Elmer Clifton
actor, director, writer
- Born:
- 1890-03-14, Chicago, Illinois, USA
- Died:
- 1949-10-15, Los Angeles, California, USA
- Professions:
- actor, director, writer
Biography
He acted on the stage from 1907 and worked with D.W. Griffith in various capacities between 1913-22, including appearances in The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). He became a director in 1917, with his best-known production probably being the big-budget whaling epic Down to the Sea in Ships (1922), which brought Clara Bow to the attention of audiences. Unfortunately, his career began to wane in the late 1920s; although he occasionally worked for such "major" studios as Columbia or RKO, he spent most of the rest of his career mired in the depths of Poverty Row, writing and/or directing quickie westerns and thrillers for such bottom-of-the-barrel studios as PRC and even lower-budget exploitation pictures for such shoestring producers as J.D. Kendis and the Weiss Brothers.
