Background
Marshall Neilan was born on 11 April 1891 in San Bernardino, California, United States.
Marshall Neilan was born on 11 April 1891 in San Bernardino, California, United States.
Neilan began his movie career as an actor. He was in Judith of Bethulia (13, D. W. Griffith) and a number of Dwan’s early pictures before Dwan gave him a chance to direct. Neilan went to the Selig company and by 1920 he was directing for his own production company. He was among the most perceptive of Mary Pickfords directors, showing a sense of comedy as well as the necessary melodramatic flourish on Rebecca of Sunny- brook Farm, The Little Princess, Stella Mans—in which Piekford played two parts, rich girl and waif—Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley, M’Liss, Daddy Long Legs, and Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall.
Otherwise, Neilan moved from Goldwyn, to MGM, to First National, and then to the nomadic career of someone famed for being unreliable and frowned upon by Louis B. Mayer. The Lotus Eater was John Barrymore and Colleen Moore; Tess of the DVrbervilles starred Conrad Nagel and Blanche Sweet, Neilan’s wife; Peggy Hopkins Joyce made one of her appearances in The Skyrocket; Bebe Daniels was in Take Me Home; Ina Claire in The Awful Truth. Neilan u'as in decline from 1930 onward, although he had a writer’s credit that year on Hell's Angels (Howard Hughes). Impoverished during the 1940s. his last appearance was in 1957 in a small role in A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan).
American directors illustrate the sustaining powers of hard work and regular habits. Very few sank from eminence as dramatically as Neilan or with such vague legends of drunken promise. Some say he loathed sound, because of its initial restriction of camera mobility; some that he was outspoken enough to give lasting offense to Louis B. Mayer. But Allan Dwan, who provided Neilan’s first chance, believed that his promise sank with the level in the bottle: “Well, he ruined himself with liquor and indifference and bitterness. He became a humorous cynic. But liquor did it."
Dwan also acknowledged Neilan’s Irish ancestry—he was usually known as "Mickey"—which may have contributed to his boasting fondness for casual methods on set. Inclined to make things up as he went along—or to extend that widespread approach into the era of producers and accountancy—he was also a famous womanizer, and not always punctual. There is a story of Man Piekford being forced to direct one of her own films because of his absence and of Neilan arriving during the day. as one of the watching crowd, to see how she was doing. Years later, however, in 1933, Piekford fired Neilan from Secrets when he was too drunk to work.