William Courtleigh Jr.

Biography

Buffalo, New York, greeted William Courtleigh Jr. on 28 June 1892, and by his early twenties he had swapped upstate winters for the heat of klieg lights. Between 1914 and 1916 he dashed across the silent screen—stealing scenes in *The Better Man*, donning naval whites for *Neal of the Navy*, and braving blizzards in *Out of the Drifts*. Off-camera he claimed Ethel Fleming as his leading lady. Fate cut the final reel short: he died in Philadelphia on 13 March 1918, two months shy of twenty-six, leaving behind a brief, bright arc of flickering images and the ghosts of stories he never got to tell.