Silent Players: A Biographical and Autobiographical Study of 100 Silent Film Actors and Actresses

George Walsh

GEORGE WALSH Pomona is a small. dusty community east of Los Angeles. It is not exactly a glamorous spot for a movie star. but here I am in June 1972 at the ranchstyle home of leading man George Walsh. Perhaps "ranch" is too grand a description for the one-story home and single field that appear to comprise the Walsh homestead. In the house is a large. slobbering dog. In the field is an equally large. slobbering horse. George Walsh looks as aged as his animals. but he is friendly and happy to talk of the past. He is as proud of his former athletic prowess as his film career. boasting of his exploits on the baseball and football fields. his swimming and his rowing expertise. There is still a hint of a footballer's build here. and I can well understand why Walsh is so pleased with the nude photographs of his muscular rear, shot in the late teens. that he insists on sharing them with me. Somehow his rugged features do not match that devastatingly handsome body. Born in New York on March 16. 1889. Walsh boasts of his Irish immigrant background. although his father was actually born in the English industrial city ofSheffield. Neither George nor his older brother Raoul (1887-1980) entered the family's thriving tailoring business. Raoul entered films with D.W. Griffith at American Biograph and became a prominent director of action dramas. After college. George joined the Brooklyn Dodgers as an outfielder in 1914. but after being laid up in mid-season with typhoid. he decided to join his brother in Hollywood. The two took up residence at the Hollywood Hotel on the corner on Highland Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard. and almost immediately. George found work as an extra in Westerns. Walsh has the small and unimportant role of the bridegroom of Cana in the Judean story of Intolerance (1916). and while working on the film. he met Seena Owen. who plays the Princess Beloved. The couple married in February 1916. but it was a stormy relationship. ending in divorce. and Walsh claimed that she had tried to kill him. Brother Raoul also married an actress. Miriam Cooper (with whom George co-starred in a number of films). and that was an equally unhappy marriage. In 1916. George Walsh was signed to a long-term contract by William Fox. with one of his first films being Blue Blood and Red. directed by Raoul: "We wrote the story on the train. coming out to California. my brother and I. and when it came to naming the main characters. why I knew they were supposed to be high class people. and I immediately thought of DuPont. I was playing the young son. and I put his name in as Reginald. without dreaming or knowing there was such as person. belonging to the DuPont family in Dela- 396 George Walsh ware. He was an honor student at Harvard, and in the picture he's shown up as not knowing anything. "When the picture was released, Mr. Fox got a letter from DuPont's lawyer , expressing indignation about maligning his family and his son, and he wanted the picture immediately destroyed. The picture was going big, so Fox had his lawyer write back that they would change all the names and eliminate any reference to DuPont. Well that wasn't enough. They wanted the picture destroyed. Fox said, all right, I'll destroy it, but I'll make another one showing that you have made millions of dollars furnishing shot and shell for the armies fighting over there [in Europe], killing thousands of men. That was the last he heard of a DuPont!" Walsh made his last film for Fox in September 1920. He had been making $1,500 a week, and Fox offered him $2,000, but knowing that Pearl White had been signed to a contract at $4,000, Walsh demanded the same figure. Fox refused, and Walsh quit the studio. The most important of Walsh's Fox features is probably The Honor System (1917), directed by brother Raoul and co-starring Miriam Cooper, but the titles mean nothing. They were "star" vehicles intended to promote Walsh's athleticism and his ability to perform stunts of which other leading men would be physically incapable. Walsh enjoyed making the films, and that much was apparent, even if the performances might be considered somewhat...