Phillips Smalley
actor, director, producer
- Birth name:
- Phillips Wendell Smalley
- Born:
- 1865-08-07, Brooklyn, New York, USA
- Died:
- 1939-05-02, Hollywood, California, USA
- Professions:
- actor, director, producer
Biography
Brooklyn, 7 August 1865: the curtain rose on Wallace Phillips Smalley, a restless New Yorker who would swap the stage for the flicker of early film. By 1914 he was lensing Shakespeare, guiding *The Merchant of Venice* through the newborn art of motion pictures; a year later he steered *Captain Courtesy* across the screen; and in 1917 he delivered the explosive pro-birth-control melodrama *The Hand That Rocks the Cradle*. Between clapper boards, he married twice—first to Phyllis Lorraine Ephlin, later to pioneering filmmaker Lois Weber, his creative and marital partner in many ventures. The final fade-out came on 2 May 1939 in Hollywood, California, closing a career that helped shape cinema’s first daring decade.
