Hector Turnbull
miscellaneous, producer, writer
- Born:
- 1884-09-11, Arlington, New Jersey, USA
- Died:
- 1934-04-08, New Hope, Pennsylvania, USA
- Professions:
- miscellaneous, producer, writer
Biography
Arlington, New Jersey, greeted the arrival of Hector Turnbull on 11 September 1884, and from that modest beginning he fashioned a career that flickered across early Hollywood marquees. Words were his first love: he sharpened scenarios until they gleamed, then stepped behind the camera to shepherd them onto the screen. Audiences laughed with Why Bring That Up? in 1929, cheered Casey at the Bat in 1927, and felt the sting of betrayal in 1916’s The Selfish Woman—three mile-markers in a filmography that helped shape the grammar of American comedy and melodrama. Off-set, he shared his life with Blanche Lasky Goldwyn, a marriage that wove together two of the industry’s spirited clans. Nearly three decades after his first breath, his last came on 8 April 1934, in the quiet riverside town of New Hope, Pennsylvania, closing the arc of a storyteller who had already given the new century some of its favorite fables.
