Theodore Wharton

Biography

Theodore Wharton entered the world on 12 April 1875 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, trailing his elder brother Leopold into a life behind the camera. At fifteen he swapped Midwestern winters for Texas heat, selling tickets and treading boards in Dallas theaters. By 1907 he had talked his way onto the Edison lot in New York, staying two busy years inside the young medium’s crucible. Between 1909 and 1912 he hop-scotched studios—Essanay among them—churning out scripts and megaphone jobs at breakneck speed. War Department officials then handed him reins to The Late Indian Wars; cameras rolled across the prairie alongside General Charles King’s script, Buffalo Bill Cody in the saddle and hundreds of cavalrymen kicking up dust. In 1914 he planted the Wharton Studio flag on the hills ringing Ithaca, New York, turning Cornell’s gorges and Cayuga’s waters into back-lot spectacle. A decade later he followed the sun west to Santa Cruz, only to die in Hollywood on 28 November 1931, leaving behind a catalogue of silents that once flickered from coast to coast.