John Emerson

Biography

A Midwestern boy who stepped off the Sandusky, Ohio docks on 29 May 1874, John Emerson sailed straight into the nascent film world and helped shape its early grammar. Behind the camera he orchestrated the 1917 romantic escapade Reaching for the Moon and the 1918 frothy comedy Come on In, while his uncredited fingerprints can be spotted on 1936’s earthquake-shaken spectacle San Francisco. Off-set, he teamed with—and married—sharp-witted screenwriter Anita Loos, the pair forming one of silent-era Hollywood’s most formidable creative duos. Emerson’s final curtain fell on 7 March 1956 in Pasadena, California, closing a life that had plotted much of Hollywood’s first chapter.