Raymond Griffith

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Griffith (seated) in How Stars Are Made (1916) by John G. Blystone

Raymond Griffith (born January 23, 1895 in Boston , Massachusetts , † November 25, 1957 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American actor, comedian, writer, director and film producer. He is considered an important but forgotten silent film comedian. After he started making sound films, he ended his acting career and became a producer for 20th Century Fox .

life and career

Origin and beginnings

Raymond Griffith was born into a family of actors in Boston and was on stage as a toddler. At the age of seven he was seen as The Little Lord . He lost part of his voice at a young age so that for the rest of his life he could barely do more than whisper. Griffith himself said that the loss of the voice came from a melodrama in which he should have shouted out loud on the stage, which he suddenly couldn't. Other sources, however, assume the consequences of an illness. Because he could no longer work as a theater actor because of the persistent voice problems, Griffith tried his hand at the circus and as a dancer and dance teacher. He also toured Europe with a group of French mimes and was a member of the US Navy for some time. After these various engagements, he went to California in 1914 and visited a friend and actor on the film set. When the director of the film saw Griffith, he hired him as an extra in the role of a Mexican bandit. Another source says he traveled to California with a vaudeville troupe and was hired there.

Career as a silent film comedian

In 1915 Griffith shot his first silent films for the L-KO Kompany and played in numerous short film comedies. In 1916 he moved to the Keystone Studios of Mack Sennett , which he left again in 1921 to work with Marshall Neilan . From 1918 he mainly made feature films. In addition to trying his hand at acting, Griffith has written about 15 films and directed two films. After moving from Neilan to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer , his rise to comedian star began with his own films. His comedies mostly contained dramatic and sad elements, had many slapstick gags and resembled a farce . Like many other silent film comedians, Griffith's characters, often detectives or reporters with dark facets, had certain trademarks: a top hat with a white shirt and black tie, and often a walking stick. At MGM he also starred in dark films such as The White Tiger by Tod Browning , in which he is looking for the murderer of his father ( Wallace Beery ). He moved to Paramount Pictures in 1924 and made a total of 15 productions that year and the next, which was his most productive period. In 1926 he made his most successful film Hands Up! on the American Civil War, which was included in the National Film Registry in 2005 .

End of his acting career and work as a producer

In the late 1920s, talkies were introduced, with his battered voice forcing Griffith to end his career as a comedian. He made two more - strangely, quite successful - sound films in 1929. In the following year he ended his film career after around 75 films with a not very funny appearance: In the classic film In the West Nothing New , he played the French soldier who was wounded by Paul Bäumer ( Lew Ayres ) who is slowly dying away from its desperate eyes. Griffith was able to complete the performance because he could only whisper his figure of the French soldier because of the wound.

In the 1930s Griffith was an assistant producer at 20th Century Fox . He has worked on over 50 films, including 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932), Gold Digger of 1933 (1933), Die Elenden (1935), Heidi (1937), Drumming on the Mohawk (1939) and In the Sign of Zorro (1940) . After In the Sign of Zorro , he completely withdrew from the film industry. Griffith was also involved in the selection and compilation of footage about the expeditions of the American polar explorer Richard Evelyn Byrd . In gratitude for this, Byrd named Mount Griffith after him, a mountain in the Transantarctic Mountains .

Death, family and aftermath

Griffith was attending a dinner at the prestigious Los Angeles' Masquers Club on November 25, 1957 when he choked on the meal, became breathless and died of asphyxia . He was 62 years old. Griffith was married to actress Bertha Mann (1893-1967) from 1928 until his death, with whom he had two biological children and one adopted child. He is buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale . Today Griffith has a reputation as a great but forgotten silent film comedian. Some of his films have been lost and many films have still not been released, making most of his works difficult or impossible to access.

Filmography (selection)

As an actor

  • 1920: Down on the Farm
  • 1922: Minnie
  • 1923: White Tiger
  • 1924: The Yankee Consul
  • 1924: Lily of the Dust
  • 1924: Open All Night
  • 1925: Miss Bluebeard
  • 1925: Paths to Paradise
  • 1926: Hands Up!
  • 1926: You'd Be Surprised
  • 1929: Trent's Last Case
  • 1930: on the Western Front (All Quiet on the Western Front)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Raymond Griffith at Silents Are Golden
  2. ↑ Bertha Mann. Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 .
  3. ^ Raymond Griffith in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved January 7, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Griffith, Raymond
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American actor, comedian, writer, director, and film producer
DATE OF BIRTH January 23, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Boston , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH November 25, 1957
Place of death Los Angeles , California