Volume III: Biographies

LEWIS, Mitchell J. *

Actor (1914-1915)

Thanhouser Career Synopsis: Mitchell J. Lewis was an actor with Thanhouser during the 1914-1915 era.

Biographical Notes: Mitchell J. Lewis was born of a Welsh father and Bohemian mother in Syracuse, New York on June 26, 1884 (other accounts say 1880 and 1888, and another account says his parents were French-Canadian). As a youth he appeared on stage in a dramatization of Palmer Cox's "Brownies" characters used in a series of illustrated books for children. Lewis Mitchell was educated at Syracuse University and then went to the United States Naval Academy, after which he served six years in the Navy, including service on the Wasp and Admiral Sampson's flagship, New York, in Cuba and Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War. While aboard ship he gained ideas for character roles which would serve him well after his service career.

His first post-navy employment was a brief stint as a trolley car operator with the Philadelphia Traction Company, but the hazards encountered during a motormen's strike induced him to quit. He went back to his home town of Syracuse, where he joined a traveling stage show with Willie Collier and was seen as a servant in a Turkish harem and also in Would You For a Million? Traveling to New York City, he soon landed a part which lasted for two years in A Chinese Honeymoon. Mitchell J. Lewis was in the star-studded cast of The Two Orphans, with James O'Neill, Louis James, Clara Morris, Elita Proctor Otis, and others, after which he was with William Faversham for three years in a stock company. Lewis was seen on stage with William Faversham in The Squaw Man, which in London was known as The White Man. In London, he also appeared on stage with Lewis Waller and Fred Terry. Back in America, he was in the production of Drainman and in the road company of The Servant in the House.

In Motion Pictures: Then came Mitchell J. Lewis' first film work, a summer engagement with the Reliance studio on West 21st Street, New York City, a position arranged by his friend, Phillips Smalley. After appearing in one film with Marion Leonard, Henry Walthall, Arthur Johnson, James Kirkwood, and Phillips Smalley, Lewis was discharged. He went back for a brief engagement on the stage, after which Smalley found him work in three or four pictures with Rex, a small independent concern. Lewis then went to England, where he went on the stage to play Nobody in Everywoman. Returning to the United States, Lewis picked up several more stage engagements and was set to tread the boards forever, when an acquaintance, Sidney Bracy, of the Thanhouser Film Corporation, suggested that he come to New Rochelle for a tryout. Lewis, who was living in Uptown Manhattan on 181st Street, journeyed to Thanhouser, where, unknown to him, his arrival had been anticipated. In fact, the person greeting him at the studio said Lewis was an hour overdue, and that Director Thomas N. Heffron had been waiting for him! For his first Thanhouser role he was given a false mustache, told to use the clothes he had arrived in, and was assigned a role as a villain. He subsequently played in several Thanhouser films, including the 1914-1915 serials, The Million Dollar Mystery and Zudora. He was not a member of the Thanhouser stock company, but was hired as needed for special roles.

A 1915 Sketch: The February 20, 1915 issue of The New Rochelle Pioneer carried this biographical sketch by John William Kellette: "Mitchell Lewis once caused a 'kiddie' who viewed The Million Dollar Mystery in a New York City theatre to cry out: 'Look out Jimmy here comes that dang villun!' The remark afterward became a classic with movie news writers when they went shy on paragraphs. 'Mitch,' as he allows those he's friendly with to call him, was creeping up on Jim Cruze when Jim was playing Jim Norton the newspaper reporter in the Mystery, and just about the time that Lewis was to land on Jimmie, the kid yelled, so intense was the scene. Well, so good did Lewis do his work in the Thanhouser classic, that Howell Hansel, peer of directors at the local plant, sent for Mitchell to do 'rough-neck' stuff in the Twenty Million Dollar Mystery, and thus we find him once again among us.

"Lewis is also a New Yorker, first seeing the light of dawn at Syracuse, and although a veritable giant, 1894 found him worrying over his first stage experience with Palmer Cox's Brownies. Success came, and with it engagements with Joe Jefferson, Lewis Morrison, all-star cast in Two Orphans; with William Faversham, Lewis Waller in London and Princess Players in New York City. But the pictures got him. 'Mitch' never won first prize in beauty contests, but he photographs well, his strong, virile, dramatic features, 'getting the stuff over' on the screen. His first picture, made by the Rex Company, was the White Red Man. He is an expert in Indian make-up parts. It is related that he showed one of his 'stills' to an expert on Indian life and asked him if he knew the character. The expert viewed it some time. 'I cannot place him, now, but he's a Sioux chief,' said the expert. 'Mitch' laughed and pointed out that it was himself. 'Well, you're a wonder,' was the reply from the dazed expert. His specialty is heavies with Indian stuff mixed in. He's been with Reliance and Rex prior to the Thanhouser engagement, and has done some work with the Box Office Attractions in big feature productions.

"His eyes are brown, his hair black, he stands 6'1" in his stocking' and weighs 210. He is unmarried, safe, sound and kind, and will stand without hitching. He has a good future in pictures, and, really, girls, he's not the villain that the screen makes him out to be. One can see his rugged work in The Twenty Million Dollar Mystery at Thanhouser Theatre every Monday until the close of the series serial. He graduated from Syracuse University."

His Later Career: By early 1915 Mitchell Lewis was with Kleine (Stop Thief); by mid-1915 he was with Universal (Man of Shame, etc.) and World (The Cub, The Girl I Left Behind Me, etc.); then he was with Metro (The Come-Back, The Flower of No Man's Land, etc.). Lewis was seen in the January 1917 Select Pictures release of The Barrier. He also appeared in the Edgar Lewis Productions releases of The Bar Sinister, The Sign Invisible, and Calibre .38. He typically played rugged outdoor character types, such as Yukon trappers, renegades, and Indians.

Mitchell J. Lewis received several inducements to return to the stage and did take a leave, with permission of Edgar Lewis, from his motion picture contract to work with Madame Nazimova on Broadway in the role of Smoot in 'Ception Shoals, but he enjoyed films so much that most stage offers were ignored. In 1917 his mailing address was given as 130 West 44th Street, New York City. The 1918 edition of the Motion Picture Studio Directory noted that the actor was 6'1" tall, weighed 190 pounds, and had as a mailing address the Screen Club, New York City. He numbered chess among his favorite pursuits.

The October 1919 issue of Picture-Play Magazine noted that Lewis had a 13-year-old son, who attended a military school in New York. At the time Mitchell Lewis and his wife, the former Nan Frances Ryan, were living in California.

Mitchell J. Lewis had a long and illustrious later career, appearing in dozens of films from the early 1920s through the mid-1950s, including Marx brothers' Bargain Basement. At one time he was under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and was seen in Ben-Hur, in the role of Sheik Ilderim. He died on August 24, 1956 in the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital, Woodland Hills, California, and was survived by a brother, Emanuel W. Lewis, and a stepson, Forrest E. Johnson.

Note: Mitchell J. Lewis, the Thanhouser player, is not to be confused with Mitchell Lewis, a black man who once acted with Al Jolson and who achieved fame in the Albany, New York area as a vocalist and singing bartender, and who died on May 25, 1969 at the age of 69 years.

Thanhouser Filmography:

1914: Deborah (7-7-1914), The Tell-Tale Scar (8-9-1914)

1914-1915 Serials: The Million Dollar Mystery, Zudora

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