Allan Dwan

Biography

Toronto welcomed Allan Dwan on 3 April 1885, and by the time the century turned he was already spinning stories into celluloid. Between 1917 and 1921 he shepherded three lightning-bolts of silent cinema—Panthea, Bound in Morocco, and A Perfect Crime—onto screens worldwide, writing and staging each frame himself. Off-set, two leading ladies shared his life: first Pauline Bush, later Marie Shelton. The reels eventually stopped rolling, and on 28 December 1981 the lights dimmed for good in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, closing the curtain on a 96-year epic.