Background
Theodore Roberts was born in San Francisco, California, on October 8, 1861, the son of Martin R. and Mary E. (Newlin) Roberts
Theodore Roberts was born in San Francisco, California, on October 8, 1861, the son of Martin R. and Mary E. (Newlin) Roberts
Roberts was educated in the public schools in San Francisco and at the California Military Academy in Oakland
With the exception of two and a half years at sea, a part of the time as captain of a schooner trading along the Pacific coast, he was uninterruptedly on the stage.
He made his first appearance at the Baldwin Theatre in San Francisco, May 1, 1880, as Baradas to James O'Neill's Richelieu.
One of his earliest traveling engagements was in Our Bachelors, in support of Stuart Robson and William H. Crane, with whom he made his first New York appearance in 1881.
After his return to the stage following his sea adventure, he acted for several seasons in support of Fanny Davenport, playing leading parts in her repertory; later he was with Mrs. Leslie Carter as Colonel Fulton Thorpe in The Heart of Maryland, as Colonel Sapt in Rupert of Hentzau, and as Henry Canby in Augustus Thomas' Arizona, in which he gave an extremely realistic portraiture of a typical stage ranchman, a part he played in 1902 at the Adelphi Theatre in London.
When he appeared in New York as Tabywana in The Squaw Man, he equipped himself for the accurate interpretation of the Indian manner and nature by engaging a Ute Indian as coach; this, however, was not his debut as an Indian, for twelve years before he had acted Scar Brow in The Girl I Left Behind Me.
For a number of years thereafter he acted many roles in a varied assortment of plays, the last that of Buck Kamman, the sheriff in Believe Me, Xantippe, in 1913. (1)
His final years as an actor, after a brief experience on the vaudeville stage, were spent in California in the making of motion pictures, his attitude towards that modern development of his profession being expressed in his remark (New York Herald Tribune, post) that he "looked upon the industry as a retiring place for broken-down actors. " He died in Los Angeles while he was in the midst of preparations for the making of a new film.
Quotations: He said about himself explaining his choice of roles that he was "too big to support an American tragedian, " meaning that his size, even if not his acting, would be to the disadvantage of the star by turning the eyes of the audience too often in his own direction.
Roberts was a man of large stature, his heavy voice, and his imperious manner.
His stalwart and heavily built figure, his long, straight features, his ruddy complexion and dark blue eyes especially adapted him to the impersonation of Indians, frontiersmen, sheriffs, and other primitive and robustious types conspicuous in the characteristically American plays that have long been popular in the United States.
His first wife was Clyde O'Brien, known on the stage as Clyde Harron, whom he married in San Francisco in 1890 and later divorced; his second wife, according to an interview in the New York Herald Tribune (post), was Florence Smythe.