American actor
Elmer Booth |
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 Booth as Jack Doogan in the
1913 play Stop Thief! |
| Born | William Elmer Booth
(1882-12-09)December 9, 1882
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| Died | June 16, 1915(1915-06-16) (aged 32)
Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
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| Occupation(s) | Stage and film actor |
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| Years active | 1901–1915 |
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| Spouse |
Irene Outtrim ( m. 1908) |
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| Children | 1 |
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| Relatives | Margaret Booth (sister) |
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William Elmer Booth (December 9, 1882 – June 16, 1915) was an American stage and film actor. He was born in Los Angeles, California and was the elder brother of Margaret Booth, a renowned film editor for Hollywood productions for nearly 70 years.[1]
Career
Elmer began acting in touring stock companies as a teenager and achieved great success in the stock company at the Central Theater in San Francisco from 1903 to 1906. Between 1910 and 1915 he starred in 40 movies; one of those was D. W. Griffith's The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), cited by many film experts as the first gangster movie.[citation needed]
Playing "The Snapper Kid", a Manhattan street tough engaged in a turf war on the Lower East Side, Booth interpreted the gangster as a cocky, entertaining antihero, far different from the standard teeth-gnashing movie bad guys of his time.[citation needed]
Death
In the early hours of June 16, 1915, Booth died in an accident in California while riding in a car driven by Tod Browning, an actor and new director with Reliance-Majestic Studios in Hollywood.[2] Actor George Siegmann was also a passenger in Browning's car. The day after the accident, the Los Angeles Times reported that the three men were returning to downtown Los Angeles from a roadhouse when Browning's car crashed into a train of the Salt Lake Railroad:
Elmer Booth was killed instantly. The motor car in which he was speeding towards Los Angeles with his two companions rammed the rear part of a flat car loaded with steel rails at Santa Fe avenue and Salt Lake tracks early yesterday morning. The conductor of the train, Harry Jones, approaching, had waved his lantern as a danger signal, and then had come to the crash that sent Elmer Booth, who was just realizing his dramatic ambitions, headforemost into the rails.[2]
Browning and Siegmann survived, although they both suffered serious injuries.[2][3] Later reports blamed the accident on heavy fog; nevertheless, Elmer's sister Margaret never forgave Browning for the loss of her brother.[3][4]
D. W. Griffith, who had planned to cast Booth in an important role in Intolerance, delivered the actor's graveside eulogy.[citation needed]
Personal life
Booth married actress Irene Outtrim in 1908. That same year, their son was born; he died of pneumonia in March 1910.[5]
