Edwin August

Biography

A Missouri boy with the improbably aristocratic name Edwin August Phillip von der der Butz first faced footlights at seven, velvet-suited in *Little Lord Fauntleroy* before St. Louis crowds. Twenty-five years later he swapped gaslight for the flicker of nickelodeons, joining Biograph’s New York troupe in 1908 and sharing the frame with a rising Mary Pickford while D. W. Griffith blocked out scenes. Summer 1912 found him lured to Lubin’s Philadelphia lot; within days he was trading longing glances with Ormi Hawley in a brisk string of one-reelers. By Christmas he had packed his bags again, roaming from studio to studio—writing, directing, and starring, sometimes bankrolling pictures under his own shingle. Fan-magazine readers crowned him the nation’s handsomest matinee idol, and in 1916 the actor turned provocateur, launching a tongue-in-cheek White House bid on an anti-censorship platform. The country laughed: a screen performer in the Oval Office? Unthinkable—little Ronnie Reagan was still in short pants. Talkies arrived; August’s voice measured up. He slipped uncredited through the backgrounds of Capra’s *Mr. Smith Goes to Washington* (1939) and Welles’s *The Magnificent Ambersons* (1942), finally hanging up his makeup kit in 1947. Off-screen he kept to a tiny Hollywood bungalow, no spouse, no entourage—only whispers of secret romances with men. He died alone on 4 March 1964 and rests beneath a simple stone at Valhalla Memorial Park.