William Wadsworth

Biography

A salt-stung cradle in Pigeon Cove, Massachusetts, rocked William Wadsworth into the world on 7 June 1874. By the flicker of early celluloid he made his living, slipping from role to role in the one-reel era—first as the roguish hero of *Vanity Fair* (1915), then conjuring comic magic in *Chris and His Wonderful Lamp* (1917), and later dodging danger through the Highland mists of *Kidnapped* (1917). Fifty-six years after that coastal birth, he drew his final breath on 6 June 1950, the Brooklyn skyline outside the window and the reels of his silent legacy still spinning somewhere in the dark.