Francis X. Bushman
actor, director, writer
- Birth name:
- Francis Xavier Bushman
- Born:
- 1883-01-10, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
- Died:
- 1966-08-23, Pacific Palisades, California, USA
- Professions:
- actor, director, writer
Biography
Baltimore, 10 January 1883: the curtain rose on Francis X. Bushman, a Marylander who would glide from nickelodeon idol to space-opera patriarch. Audiences first swooned over his sculpted silhouette in the chariot-charged spectacle Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925); nearly three decades later they greeted him with delighted double-takes as the imperious, white-mustached Mr. Larrabee in Sabrina (1954), and again in 1961 when he commanded a lunar outpost in The Phantom Planet. Between those bookends he both acted and called the shots from the director’s chair. Off-screen, four women—Iva Millicent Richardson, Norma Emily Atkin, Beverly Bayne, Josephine Fladine Duval—took turns as his leading lady in the serial called marriage. The final fade-out came on 23 August 1966 in Pacific Palisades, California, closing a reel that stretched from gas-lit theaters to the Space Age.
