (headlining
Hearts of Oak (1924), starring in
Die Tochter des Tyrannen (1928) and
playing the Chaplain in support of
Will Rogers in
Mit Volldampf voraus (1935)).
Bosworth had a featured role in the early science-fiction movie
Just Imagine (1930) and played
Chingachgook in support of star
Harry Carey's Hawkeye in Mascot Pictures'
serial
Der letzte Mohikaner (1932).
As the sound era wore on, he was reduced to bit parts, frequently
uncredited, in such A-pictures as the
W.C. Fields comedy
Beine sind Gold wert (1932)
and the Errol Flynn western
Sein letztes Kommando (1941).
He kept working until the year before his death, appearing in six films
in 1942, including an uncredited bit role as a clergyman in support of
Barbara Stanwyck in
The Gay Sisters (1942), his
penultimate picture. His last film was Universal Pictures' western
Sin Town (1942), starring
Constance Bennett and
Broderick Crawford, which was
advertised with the intriguing tagline "The Glory Hole of the Booming
Oil Towns!"
Altogether, Hobart Bosworth acted in over 250 movies from 1908 to
1942, directed 44 known pictures from 1911 to 1915, and wrote 27 &
produced 11 known pictures from 1911 to 1921. His actual count might be
hundreds more.
Hobart Bosworth, the "Dean of Hollywood," died on December 30, 1943 of
pneumonia in Glendale, CA. He was 76 years old. He was survived by his
second wife, Cecile, and his son George.
