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

Henry B. Walthall

HENRY B. WALTHALL There is no other player from the silent era so closely associated with one screen role than Henry B. Walthall. for better or worse. he will always be the "little colonel" of The Birth of a Nation. the epitome of the Southern gentleman and to some. the symbol of Southern racism. Everything that Walthall accomplished prior to The Birth ofa Nation might be considered training for that film. and nothing he did later could possibly compare to that one single performance. Even his personality would seem to mirror that of the character he portrayed. In her autobiography. Lillian Gish wrote that "'Wally: as he was affectionately called, was everything in life that his 'little colonel' was on the screen. dear, patient, lovable." Like his mentor D.W. Griffith. Henry Brazeale Walthall was a Southerner . with perhaps a little more affluent family background than the director, but certainly influenced by the same Southern history and culture. He was born. one of eleven sons. on a farm near Columbiana. Shelby County. Alabama . on March 16. 1878. He studied law. but quit to fight in the SpanishAmerican War. and then took up acting. making his New York debut in 190I. He was cast in popular Southern melodramas of the day. including Edward McWade's "Winchester and Lottie Blair Parker's Under Southern Skies. In 1909, a chance encounter with a friend and fellow actor. James Kirkwood. resulted in a meeting with D.W. Griffith at the American Biograph Company. Griffith was already familiar with Walthall's stage work. and immediately cast him in A Convict's Sacrifice. released on July 26. 1909. Walthall appeared in more than 100 American Biograph shorts from 1909 through 1913, and, with a short break at Pathe, was to remain with Griffith until 1915. "He loved Wally," recalled Blanche Sweet. "He thought he was a fine actor, and he never really had much to say about Wally's acting. He showed him very little. He just said, 'Well. here's the situation: this. that and the other, or 'a little less Wally,' or 'a little more Wally.' He respected and depended upon Wally as an actor." Blanche played Judith to Walthall's Holofernes in Griffith's first and American Biograph's only feature-length production, Judith ofBethulia, released on March 8, 1914. At only five feet. six inches. Walthall lacked the stature of Holofernes. but, as Blanche remembered . Griffith's attitude was, "Wally will play it big." The actor did not immediately go with Griffith when the director moved from American Biograph to the Reliance-Majestic organization. but he was starred in two 1914 features there, Home. Sweet Home and The Avenging Conscience. In the latter. a psychological drama. Walthall is an anti-hero. the nephew who dreams vividly of murdering his uncle, demonstrative ofthe actor's 402 Henry B. Walthall ability to handle unsympathetic and even villainous roles with which he is not generally associated. Walthall had played Southerners in many American Biograph shorts, and he was the obvious choice for Ben Cameron, the "little colonel." who fights valiantly for the Southern cause in the Civil War, returns to a community devastated by war and Northern carpetbaggers and conceives of the Ku Klux Klan in The Birth ofa Nation. This being a silent film, the audience, of course, never hears Walthall. but one knows instinctively that here is a proud and noble Southerner, a perception that is a tribute to both actor and director. As one critic dubbed him. Walthall was now "The Edwin Booth of the Screen." but rather than capitalize on the success of The Birth of a Nation, he left Griffith. first joining the Balboa Amusement Company in Long Beach. California and then the declining Chicago-based Essanay Company in the late spring of 1915. Both Walthall and his actress wife. Mary Charieson, remained with Essanay through May 1917. Walthall's only production for Essanay that has the remotest interest is The Raven (1915), in which he plays Edgar Allan Poe, and which has obvious links to The Avenging Conscience, suggested by Poe's "TheTell-Tale Heart." After leaving Essanay, Walthall was promoted as available at $2.500 a week, a ridiculously high figure when one considers that at Balboa two years earlier. he was earning only $250 a week. There were, of course. no takers, and Walthall formed his own independent production company. releasing through Paralta the first...