(Beautiful 21-year-old Nora Moran waits on death row, hour...)
Beautiful 21-year-old Nora Moran waits on death row, hours away from her execution for a crime she did not commit. Sedated by sympathetic prison matrons, she dreamily recalls her tragic past. Orphaned at birth, she longs for a life in the theater, but as a teen is only able to find work in the circus as an assistant to Paulino, the lion tamer. Eventually, she runs away to escape brutal sexual abuse at the hands of her employer. Fleeing to another town, she finds love for the first time as the mistress of Governor Dick Crawford. Paulino finds her and as he attempts to rape her once more, he is murdered. She now willingly faces the electric chair, to protect the reputation of the real killer, the only man who ever gave her a brief taste of happiness.
Screen writer Frances Hyland and director Phil Goldstone combined their talents to create a dark brooding masterpiece of love, betrayal, murder and courage in the face of death. Utilizing flashback, voiceover, dream sequences and a melancholy atmosphere, they anticipate many of the techniques that would characterize film noir decades later. Ravishing Zita Johann, best known for her role in The Mummy (1932), gives a haunting performance as the tragic, doomed Nora. Majestic rented their sets and costumes from the major studios, allowing them to concentrate their budgets on fine actors. Powerful performances by John Miljan, Alan Dinehart, Paul Cavanagh, Claire DuBrey, Sarah Padden, Henry B. Walthall, Syd Saylor, and Cora Sue Collins make this a rare forgotten classic.
(A Henry B. Walthall double feature including: The Raven (...)
A Henry B. Walthall double feature including: The Raven (1915) Based on the novel The Raven: The Love Story of Edgar Allen Poe. Supposedly a biography of Edgar Allen Poe. Presents some striking fantasy visuals and a fine performance by Walthall - 59 Minutes and Ghosts (1915) One of the first authentic horror movies! Brilliant! Horrifying! Enthralling! - 49 Minutes
JUDITH OF BETHULIA (1914) and THE GRIT OF THE GIRL TELEGRAPHER (1912)
(JUDITH OF BETHULIA starring Blanche Sweet, Henry B. Walth...)
JUDITH OF BETHULIA starring Blanche Sweet, Henry B. Walthall, Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, Kate Bruce and Lillian Gish. Directed by D.W. Griffith. In this, Griffith’s first feature film, Blanche Sweet portrays Judith, an attractive, devout widow. When the walled city of Bethulia is attacked by an invading Assyrian army, the city’s supply of food and water are cut off, leaving the citizens within the walls to die of hunger and thirst. To liberate her people and end their suffering, Judith conceives a daring plan to seduce and kill Holofernes, the Assyrian General. A true landmark in the history of the motion picture, JUDITH OF BETHULIA showcases Griffith’s remarkable skill in directing high drama as well as his brilliant staging of elaborate battle scenes, talents he would later magnificently display in THE BIRTH OF A NATION and INTOLERANCE.
THE GRIT OF THE GIRL TELEGRAPHER starring Anna Q. Nillson, Guy Coombs, Hal Clements and Miriam Cooper. Directed by J.P. McGowan. A Kalem production filmed in New Jersey, USA. Betty is the train station telegraph operator in the small town of Oreland. A new tenant in her boarding house turns out to be Smoke Up Smith, a notorious car thief. When Betty discovers his identity and attempts his capture, Smith makes a run for it by stealing a train. A terrific little short with plenty of thrills, local scenery and a train chase climax!
Original music scores composed and performed by John Mucci!
Henry Brazeale Walthall was an American stage and film actor.
Background
Henry Brazeale Walthall was born on a plantation at Mallory Station on the Coosa River in Shelby County, Ala. , the third of nine children and second among six sons of Junius Leigh Walthall, a Confederate Army captain, and his wife, Annie Mallory Wallace. On his father's side he was descended from the Miles Cary family of Virginia and was a grandnephew of Edward Cary Walthall, Confederate general and United States Senator. He was tutored at home by his planter parents, assisted by a clergyman uncle who lent the boy books. Walthall was early drawn to acting; as a country youth he staged the trial scene from The Merchant of Venice in neighboring schoolhouses and towns. When he was fifteen the family moved to Birmingham, Ala.
