Herbert Brenon
actor, director, writer
- Birth name:
- Alexander Herbert Reginald St. John Brenon
- Born:
- 1880-01-13, Dublin, Ireland, UK [now Republic of Ireland]
- Died:
- 1958-06-21, Los Angeles, California, USA
- Professions:
- actor, director, writer
Biography
Dublin’s rain-soaked streets welcomed Herbert Brenon on 13 January 1880, and from that first cry he seemed destined to chase stories with a camera instead of a pen. Crossing the Atlantic, he became one of the silent era’s visual conjurors, pinning sweeping deserts onto the screen with *Beau Geste* (1926), reviving medieval England in *Ivanhoe* (1913), and coaxing hearts to break quietly in *Sorrell and Son* (1927). Off-set he shared his life with Helen Brenon, his partner in the tumultuous waltz of early Hollywood. Six decades after leaving Ireland, the light dimmed for him in Los Angeles on 21 June 1958, but the flickering images he crafted still whisper his name.
