Orral Humphrey
actor, director
- Birth name:
- Thomas Orral Humphrey
- Born:
- 1880-04-03, Louisville, Kentucky, USA
- Died:
- 1929-08-12, Los Angeles, California, USA
- Professions:
- actor, director
Biography
Louisville, Kentucky, greeted Orral Humphrey on 3 April 1880, and by his late teens he had already traded river-city summers for the flicker of klieg lights. First stepping before the camera in The Pork Plotters (1916), he soon slipped behind it as well, coaxing out the first screen version of Huckleberry Finn in 1920 and, seven years later, orchestrating the jazz-age swirl of Broadway Madness. Between those projects he found time to wed three times—Lois Frances Born, Josephine Edith Taylor, and Florence Chapman each sharing a chapter of his restless life. The lights dimmed for good in Los Angeles on 12 August 1929, closing the curtain on a career that helped drag silent comedy from custard-pie chaos toward something like cinematic art.
