James Durkin
actor, director, manager
- Birth name:
- James Peter Durkin
- Born:
- 1876-05-21, Quebec, Canada
- Died:
- 1934-03-12, Los Angeles, California, USA
- Professions:
- actor, director, manager
Biography
A winter baby of 1876, James Durkin first drew breath in Quebec City on 21 May. Within two decades he had slipped south to the flickering new world of motion pictures, trading snowy streets for klieg lights and becoming both a steady leading man and an inventive director. Audiences of 1916 puzzled over his whodunit *Who Killed Simon Baird?* and felt the pulse of newspaper life in *The Clarion* that same year, while 1933 found him revisiting cliff-hanger glory with *Perils of Pauline*. Off-screen, romance made headlines twice: first with actress Maude Fealy, then with Alice Naylor. His final scene rolled on 12 March 1934 in Los Angeles, closing a 57-year story that began beside the St. Lawrence and ended beneath the California palms.
