William S. Hart
William Surrey Hart (December 6, 1864 in Newburgh, Orange County, New York, † June 23 1946 in Newhall, California ) was an American film actor, director, screenwriter and film producer of the silent film era. His westerns were a milestone of the genre.
Career
Hart came in 1888 to New York, where he began a study acting at FF Markey. He traveled with touring theaters and appeared on Broadway, including 1899 in the role of Messala in the play Ben-Hur. In 1905, he was there with The Squaw Man and played successfully in other Western plays.
In 1907 he was hired for the film Ben Hur for the cuteness of it already in the theater role of Messala. His real entry in the film industry, however, began in 1914 with a contract with Thomas Harper Ince. His acting debut in a feature film was the role of Jim in Stoke Reginald Barker's The Bargain. In the same year Harts directorial debut The Passing of Two -Gun Hicks, in which he also played the lead role originated. William S. Hart was known by many Western in which he played the lead role in each case. In 1917, he took on a lucrative offer from Adolph Zukor and went to Famous Players. His last major film role came in 1925 in King Baggots Tumbleweeds.
Hart was also a writer and published several volumes of Western stories ( Pinto Ben and other stories, The Golden West Boys, Hoofbeats, The Law on Horseback and others), and in 1929 his memoir, My Life - East and West.
It is located on the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn buried. For his contribution to the film industry William S. Hart was a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6363 Hollywood Blvd. honored.
Reception
Hart is among one of the first Western hero in film history. His success was based on a very authentic and expressive play. He was able also to expand the hitherto limited psychological and contextual spectrum of the genre to various components. Hart embodied mostly ambivalent, sometimes broken characters, guide their search for identity and support, as well as conflicts with their own, but also the social mores repeatedly isolation. Services to the general public or individual, loved by the protagonists of people to go into these films often go hand in hand with pain and personal loss. This tragic element was mentioned frequently in the course of the later Western history. The most popular example of the Western classic is probably Twelve clock noon, the main role was played by Gary Cooper, often received as a reincarnation of the hard figures. In the 1960s, it eventually became a supporting element of a whole genre flow. Hart's direct successor in viewer popularity, Tom Mix, however, was in many respects the opposite Harts. The Western characters shown by him were free of self-doubt and over-subscribed, all-rounder. This corresponded to the wishes of the former audience, who longed for the optimism of the 1920s, after the blue spectacle. Rota therefore, Mix has been referred to as "Glamour Cowboy ".