S. Rankin Drew

Biography

S. Rankin Drew was born into footlights and celluloid: son of Sidney Drew and the first Mrs. Sidney Drew, and—through his mother’s bloodline—first cousin to the royal Barrymore trio, John, Lionel, and Ethel. His parents, veterans of the stage, tried to ground him by packing him off to a military academy, but uniforms and drills were no match for greasepaint and limelight. Soon he was crisscrossing the country in touring companies beside his parents and a young Lionel, who nudged him toward the flickering new art of motion pictures. Before long Rankin was in front of the camera, his dark good looks earning him brisk stardom; even quicker came the realization he preferred calling the shots from behind it. The actor slid into the director’s chair and, in a blaze of creativity, turned out a string of popular one-reelers that trade papers praised for their snap and polish. In 1915, when Europe’s skies were turning into battlefields, he traded title cards for propellers and enlisted with the Lafayette Escadrille. Among the fledgling pilots training beside him was William A. Wellman—future Oscar-winner, then just another American itching for altitude. On June 19, 1918, a German bullet tore through his cockpit over France; Drew died in the crash, one of the last casualties of the Great War. His father, Sidney, already reeling from the loss of his professional partner and wife, never recovered. Within eleven months he, too, was gone, dead at fifty-four, leaving a silent screen still echoing with the name Rankin Drew.