David Butler
actor, director, writer
- Born:
- 1894-12-17, San Francisco, California, USA
- Died:
- 1979-06-14, Arcadia, California, USA
- Professions:
- actor, director, writer
Biography
A Christmas-week baby birthed amid the clang of San Francisco’s cable cars, David Butler stepped onto the stage while the 19th century still had breath. By the 1920s he had traded footlights for camera lenses, becoming the unseen hand steering Shirley Temple through raucous hayloft tunes in If I Had My Way (1940) and conjuring Boris Karloff’s spooky antics in You’ll Find Out the same year. A decade later he coaxed June Haver’s voice into the sweet, post-war optimism of Look for the Silver Lining (1949). Off-set he shared a quiet life with Elshie H. Schulte, his wife and steadfast collaborator. Ninety-two autumns after that December morning in 1894, Butler’s final curtain fell on a June afternoon in 1979, in Arcadia, California, leaving behind a reel of laughter, melody, and silver-screen mischief.
