Stellan Windrow

Biography

Stellan Windrow's parents were both Swedish physicians. His mother Anna Malmqvist Holm emigrated to Chicago were she gave birth to Stellan, then divorced his father Sven Vindruvva in absentia. At the University of Chicago Stellan was an outstanding athlete (swimming, shotput, discus), took an Associate in Philosophy (1915) and was a member of Alpha Tau Omega, the Society of Tiger Head and the Blackfriars Drama Society. He worked summer jobs at Chicago's Essanay Studio and there became friends with Wallace Beery, Ruth Stonehouse and Francis X. Bushman. In 1917 he was hired by producer 'Bill Parsons' to play the part of Tarzan, becoming the first actor ever contracted for the part. After several weeks of shooting, on Bayou Teche LA, the tree-work all but completed, the United States entered World War I and Stellan became an ensign in the navy. He attended the premiere of Tarzan of the Apes (1918) as a guest of Parsons, but was uncredited in the film even though all the shown tree-work was his. Following marriage and the birth of daughters Marjorie and Patricia, the Windrows moved to a suburb of Paris, working for the Swedish division of Paramount Pictures. Near the end of the 1930s they returned to New York where he worked as a free-lance newspaper/magazine photographer. He served in the American Red Cross during World War II, in north Africa. Stellan died of "hardening of the arteries" November 25, 1959 in New York.