(A bank cashier (Lon Chaney) discovers the bank president ...)
A bank cashier (Lon Chaney) discovers the bank president has lost $35,000 in speculation and upon confronting him with the facts, is apparently killed in the ensuing fight. The body is placed in a car. The following morning the wrecked car is found but cashier's body is missing. A rare early look at the work of Lon Chaney. 51 minutes with an Orchestra Score. Included short subject from 1916: "THE FIREMAN" with Charlie Chaplin
Franklyn Farnum, screen name of William Smith, was an American character actor and Hollywood extra who appeared in 433 productions between the years 1916 and 1961. Farnum appeared as an actor in more films to win the Academy Award for Best Picture than any other (see below).
Background
He was born in 1878 in Boston, Massachusetts, and became a vaudeville actor at the age of twelve. He confided to an interviewer that his name was really William Franklyn Smith but that with advice he had changed his last name to Farnum and added his own middle name to form a more glamorous stage name.
Education
Farnum left school when he was twelve to help support his poverty-stricken family. A Protestant minister who heard him singing as he shoveled snow gave him a place in his church choir and sponsored his singing lessons.
Career
Farnum began his professional career singing at local smokers, and before the turn of the century was appearing as a chorus boy in musicals. He was reported to have made his debut as a principal as understudy to Walter Lawrence in Sultan of Sula at the Tremont Theater in Boston when he was seventeen.
He soon became a leading man in the Nixon-Zimmerman Company, which sent out road shows and maintained theaters in Philadelphia and New York. Farnum first appeared on Broadway in The Dollar Princess (1909). Next came Madame Sherry, an Otto Harbach-Karl Hoschna production that was one of the most famous pre-World War I operettas (1910), and The Sunshine Girl, with Julia Sanderson (1912). Victor Herbert's The Only Girl (1914) was Farnum's last Broadway vehicle.
His Broadway experience won Farnum parts in early three-reel movies produced in New York City; he was billed as Smiling Franklyn Farnum. In 1914 he went to Hollywood to appear with Ruth Stonehouse in Love Never Dies.
Farnum played romantic leading men "bearing the Farnum brand of smiles and tears" in several one- and two-reel films for Triangle, Bluebird, and Metro. Tall, lean, and broad-shouldered, he had a special flair, particularly in roles calling for period costumes.
In The Clock (1917), a five-reel comedy, he introduced a comic element into his adventure roles, modeled after the style of Douglas Fairbanks. This comic manner was at its best in The Fighting Grin (1918).
Farnum played Silent Joe in a mystery-western serial, Vanishing Trails (1920), and costarred with Helen Holmes in Battling Brewster (1924). But his real popularity was as a hero in such westerns as The Struggle (1920), The Fighting Stranger and The Galloping Devil (1921), So This Is Arizona (1922), The Firebrand (1923), A Two-Fisted Tenderfoot (1924), and The Gambling Fool (1925).
Although he had never ridden a horse or tried stunt work until he went to Hollywood, his name came to have the kind of magic that was associated with Tom Mix and William S. Hart. Farnum's appeal was not diminished by the similarity of his name to that of two brothers, William and Dustin Farnum, who were famous western stars of the period.
During the next twenty years Farnum appeared as henchmen, villains, and other characters in dozens of films, including Three Rogues (1931), with Victor McLaglen and Fay Wray; Leftover Ladies (1931); Mark of the Spur and The Texas Bad Man (1932); Powdersmoke Range, with Harey Carey and Hoot Gibson (1936); In Early Arizona (1938); Saddle Leather Law (1944); Dear Wife (1950); My Friend Irma (1949); All About Eve (1950); Sunset Boulevard (1950); Lemon Drop Kid (1951); With a Song in My Heart (1952); and Casanova's Big Night (1954), with Bob Hope.
In 1956 he appeared in Top Secret Affair, his 1, 100th film. He retired from film work in 1960.
A Protestant minister who heard him singing as he shoveled snow gave him a place in his church choir and sponsored his singing lessons.
He quickly adapted to work as an extra, often for independent companies.
Views
Quotations:
He resigned as president of the union in January 1959, stating: "I feel that younger blood is needed in the presidency in the approaching contract negotiations. "
He quickly adapted to work as an extra, often for independent companies. This reversal did not make Farnum bitter: "I have no false pride. There are people who say 'I won't work extra, ' but they're only kidding themselves. You have to stay active and keep vindicating yourself. "
Personality
He was described as being far handsomer off screen than on, and as having a special magnetism and warmth that the camera could not capture.
Connections
Farnum was married to Edith Goodwin, who died in 1959. Their daughter Geraldine was also an actress.