William J. Shea — Motography’s Gallery of Picture Players (1913) 🇺🇸

William J. Shea is rounding out his fifth year with the Vitagraph Company of America, the record of years to which he adds this last five being one of accomplishment in the histrionic art as practiced on the American stage.

Mr. Shea’s talent for acting is inherent, his mother having been Jane Tate, a prominent actress in the Edinborough Theater, Scotland.

It was in Dumfries, Scotland, that Mr. Shea was born but America called to the Sheas and they came when William J. was a mere tyke. In his younger years William decided to be a civil engineer, the occupation of his father, who was in the Marine Corps of the British army, but when be finished school he declared the stage to be his vocation.

At the age of eighteen he was a member of the stock company in Albany, N. Y., and later played with Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson, Lawrence Barrett, Clara Morris, Mrs. Fiske, Maggie Mitchell and others, Shakespearean repertoire and then the pictures.

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Collection: Motography Magazine, April 1913