Maxfield Stanley

Biography

Maxfield Stanley entered the world in 1880 somewhere amid England’s rolling green. Within a few restless years he had crossed the Atlantic and slipped in front of cameras, lending his presence to epoch-making silents: D. W. Griffith’s incendiary epic *The Birth of a Nation* (1915), its sprawling follow-up *Intolerance* (1916), and the melodrama *Beauty in Chains* (1918). Though the talkies eventually eclipsed his era, Stanley’s footprints remained on those flickering strips of celluloid. He spent his final sunset years in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, and drew his last breath there on 2 July 1968.