Tom Ricketts

Biography

Tom Ricketts arrived in the world in 1853, amid the fog and footlights of London, and spent the next eight-and-a-half decades racing from one stage—or soundstage—to the next. By the time the final curtain fell in 1939, he had stacked up more than 300 acting and directing credits, yet today his name surfaces mainly in trivia nights: he aimed the camera at Hollywood itself for the very first time. He had begun, of course, in greasepaint, earning applause as a nimble Shakespearean in West End theaters before the smell of celluloid lured him west. Once bitten by film, Ricketts never slowed; even the sniffle that accompanied him out the door on his last morning failed to slow his stride. Within days that cold sharpened into pneumonia and, with theatrical speed, carried him off. His wife, actress Josephine Ditt, remained unaware—her own December stroke had already dimmed the lights for her—leaving Ricketts to exit alone, as briskly as he had lived.