Willie Ritchie

Biography

San Francisco greeted Willie Ritchie on 13 February 1891, and by 1914 the city’s flickering nickelodeons were already flashing his face. In that year he stepped before the camera for *Golden Gate Weekly, No. 57*, followed swiftly by *Mutual Weekly, No. 42* and the knock-out melodrama *The Man Who Beat Dan Dolan* in 1915. The reels kept turning, audiences kept cheering, and Ritchie kept pace with the newborn art of moving pictures until the lights dimmed for good. He drew his last breath on 24 March 1975, in Burlingame, just a short streetcar ride from the neighborhood where his story first unspooled.