John Merkyl

Biography

Keokuk, Iowa, greeted John Merkyl’s first cry on 2 June 1885, and by the mid-1910s the camera had claimed him. Between 1915 and 1918 he slipped into three very different skins: the debt-ridden lover of *The Price*, the privileged dreamer in *The Fortunate Youth*, and the battle-scarred survivor populating *A Man’s World*. When the final reel of his own life flickered out on 1 May 1954, the lights dimmed in Los Angeles, California, the city that had become his last set.