Background
Franc Bacon was born in Marysville, California, on January 16, 1864.
(Excerpt from Lightnin' Marvin had a lot on his mind, and...)
Excerpt from Lightnin' Marvin had a lot on his mind, and was studying law all alone in the cabin at nights into the bargain, but he liked to have Bill drop in, liked to hear him talk. Bill could tell some pretty tall yarns, but he told them so well you had to swallow them. There was an odd, friendly, understanding bond between the ambitious young fellow and the easy-going, humorous old man. They con fided in each other a great deal, and - well, like Mrs. Jones and Millie, Marvin fre quently found himself crediting Bill with a semblance of mental speed. But then his mind would picture the ambling, aimless figure of Bill Jones with its shock of disor dered gray hair and half-shut eyes, and Marvin would smile to himself and turn his thoughts to something else. But he won dered, nevertheless. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Franc Bacon was born in Marysville, California, on January 16, 1864.
He left school in San José at the age of fourteen.
After a failed foray into politics and growing disenchantment with the newspaper business, Bacon chose to “turn respectable” and joined a San Jose stock company. By 1894 he was a member of a dramatic company with D. K. Higgins and Georgia Waldron playing the villain in Higgins’ melodrama, The Plunger. He later formed a small company with his wife and a few other actors and toured mostly California venues for a number of seasons.
He became successively a sheep-herder, an advertising solicitor, a photographer, a newspaper writer, and a candidate for the California legislature. He began his stage career after he had reached maturity; joining a stock company at the Garden Theatre in San José in 1890 he made his first appearance there as Sample Switchell in Ten Nights in a Barroom and acted over six hundred rôles during his ensuing seasons in that city. For a time he managed a company of his own in Portland, Oregon, and then he began a long season at the Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco, where he further enlarged his repertory by acting a different character each week.
Arriving in New York, he was successful in securing first-class engagements, among them being the parts of William Carr in Stop Thief, Sam Graham in The Fortune Hunter (his tours in that play later taking him back to San Francisco), Hiram Higgins in The Miracle Man, and Jerry Primrose in The Cinderella Man. In collaboration with Winchell Smith he wrote Lightnin', which was based on a vaudeville sketch of his own entitled Truthful James, its principal character being especially constructed to fit his own manner and temperamental qualities. It opened in Washington, January 28, 1918, and on August 26, 1918, began its long run at the Gaiety Theatre in New York, where it continued uninterruptedly, with the exception of a few days when the theatre was closed on account of the actors' strike, through to August 27, 1921, a total of 153 weeks and 1, 291 performances.
Bacon died suddenly in Chicago, where he was playing at the Blackstone Theatre. After his death, the play was performed with success in many American cities and also in London.
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He married Jennie Weidman on June 27, 1885. Their daughter, Bessie Bacon Allen (1886–1952), became an actress and writer, and their son, Lloyd Bacon, a Hollywood director.