George Melford
George H. Melford ( born February 19, 1877 in Rochester, New York, † April 25, 1961 in Hollywood, California ) was an American actor and film director.
Life
Melford graduated from McGill University in Montreal. He was already an established stage actor in Cincinnati, Ohio, before he got into the film business in 1909 at the Kalem Studios in New York and was hired by Sidney Olcott as a character actor. In 1911, he led his first film directing. In 1915 he moved from Kalem to Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. In the same year he was a founder of the Motion Picture Directors Association.
1916 turned Melford To Have and to Hold, a screen adaptation of the U.S. bestseller by Mary Johnston from 1900, with the dancer Mae Murray in the lead role. Its now known film is the silent film The Sheik with Rudolph Valentino from the year 1921.
Melford was the mid-1920s to Universal Studios, where in 1929 his first sound film turned. In 1930 he created for Universal several Spanish-language versions of the film that were shot parallel to the English with other actors. The most famous of which is Dracula.
The 15-part adventure film series Jungle Menace at Columbia Pictures, co -directed by Harry L. Fraser, 1937 was his last film. At the age of 60 years and after 130 films as a director, which made him financially independent, Melford came back as a character actor in supporting roles in appearance, including in The Ten Commandments (1956). 1960, at the age of 83, he stood for the last time in front of the camera. He died the following year of a heart attack.
George Melford is located in the Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery buried in Los Angeles.