William R. Randall

Biography

Rochester, New York, claimed him first—William R. Randall stepped into the world there, then stepped straight in front of cameras while the medium itself was still learning to walk. In 1913 he swashbuckled through *The Prisoner of Zenda*, traded arrows for intrigue in 1925’s *The Green Archer*, and, sandwiched between, played the upstanding rival in 1914’s *The Better Man*. Twenty-six years after that debut, on 22 April 1939, the curtain rang down for good in Elizabeth, New Jersey, but the flickering images he left behind keep the applause going.