Raoul Walsh — Biographical Sketch (1927) 🇺🇸
It is quite an achievement to have directed the picture that shattered all weekly records in New York’s largest picture palace, but Raoul Walsh is probably prouder to recount the days when he sailed the seven seas as an able seaman or when he rode the range as a Texas cowboy.
There are more drug store cowboys along New York’s White Way than there are of the Texas type. Walsh is a New Yorker, raised and educated there in the public schools, but he heard the call of the West in his youth, and he ran away from home to become a Texas cowboy. It was exciting for a while and he became a good puncher, but he tired of it and put out for New Orleans, where he shipped on sailing vessels and steamers that took him to all parts of the world.
Returning eventually to New York, Walsh decided upon a stage career, and it was a very successful one. He played all the leading New York houses, and his parts ranged from heavies to juveniles and leading man.
Naturally, the early days of the movies appealed to him, and he got his first screen work in 1905. His first role was that of J. W. Booth in D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. There followed engagements as an actor and then as a director with Edison, Pathé, Universal, Fox, United Artists and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Eight years ago Mr. Walsh gave up acting to become a director and to do some scenario writing on the side, but he was finally prevailed upon to play the leading role opposite Gloria Swanson in the United Artists production, now in the making, Sadie Thompson, which he is also directing.
Mr. Walsh has directed a number of the screen’s greatest successes, his outstanding achievement being the Fox production, What Price Glory?, which smashed to smithereens all records for a single week’s showing and for three weeks’ showing at the palatial Roxy Theatre in New York. It was he who directed Douglas Fairbanks [Douglas Fairbanks Sr.] in The Thief of Bagdad.
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Raoul Walsh — Director- What Price Glory?
- Loves of Carmen
- Scenarist, Director and Actor in Gloria Swanson’s Sadie Thompson
Collection: Motion Picture News, October 1927 (Booking Guide and Studio Directory