Education
He attended public school at Birmingham, Ala. He studied at Howard College for six months.
Career
At twenty he volunteered for duty in the Spanish-American War. While serving in Miami, Fla. , he contracted malaria, an illness which recurred throughout his life. Soon after the war his theatrical ambitions led him to New York City, where he obtained a role as a southern soldier in a revival of Secret Service, by William Gillette, at the Murray Hill Theatre. Engagements followed with the Mack Fenton stock company and in a touring company of Under Southern Skies. In 1906 he joined actor-manager Henry Miller in the cast of The Great Divide. This was the time of the beginnings of motion pictures in the United States, and when Walthall met the director David Wark Griffith at the pioneering Biograph studio in New York, he decided to try the new medium. His first effort for the screen was a one-reel picture, The Convict's Sacrifice (1909). The next year, playing opposite Mary Pickford, he acted the role of the Indian, Alessandro, in Griffith's memorable two-reeler Ramona. In 1913 he played Holofernes, opposite Blanche Sweet, in Griffith's Judith of Bethulia, a four-reel production notable for its elaborate biblical sets, its use of crowds, and its intricate plot construction. Other significant films followed, including Home Sweet Home and The Avenging Conscience, both produced by Griffith's new Mutual company in 1914. All these parts, however, were preliminary to Walthall's greatest role, that of Benjamin Cameron, the "Little Colonel, " in Griffith's The Birth of a Nation. Released in Los Angeles on Feburary 8, 1915, and soon afterwards in New York, it brought together Walthall, Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Donald Crisp, and Wallace Reid in a three-hour production (twelve reels) that marked the founding of the modern film. A sensational success, it grossed $18, 000, 000 within a few years of its release and was still being exhibited forty years later. For several years Walthall remained one of the screen's leading stars. In the forefront of the effort to produce motion pictures that would attract educated audiences, he appeared in 1915 in film productions of two Ibsen plays, Ghosts and Pillars of Society. His portrayal of Edgar Allan Poe in The Raven that same year won acclaim for the "sincerity" and "fine restraint" of his acting (Chicago Tribune, December 1, 1915). In 1919 he gave an outstanding performance as the priest in The Confession. But meanwhile, before the release of The Birth of a Nation, Walthall had left D. W. Griffith to work for another studio, and despite the excellence of his own acting, his films of this period did not equal in quality or significance those he had made for that master film craftsman. By 1920 Walthall had gone into eclipse, and for a time he dropped out of motion pictures. Resuming his work in Hollywood in 1922, he played for the next decade in a succession of generally unimportant parts. The coming of talking pictures, however, gave new range to Walthall's talents, and during the 1930's he again achieved prominence as a character actor. Among his best roles of this period were President Madero in Viva Villa! (1934), the Rev. Ashby Brand in Judge Priest (1934), and Dr. Manette in A Tale of Two Cities (1935). Walthall collapsed in his fifty-ninth year on location at Alameda, Calif. , just after completing the part of an airplane inventor in China Clipper (1936). For five years he had suffered from tuberculosis; exhausted from overwork, he died three weeks later in the Pottenger Sanatorium, Monrovia, Calif. , of tuberculous peritonitis. He was buried in the Hollywood (Calif. ) Cemetery.
Achievements
He appeared as the Little Colonel in D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). Walthall has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 6201 Hollywood Boulevard. In addition to creating one of the historic roles of the screen, he had acted with artistry and distinction during a quarter-century of motion pictures.
Below average height and slender, with a heavy head of hair, Walthall made full use of an expressive face and voice.
Connections
He was married twice: in 1907 to Isabelle O'Flanigan, whose stage name was Fenton, from whom he was divorced, and in 1917 to the screen actress Mary Charleson, who had played opposite him in The Truant Soul (1916). She with their daughter, Mary Patricia, survived him.
