William Eville

Biography

Born under the gaslight of 1868, William Eville slipped into the flickering new century with a face made for the silver sheet. Between 1919 and 1921 he darted across the screen three times that history remembers—first as the foil in A Virtuous Vamp, then twice in 1921 trading barbs and top-hats in Millionaire for a Day and Know Your Men. When the curtain fell for good in 1929, the lights dimmed on American soil, closing the scene on a man whose ghost still moves, frame by frame, through the archives of early film.