Cliff Saum

Biography

Columbus, Ohio, greeted Cliff Saum’s arrival on 18 December 1882, and by the time silent-film audiences met him he had already traded Midwestern streets for studio backlots. Between 1917 and 1929 he logged more than 150 screen appearances, sliding from henchman to hero with the ease of a man who knew every camera angle because he had once called “Action!” himself as an assistant director. War melodrama Kaiser's Finish (1918) gave him his first real notice; he sealed the memory with the swashbuckling adventure The Tigress (1927) and the satin-and-scandal romp Fashion Madness (1928). Talkies arrived, tastes shifted, and Saum stepped back, settling in Glendale, California, where he died quietly on 5 March 1943, leaving behind a ledger of flickering shadows that still carry his name.