Maurice Costello
actor, director, writer
- Born:
- 1877-02-22, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
- Died:
- 1950-10-28, Hollywood, California, USA
- Professions:
- actor, director, writer
Biography
Pittsburgh, 22 February 1877: the city’s smoky riverbanks welcomed Maurice Costello, the boy who would grow into silent-cinema’s first matinee idol. Between 1913 and 1915 he faced three cameras and three fates—trekking The Golden Pathway, forging Iron and Steel, and confronting The Man Who Couldn’t Beat God—while quietly inventing the grammar of screen acting. He signed love letters as “Ruth’s husband,” then later as “Mae’s,” marriages that book-ended a life lived in footlights and flicker. Hollywood took him back on 28 October 1950, closing his curtain beneath the California sun, but the images he left behind still move at sixteen frames per second.
