Sam De Grasse
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Samuel Alfred de Grasse (born June 12, 1875, died November 29, 1953) was a Canadian actor. Born in Bathurst, New Brunswick, he trained to be a dentist. After his older brother Joe had gone into the fledgling movie business, de Grasse decided to also give it a try. He traveled to New York City and in 1912 he acted in his first motion picture.
At first he played standard secondary characters but when fellow Canadian Mary Pickford set up her own studio with her husband Douglas Fairbanks, he joined them. He portrayed the villainous Prince John in Fairbanks' 1922 Robin Hood. As a shifty-eyed villain, after this he began to specialize in the role of the "bad guy".
He married actress Ada Fuller Golden and had a daughter, Clementine. He was the uncle of successful cinematographer Robert De Grasse. He lived on the west coast until his death in Hollywood. He is interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
During his career, he appeared in 107 films. A few of them are:
- The Birth of a Nation - (1915)
- The Good Bad Man - (1915)
- Intolerance - (1916)
- Wild and Woolly - (1917)
- An Old Fashioned Young Man - (1917)
- Blind Husbands - (1919)
- Robin Hood - (1922)
- The Spoilers - (1922)
- Forsaking All Others - (1922)
- Slippy McGee - (1923)
- Painted People - (1924)
- The Black Pirate (1926)
- The Fighting Eagle - (1927)
- King of Kings - (1927)
- Our Dancing Daughters - (1928)
- The Man Who Laughs - (1928)
- Wall Street - (1929)
- Captain of the Guard - (1930)
See also: Other Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood
[edit] References
- Charles Foster, Stardust and Shadows: Canadians in Early Hollywood, 2000, ISBN 1-55002-348-9
