William Bechtel

Biography

Berlin, 12 June 1867: the day the curtain rose on Wilhelm Bechtel. By 1911 he had swapped the spelling of his name, swashbuckled across the screen as one of Dumas’s musketeers, and helped launch the American movie industry’s first truly epic serial. Two years later he stared down corruption in *It Is Never Too Late to Mend* (1913), then spent 1919 dodging shadows in the moody thriller *The Lurking Peril*. Off-camera, the leading lady who answered only to “Mrs. William Bechtel” shared his life; on-camera, he shared his gift for making silent film speak. The final fade-out came in Hollywood, California, on 27 October 1930, closing a 63-year performance that began in imperial Germany and ended under the palm-lined lights of a town he helped invent.