"Raoul Walsh's 52-year directorial career made him a Hollywood legend. Walsh was also an actor: He appeared in the first version of W. Somerset Maugham's "Rain" renamed Sadie Thompson (1928) opposite Gloria Swanson in the title role. He would have played the Cisco Kid in his own film In Old Arizona (1928) if an errant jackrabbit hadn't cost him his right eye by leaping through the windshield of his automobile. Warner Baxter filled the role and won an Oscar. Before John Ford and Nicholas Ray, it was Raoul Walsh who made the eye-patch almost as synonymous with a Hollywood director as Cecil B. DeMille's jodhpurs." "He interned with the best, serving as assistant director and editor on D.W. Griffith's racist masterpiece, The Clansman, better known as The Birth of a Nation (1915), a blockbuster that may have been the highest-grossing film of all time if accurate box office records had been kept before the sound era. He pulled triple duty on that picture, playing John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater and ranked as the most notorious American actor of all time until Pee Wee Herman (Paul Reubens)." "The year before The Clansman, Walsh was second unit director on The Life of General Villa (1914), also playing the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa as a young man. Walsh got his start in the business as co-director of another Pancho Villa flick, The Life of General Villa (1914), in 1912. The movie featured footage shot of an actually battle between Villa's forces and Mexican federal troops." "In 1915, in addition to helping out the great Griffith, Walsh directed no less than 14 films, including his first feature-length film, The Regeneration (1915), which he also wrote. The movie starred silent cinema superstar Anna Q. Nilsson as a society woman turned social worker who aids the regeneration of a Bowery gang leader. It was a melodrama, but an effective one. In his autobiography, Walsh credited D.W. Griffith with teaching him about the art of filmmaking and about production management techniques. The film is memorable for its shots of New York City, where Walsh had been born 28 years earlier on March 11, 1887." "Raoul Walsh would continue to be a top director for 40 years and would not hang up his director's megaphone (if he still had one at that late in the game) until 1964. As a writer, his last script was made in 1970, meaning his career as a whole spanned seven decades and 58 years."
O.H.M.S. (1937) "Two soldier friends vie for the affections of the sergeant-major's daughter, against a background of military pomp and adventure." Raoul Walsh, Anna Lee, and Wallace Ford during filming Shot at Gainsborough Studios in London, and renamed You're in the Army Now! for its American release.
Raoul Walsh – “Each Man in His Time” “I saw its birth, its golden era, and its declining years and I am convinced that Hollywood’s decline from glory is in no way the result of senility. On the contrary, it is a relapse (temporary, I hope), into the immaturity of adolescence.” So laments eighty-six-year-old Raoul Walsh in his memoirs, titled “Each Man in His Time”, published in 1974. "In 1905 in San Antonio, a local theater production needed a cowboy to ride a horse onstage. He volunteered and was hired. Bitten by the acting bug, he soon craved more. “I read scripts and sat up late, waiting for fame to knock at my door. I might have felt more encouraged if I had known that opportunity would arrive when the time was right.” "In 1924, Douglas Fairbanks chose him to helm The Thief of Bagdad which displayed his effervescent acrobatics to maximum effect and included some spectacular sequences like the groundbreaking flying carpet. Walsh was legitimately proud of its resounding success." "In 1928, while in the midst of directing In Old Arizona, in which he was also playing the Cisco Kid, he lost this right eye in an automobile accident. Never dwelling on his misfortune, (“The world was not going to stop because of it. I could still ride and dance and order a drink.”), he simply chose to wear a trademark eye patch for the rest of his life." "Two years later, he cast an unknown John Wayne in The Big Trail, the first big-budget widescreen production of the sound era, filmed entirely on location. In the part of a frontiersman, “his height gave him authority and his voice was developing the familiar twang that would be expected by millions. He took directions easily and I never had any trouble keeping him in character. In the jargon of the trade, he was a natural. There is a lot of pride in the knowledge I discovered a winner. Not only that. I also found a great American.” READ MORE
This is supposedly Raoul Walsh with 2nd wife (1928-1947) Lorraine. There are some contradictions on whether her name was Walker or Miller. Not Lorraine Miller, the actress, although they do look alike. They are a good-looking couple, whoever she is.
"Marriages: Miriam Cooper, 1916 (divorced 1927); Lorraine Walker, 1928 (divorced 1946); Mary Edna Simpson, 1948"
Virtual History (Click Cover Pictures in link to enlarge) Raoul Walsh (1887 - 1980) American film director, actor, and founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. (A real pictorial Treasure!) Photoplay, December 1928 See more