Silent Stars In Pittsburgh

We welcome submissions of blurbs about Pittsburgh’s notable silent personalities below. If you’d like to help, please email us (before you write anything) at pittsburghsilentfilmsociety@gmail.com.

Olive Thomas

Born in Charleroi near Pittsburgh on October 20, 1894. After her steelworker father died in a work-related accident in 1906, the family moved to McKees Rocks. She worked at Joseph Horne’s Department Store and Kaufmann’s in downtown Pittsburgh. She moved to New York City in 1913 and became a famous artist’s model and Ziegfeld Follies girl. She starred in numerous films, including OUT YONDER (1917), THE FLAPPER (1920), and her last and perhaps most successful film EVERYBODY’S SWEETHEART (1920).
She was married to actor Jack Pickford, the younger brother of fellow silent-film star Mary Pickford. On September 10, 1920, Thomas died in Paris five days after ingesting her husband's syphilis medication, mercury dichloride, that brought on acute nephritis. Although her death was ruled accidental, news of her hospitalization and subsequent death were the subject of speculation in the press. Thomas' death has been cited as one of the early scandals in Hollywood that was heavily publicized. She is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx.
See Vincent Ciaramella’s Powerpoint with information on Olive Thomas’s Pittsburgh history HERE.
Thomas Meighan

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Lois Weber

Florence Lois Weber was born on June 13, 1879, in Allegheny City, now part of Pittsburgh. Some regard her as one of the most important and prolific film directors in the era of silent films. Film historian Anthony Slide wrote: "Along with D. W. Griffith, Weber was the American cinema's first genuine auteur, a filmmaker involved in all aspects of production and one who utilized the motion picture to put across her own ideas and philosophies".
Some of her more notable films include HYPOCRITES, which featured the first full-frontal female nude scene; WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN, which discussed abortion and birth control and was added to the National Film Registry in 1993; her adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough’s TARZAN OF THE APES for the very first Tarzan film; and THE BLOT. She is credited with discovering, mentoring, or making stars of several women actors, including Mary MacLaren also (from Pittsburgh, see below), Billie Dove, Anita Steward, and also inspiring screenwriter Frances Marion.
She died at 60 years old on November 13, 1939, destitute, from a bleeding ulcer. She was cremated, but the location of her remains are unknown. She was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. A Historic Marker was dedicated to her at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Allegheny branch in 2019.
See a full article on Lois Weber by Thomas Wilson from The Allegheny City Society’s Reporter Dispatch HERE.
Adolph Menjou

Born in Pittsburgh on February 18, 1890, Menjou’s French father managed the Hotel Duquesne, where he met Adolph’s Irish mother, who also worked there. A few of his notable films include Charlie Chaplin’s A WOMAN OF PARIS, Kubrick’s PATHS OF GLORY with Kirk Douglas, THE SHEIK with Rudolph Valentino, A STAR IS BORN with Janet Gaynor, and he was nominated for an Oscar for THE FRONT PAGE.
He famously publicly feuded with Katherine Hepburn over his cooperation with the HUAC hearings. He died on October 29, 1963 of hepatitis in Beverly Hills, CA and buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Richard Rowland

Richard Rowland was born and raised in Pittsburgh, the son of James and Emma Morton Rowland. As a young boy growing up in the late 1800s, he delivered supplies for the family's calcium light business. Calcium lighting was used at that time for bright spots and floodlight effects in theaters around the city.
Over the years, Rowland earned the nickname "the Calcium Kid" and became fascinated with the burgeoning movie industry. When movie houses asked Rowland whether he could supply rental films, he borrowed $2000 and expanded the business into film distribution.  By 1908-1909, the company was touted as one of the nation's largest film rental companies.
But the 1910s brought major changes to the movie world, as film production, distribution and exhibition became more standardized and centralized.  Many independent distribution companies were swallowed up by the General Film Corporation (GFC.) In 1910, Rowland and his then partner James B. Clark sold their business to GFC for "more money that I thought existed," Rowland said in a 1941 interview with the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
But that didn’t end Rowland’s love affair with the movies. He and Clark opened a string of movie houses throughout the city, including the 1000-seat Regent Theatre, located at Penn and Highland avenues in East Liberty. In 1915, Rowland went to New York City to serve as the president of the newly launched Metro Pictures. Metro originally  focused on movie distribution but soon announced plans to produce its own films. Rowland’s greatest success at Metro was the production of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which brought Rudolph Valentino to stardom.
Rowland followed his stint at Metro with work at some of Hollywood’s biggest studios including First National, Fox Film and RKO. He died in 1947 in New York and is buried in Pittsburgh’s Homewood Cemetery.
View of Richard Rowland: The Calcium Kid Finds a Future in Film | Western Pennsylvania History: 1918 - 2023
Lois Moran

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Tom Mix

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William Powell

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SEE TWO ARTICLES BELOW ON WILLIAM POWELL