Background
Charles Sullivan was born on September 18, 1886 in Stillwater, Minnesota, United States.
2017 Buford Ave, St Paul, MN 55108, United States
Charles Sullivan studied at the University of Minnesota but dropped out in 1907.
Charles Sullivan was born on September 18, 1886 in Stillwater, Minnesota, United States.
Charles Sullivan attended public schools of St. Paul, Minnesota. He studied at the University of Minnesota but dropped out in 1907.
After C. Gardner Sullivan dropped out of the University he took a job at the Daily News in St. Paul. His career as a journalist would subsequently take him from place to place before he ended up in New York City, where he wrote a syndicated column for the Evening Journal. It was during this period in New York that Sullivan made the connections that started him in the career for which he is remembered, that of a Hollywood scriptwriter.
In New York, Sullivan began writing story sketches that he sold to a few vaudeville shows and shopped around to various film producers. The first film company to buy one of his scenarios was Edison and Lubin, which filmed Sullivan’s Her Polished Family in 1911. Sullivan continued to sell scenarios for short, one-reel films to this company while developing his talent and studying the kind of epic films that he hoped one day to write. His strategy paid off when in 1913, he sold a sketch for an Indian-versus-the military adventure film to the New York Motion Picture Company. The company’s head of production, Thomas W. Ince, would launch Sullivan’s film career.
For the next year Sullivan continued to sell scenarios to Ince’s company while still working at the Evening Journal. But in 1914, Ince offered him a lucrative writing job in California. Sullivan moved to Santa Monica, where he thrived in his new position. He was able to quickly churn out stories that, upon Ince’s insistence, included notes for the actors and directors about camera shots, body language and character development, sets, and even makeup and costumes.
One of Sullivan’s first films to win critical attention was The Passing of Two-Gun Hicks. It was a story about the American West, but unlike the cowboy films that were popular of the day, it was not just an action flick. Writing for the young star, William S. Hart, as the lead, Sullivan worked a more complex character development into the action-filled plot. The positive reception that this film received caused Ince to call for more like it, and Sullivan subsequently wrote a number of short and feature-length scripts of this kind. The complexity of the American West character that Sullivan introduced into film still influences the genre today.
By 1914 Sullivan was receiving credit for his work. While most scenario writers of the day did not have their names attached to their work, Sullivan’s became a point for advertising, an indication that the film was a work of quality. In 1915, when Ince’s New York Motion Picture Corporation allied with the Triangle Corporation—which would distribute its features—Sullivan was promoted to head of the scenario department. At this time, he also began concentrating on writing five-reel feature films.
In addition to writing for Hart, Sullivan wrote a number of vehicles for other actors and actresses. One favorite was Bessie Bamscale, a versatile actress for whom Sullivan wrote a number of parts. In The Payment she plays a kept woman, and in Plain Jane she is a girl in love. Both films were popular with theater-goers.
By 1917, Sullivan’s duties as head of the scenario department began to eclipse his writing. That same year Ince moved to Paramount, taking Sullivan with him. In his new position Sullivan worked with a number of respected directors and actors, making enough connections for him to leave Paramount in 1919 to write as a freelancer.
In the 1920s Sullivan continued to sell his scripts to Ince and work with some of Ince’s talented directors, such as John Griffith Wray and Fred Niblo. In the early part of the decade Sullivan wrote Dynamite Smith, Human Wreckage, about drug users, and the comedy Wandering Husbands, all featuring actors from Ince’s company (by that point Ince had left Paramount to form Associated Producers). But in 1924, Ince died unexpectedly. Fortunately for Sullivan, he had recently begun writing adaptations of Broadway shows for Joseph M. Schenck, starring Norma and Constance Talmadge.
Beginning in 1926, Sullivan began a close working relationship with independent producer Cecil B. DeMille. For DeMille, Sullivan began a new working method of collaborating with a group of writers on scripts that were based on either news stories or popular theater productions. The films he helped make for DeMille during this period include Three Faces East, Corporal Kate, Yankee Clipper, Vanity, and Turkish Delight.
At the end of the 1920s, a change happened in the motion picture industry that changed Sullivan’s career, as well as that of many others—the end of the silent films. In 1928 Sullivan worked on Sadie Thompson, starring Gloria Swanson, and the romantic film Tempest, featuring John Barrymore. These were his last silent films. Some of the first films with sound that Sullivan worked on were The Woman Disputed, directed by Henry King, and The Locked Door, for producer Joseph Kennedy. He also co-wrote one of the earliest sound gangster films, Alibi, in 1929.
At a time when screenwriting was a precarious position due to the changes happening in the industry, Sullivan fell back on more administrative work. He took a position as a script supervisor with Universal in 1930 and then a similar job with MGM in 1931. Many studios during this time were trying to decide what kind of dialog worked with audiences and were taking their cue from the theater. Sullivan did several adaptations of plays in the 1930s, most notable of which was Strange Interlude, based on a work by Eugene O’Neill.
Sullivan’s last works were for DeMille. He retired in 1940 after having written over 375 scenarios that appeared on film.
Charles Sullivan was an avid golfer and crossword puzzle enthusiast.
Charles Sullivan was married to Anne May Sullivan and had four children.