Brigham Royce

Biography

Memphis, 1864: the Mississippi’s muddy breeze carried the first cry of Brigham Royce, a child who would trade river-town lamplight for klieg lights. By 1915 he had stepped before the frost-bitten cameras of “Helene of the North,” gifting the silent snowscapes a smolder no title card could contain. Six years later he detonated across screens again as “Dynamite Allen,” a role that let his eyebrows do the blasting while the nitrate kept its secrets. The curtain finally fell on 7 March 1933 in Baltimore, Maryland, where the Chesapeake tide carried off the last echo of a voice that never needed sound.