Gladden James
actor
- Born:
- 1888-02-26, Zanesville, Ohio, USA
- Died:
- 1948-08-28, Hollywood, California, USA
- Professions:
- actor
Biography
A midwinter baby, Gladden James drew his first breath on 26 February 1888 in Zanesville, Ohio—a river town that had no idea it had just shipped a future screen chameleon to the world. Within a few years he was trading Ohio’s quiet banks for the klieg lights of early Hollywood, lending his razor-sharp features to silent melodrama and early talkies alike. Audiences watched him slink through the underbelly of crime in *The Third Degree* (1919), melt steel with sheer nerve in *Iron and Steel* (1914), and croon heartbreak from behind prison bars in *Weary River* (1929). On 28 August 1948 the California sun set on his final scene, in Hollywood, closing an arc that had stretched from small-town roots to flickering immortality.
