Frank Jonasson

Biography

December 14, 1878, Salt Lake City: the desert air cracked with cold the day Frank Jonasson drew his first breath. By the time the cameras rolled, he had traded mountain silhouettes for klieg lights, slipping into silent stories that flickered across nickelodeon screens. In 1916 he braved the Barbary Coast as the lead of *The Girl from Frisco*, and eight years later he book-ended his career with back-to-back 1924 releases: the comedy *Merton of the Movies* and the melodrama *The Fighting Coward*. The final curtain fell on 17 October 1942, among the citrus groves of Rancho Los Amigos, California, where the man who once lived in flickers of black-and-white faded gently into stillness.