Joseph S. Chailee

Biography

Joseph S. Chailee first drew breath in 1852, long before the flicker of moving pictures became the world’s favorite escape. By the time cameras rolled, he had stepped before them with quiet authority, gifting life to three silent-era cornerstones: the frontier epic Beyond the Great Wall (1920), the bare-knuckle drama The Fight (1915), and the snow-bitten poetry of The Spell of the Yukon (1916). His final curtain fell on 17 December 1924, in Amityville, New York, where the lights dimmed on a career that helped teach the young art of film how to speak without words.