John Troyano
actor
- Born:
- 1890-08-14, Foiano, Val Fortore, Italy
- Died:
- 1938-04-22, Brooklyn, New York, USA
- Professions:
- actor
Biography
Foiano della Val Fortore, a sun-baked hamlet in Italy’s heel, watched its most restless son, John Troyano, sail away before his tenth birthday. The Lower East Side of New York swallowed him whole, then Vitagraph Studios discovered the street-kid with watchful eyes and gave him a new mailing address: the inside of a camera lens. Trade papers of 1908 began listing the wiry newcomer as “Master Troyano,” one of the first performers ever marketed as a “juvenile lead.” Between school bells and streetcars he dashed through one-reel adventures, most fatefully “From Cabin Boy to King,” a 1910 cliff-hanger now chalked up by film scholars as the screen’s first mystery-thriller. Silent though the films were, the kid from Foiano made them crackle like fireworks over the Hudson.
