Elmer Booth

Elmer Booth
Booth as Jack Doogan in the Carlyle Moore play Stop Thief! (1913)
Born	William Elmer Booth (1882-12-09)December 9, 1882 Los Angeles, California, United States
Died	June 16, 1915(1915-06-16) (aged 32) Los Angeles, California, United States
Occupation	stage actor, film actor
Years active	1901-1915
Spouse(s)	Irene Outtrim (1908–unknown)

William Elmer Booth (9 December 1882 - 16 June 1915) was an American actor. He was born in Los Angeles, California and was the elder brother of film editor Margaret Booth.^[1]
Elmer began acting in touring stock companies as a teenager and achieved great success in the stock company at the Central Theater in San Francisco from 1903-1906. Between 1910 and 1915 he starred in 40 movies; one of those was D. W. Griffith's The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), cited by many film experts as the first gangster movie. Playing The Snapper Kid, a Manhattan street tough engaged in a turf war on the Lower East Side, Booth interpreted the gangster as a cocky, enterprising antihero, far different from the standard teeth-gnashing movie bad guys of the time. His groundbreaking performance created a new character type and paved the way "for all the Cagneys, Bogarts, and Robinsons who later shot their way across the screen."^[2]
Booth died at the age of 32 in a car crash in Los Angeles, caused by actor and director Tod Browning. D.W. Griffith, who planned to give Booth an important role in Intolerance, delivered the actor's graveside eulogy.^[2]

Selected filmography

• A Beast at Bay (1912)
• An Unseen Enemy (1912)
• The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912)
• Gold and Glitter (1912)
• The Adopted Brother (1913)
• Mrs. Black is Back (1914)
• Gasoline Gus (1915)
• A Chase by Moonlight (1915)

References