Tom Ricketts
actor, director, writer
- Born:
- 1853-01-15, London, England, UK
- Died:
- 1939-01-20, Hollywood, California, USA
- Professions:
- actor, director, writer
Biography
Tom Ricketts entered the world in London, 1853, and spent the next eight-and-a-half decades ricocheting between stages and sets, clocking more than 300 film appearances and directorial turns along the way. Yet modern audiences barely whisper his name, even though he aimed the very first camera ever rolled in Hollywood. He first made waves in Victorian theatres, celebrated for a Shakespearean prowess that packed houses along the Thames. When the flickering new medium beckoned, Ricketts crossed the Atlantic and never slowed, shooting, acting, and mentoring right up to his final call sheet. In January 1939 he reported to the studio nursing what felt like a common chill; within days it flared into fatal pneumonia. He died before the week was out, his passing kept from wife Josephine Ditt—herself incapacitated by a December stroke—until the end.
