Wilbur Higby

Biography

Before the footlights ever found him, Wilbur Higby was trading double plays for Grand Rapids on the professional diamond. When the stands emptied, he followed the smell of greasepaint into touring stock companies, sharing the boards with Otis Skinner, Wilton Lackaye, and sprite-like Marguerite Clark. Universal beckoned in 1914; within a year he was trading barbs on-screen with Douglas Fairbanks and taking direction from Elmer Clifton and W. Christy Cabanne. Through the Jazz Age he remained the reliable silver-haired patriarch, the man whose calm nod sent adventurous daughters racing out the door. A sudden heart attack wrote curtain for the former ballplayer turned perennial screen father.