Volume III: Biographies

PLATT, George Foster

Director (1915-1916)

Thanhouser Career Synopsis: George Foster Platt was a director with Thanhouser in 1915 and 1916. In the spring of 1916 he was at Thanhouser's Jacksonville studio.

Biographical Notes: George Foster Platt was born in Virginia. Following high school, he journeyed west to attend the Colorado School of Mines, but soon he decided to spend his life's work as a cattle rancher. He changed his mind again, and went to New York City, where he landed a role on the stage in The Electra. He left Broadway and went to Massachusetts, where he worked in a paper mill for a year and a half, after which he went back to Colorado to spend two years in another paper mill. Platt decided to return to the stage and joined a small road company for $18 per week. Soon thereafter he learned of an opening and became stage manager of the Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco. After spending a year on the West Coast, Platt went to Milwaukee, where he was employed as a stage manager for Edwin Thanhouser at the Academy of Music. In July 1902 it was announced that he was writing a romantic play which would be staged soon at the Academy.

After Milwaukee, George Foster Platt went to the Madison Square Theatre in New York City, where he produced several plays, including The Awakening, with Katherine Grey, The Man on the Box, with Henry E. Dixey, and The Three of Us, by Rachel Crothers. From the last-named engagement he went back to the West and directed plays at the Valencia Theatre in San Francisco, where his productions included Peter Pan and Sporting Life. Then the New Theatre, in New York City, beckoned, and he crossed the continent once again, to direct modern plays, including The Bluebird, Strife, The Witch, The Thunderbolt, The Piper, Sister Beatrice, Vanity Fair, and The Arrow-Maker. Platt's next stop was at Winthrop Ames' Little Theatre, for which he produced The Pigeon, Snow White, The Affairs of Anatole, and other plays. During this engagement he was the subject of an interview published in The New York Dramatic Mirror, January 28, 1914. Certain of the plays which he staged over a period of years featured such well-known personalities as Henry E. Dixey, Carlotta Nielsen, Charlotte Walker, and Margaret Anglin.

George Foster Platt joined the Thanhouser Film Corporation in March 1915, reportedly at the same time Thomas Coffin Cooke joined. This was at the inducement of Edwin Thanhouser, who had just returned to run the company bearing his name. The New Rochelle Pioneer, April 3, 1915, noted: "It is a particular coincidence that he should join Mr. Thanhouser for it was just about ten years ago that Mr. Platt was stage manager for the Thanhouser Stock Company in Milwaukee. The acquisition of Mr. Platt is a fair criterion of the standard we expect from the new regime at the New Rochelle institution, for those who know of Mr. Thanhouser's work of a few years ago will remember him as one of the first to introduce into pictures talent from the legitimate, and the foremost exponent of the standardized film product...."

A paragraph in Variety, December 17, 1915, told of a diversion: "George Foster Platt, one of the Thanhouser directors, was taking a gambling house scene at the studio last Sunday, when someone suggested a crap game. Everybody participated, and business was stopped for a brief spell. After Platt cleaned up seven dollars, the director said: 'We will now take pictures.'"

For Thanhouser Platt directed various productions through 1916, including some films produced at the firm's short-lived Jacksonville studio. While in Jacksonville in early 1916 he lived in a small bungalow at 2326 Pearl Street, where during evenings he frequently entertained Thanhouser players and other friends. Platt left Thanhouser shortly thereafter and departed New Rochelle for Los Angeles on Sunday, April 2, 1916, to work with the Jesse L. Lasky Company. On May 3, 1916 he was riding in an automobile in the Los Angeles area with Clinton H. Stagg, also a former Thanhouser employee who went to Lasky. An accident occurred; Stagg was killed, and Platt escaped with a broken arm. While his injury was mending he took a trip to the Orient. In September 1919 Platt was signed by Cathrine Curtis, president of the company bearing her name, to direct films in Los Angeles, much to the disappointment of certain Broadway interests who had hoped he would direct a new play starring Ethel Barrymore.

Thanhouser Filmography:

1915: Movie Fans (Falstaff 4-30-1915), The Angel in the Mask (5-30-1915), A Maker of Guns (7-6-1915), His Wife (10-28-1915), Inspiration (11-18-1915)

1916: Big Gun Making (British release date: 1-6-1916), The Five Faults of Flo (1-20-1916), What Doris Did (3-1-1916), The Net (4-1-1916)

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