Augustus Thomas
director, producer, writer
- Birth name:
- Augustus Thorn Thomas
- Born:
- 1857-01-08, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
- Died:
- 1934-08-12, Nyack, New York, USA
- Professions:
- director, producer, writer
Biography
On a winter’s day in 1857, St. Louis greeted its newest storyteller: Augustus Thomas. By 1913 he had turned the racetrack drama *Checkers* into flickering life; the next year he plunged audiences into the raw chaos of *The Jungle* and then charmed them with the bittersweet warble of *The Nightingale*. Behind the camera and the pen he shaped early American cinema while Lisle Colby stood beside him as his wife and anchor. Seventy-seven autumns later, in 1934, the Hudson River town of Nyack, New York, became the final curtain for the Missouri boy who taught the silent screen to speak.
