Edward José

Biography

A passport stamped “Belgium” barely cooled before Edward José stepped in front of a camera and, opposite the incandescent Theda Bara, helped make A Fool There Was (1915) a scandalous sensation. The rush of acting soon gave way to the thrill of calling the shots: he took the reins on Pearl White’s cliff-hanging serials, then spent the late-Teens and early-Twenties marshaling features at break-neck speed. His grandest gamble arrived the same year he debuted—The Beloved Vagabond, a six-reel, hand-tinted epic that flickered like stained glass in darkened theatres. Six years later, José crossed the Atlantic one final time, trading the Hollywood hurly-burly for the boulevards of France, where he kept cameras rolling until 1926.