Richard Taber

Biography

Long Branch, New Jersey, greeted the arrival of Richard Taber on 31 October 1884, and from that seaside town he would set off to make a living inventing other people’s lives. Between the silents and the early sound era he slipped in and out of characters—scribbling gritty tales for Is Zat So? in 1927, throwing punches on-screen in Two Fisted eight years later, and later chasing shadows in the 1949 radio series Man Against Crime. Offstage he shared his life with fellow performer Mary Ellen Hanley, the actress who became his wife. The curtain rang down on 16 November 1957 in New York City, the restless metropolis that had long served as both his playground and his stage.