Broncho Billy Anderson

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Broncho Billy Anderson (March 21, 1880 – January 20, 1971) was an American actor, writer, director, and producer, who is best known as the first star of the Western film genre. [1]

Broncho Billy Anderson

Born Max Aronson
March 21, 1880(1880-03-21)
Little Rock, Arkansas
Died January 20, 1971 (aged 90)
Woodland Hills, California
Occupation Film, stage actor

Contents

[edit] Birth

He was born Max Aronson in Little Rock, Arkansas, the sixth child of Henry and Esther Aronson, natives of New York. [2][3] His younger sister Leona Anderson would achieve a degree of success in the 1950s as a novelty singer who specialized in singing off-key songs for comedic value.[4]

Anderson, who was Jewish, [5] is also claimed by Pine Bluff, where he was raised until age eight.

He then lived in St. Louis until he was 18, when he moved to New York City. He was a photographer's model and newspaper vendor before appearing on the stage. He performed in vaudeville, later working with Edwin S. Porter as an actor and occasional script collaborator.[6]

[edit] Film

In Porter's early motion picture The Great Train Robbery (1903), Anderson played three roles. After seeing the film for the first time at a vaudeville theater and, being overwhelmed by the audiences reaction, Anderson decided the film industry was for him. Using the stage name Gilbert M. Anderson, he began to write, direct, and act in his own Westerns. He became the first cowboy star of movies through a large collection of silent shorts in which he was known as "Broncho Billy".

In 1907, he and George K. Spoor founded Essanay Studios ("S and A" for Spoor and Anderson), one of the predominant early movie studios. Anderson acted in over 300 short films for the studio. Though he played a wide variety of characters, he gained enormous popularity in a series of 148 Western shorts in which he played the first real movie cowboy hero, "Broncho Billy."[7] Spoor stayed in Chicago running the company like a factory, while Anderson traveled the western United States by train with a film crew shooting movies.

Writing, acting and, directing most of these movies, Anderson also found time to direct a series of "Alkali Ike" comedy Westerns starring Augustus Carney. In 1916, Anderson sold his ownership in Essanay and retired from acting. He returned to New York, bought the Longacre Theatre and produced plays, but without permanent success. He then made a brief comeback as a producer with a series of shorts with Stan Laurel, including his first work with Oliver Hardy in A Lucky Dog (filmed in 1919, released in 1921). Conflicts with the studio, Metro, led him to retire again after 1920.

He resumed producing movies, as owner of Progressive Pictures, into the 1950s, then retired again. In 1958, he received an Honorary Academy Award as a "motion picture pioneer," for his "contributions to the development of motion pictures as entertainment."

At age 85, Anderson came out of retirement for a cameo role in The Bounty Killer (1965).

[edit] Death

He died in 1971 at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. [1] He was cremated and his ashes are kept in a vault at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles.

[edit] Legacy

Anderson was honored posthumously in 1998 with his image on a U.S. postage stamp. In 2002, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. For the past nine years, Niles (now part of Fremont), California, site of the western Essanay Studios, has held an annual "Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival."[8]

He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1651 Vine Street in Hollywood.[9]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b "Bronco Billy Anderson Is Dead at 88.", New York Times, January 21, 1971. Retrieved on 2007-07-21. 
  2. ^ The Internet Broadway Database uses the date Mar 10, 1883 and the place as Pine Bluff, Arkansas
  3. ^ Aronson in the United States Federal Census, Pulaski County, Arkansas, 1880, Enumeration District 143, p. 303 B.
  4. ^ Space Age Musicmaker
  5. ^ Kehr, Dave. "The Actors Who Have Two Faces", New York Times, 2000-01-16. Retrieved on 2006-12-13. "Consider the case of G. M. (Broncho Billy) Anderson, who may have been the first actor-director in the movies. Anderson was actually a Jewish kid from Little Rock, Arkansas (real name: Max Aronson), who worked as a salesman and on the stage before being hired as an actor by the Edison Company. He played three bit roles in Edison's pivotal, hugely popular 1903 western "The Great Train Robbery," an experience he drew upon when he founded his own company, Essanay, in 1907. Beginning with "The Bandit Makes Good," Anderson parlayed his amiable Broncho Billy character into some 400 one- and two-reel attractions over the next nine years, becoming one of the earliest identifiable movie stars and the first long-running cowboy hero." 
  6. ^ Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia, 5th Ed. New York City: Harper Collins, 2005. p. 35-36.
  7. ^ Kiehn, David. (2003). Broncho Billy and the Essanay Film Company. Berkeley, Calif: Farwell Books. ISBN 0-9729226-5-2. , p.162
  8. ^ Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival
  9. ^ Hollywood Chamber of Commerce

[edit] External links

Persondata
NAME Anderson, Broncho Billy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Aronson, Max
SHORT DESCRIPTION Film director, actor
DATE OF BIRTH 1880-3-21
PLACE OF BIRTH Little Rock, Arkansas
DATE OF DEATH 1971-1-20
PLACE OF DEATH