Volume III: Biographies

MITCHELL, Howard M. *

Actor, director (1914-1916)

Thanhouser Career Synopsis: Howard M. Mitchell was an actor and director with Thanhouser during the 1914-1916 years.

Biographical Notes: Howard M. Mitchell was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on December 11, 1887 (one account says 1885). From an early age he showed an interest in the stage, and when he was a little boy he and his little friends had a "stock company" which gave performances in the basement of his home, to the acclaim of the neighbors. Later, he went on the stage with a stock company in Wichita, Kansas. After playing stock for six or seven years, he decided to follow his family's preference and take up the study of law. However, after contemplating this alternative, he firmly resolved that before the footlights is where he wanted to be. In January 1910 Mitchell was on stage at the Gilmore Theatre, Springfield, Massachusetts, in a melodrama, The King of Bigamists. In June 1912 he was on stage at Blaney's Arch Street Theatre in Crawford's Claim, a drama also known as Nugget Nell. By that time he was a well known personality on the local stage.

By 1911 Howard M. Mitchell was in films with Lubin. An article in The New York Mirror, April 17, 1911, told of his incarceration by mistake in a Philadelphia jail, after he visited the lockup to research "local color." It later turned out that his fellow players had arranged the set-up as a gag. For Lubin he was in the 1914 serial, The Beloved Adventurer, and in the 1915 serial, The Road of Strife. In 1914 he worked with Thanhouser briefly. However, he was not a member of the Thanhouser stock players at the time. Howard M. Mitchell joined Thanhouser as a director and first reported for work on Tuesday, July 6, 1915, to fill a vacancy left by Edgar Jones, who departed from Thanhouser after being a director there for only two weeks. Mitchell was an actor and director with the New Rochelle studio in 1915 and 1916. He played in the 1916 films, When She Played Broadway and Fear, and directed Betrayed and acted in and directed The Traffic Cop the same year. The New Rochelle Pioneer, June 3, 1916, announced that he was among nearly two dozen important players, directors, and cameramen who were terminated by the studio on Saturday morning, May 27, 1916, as part of an economy move when the outlook for the Thanhouser Film Corporation seemed bleak.

The New Rochelle Evening Standard, December 19, 1916, printed this item: "Howard M. Mitchell, for some time one of Thanhouser's actor-directors left today for Glendale, California, where he intends to join the Kalem Company as a director. He is engaged to direct a new serial picture of Stingaree...in 30 reels. Also a series of feature pictures in some of which he will do the villain. Mr. Mitchell is a protegé of Arthur V. Johnson, a Lubin director, and was with Thanhouser two years. He has produced some of Thanhouser's best comedies and dramas and has become well known in many circles here. He has been the hero of several exciting episodes not before the camera as well as on the screen, among which were some real rescues from drowning and from runaway horses."

The actor was a sportsman, and in swimming he won several medals, including awards from the Hygeia Club and the Argo Club. He preferred city life to that of the country, except during hunting season, when he enjoyed tramping through the woods. His wife, whom he married in 1909, was formerly known as Mary Laird, a stage actress who was the daughter of the editor of the Key West Democrat and a direct descendant of Pocahontas. In August 1912 she went to Reno, Nevada, a divorce haven at the time, and filed an action against Mitchell, alleging "cruel and barbarous treatment" and testifying: "He threatened to mar my beauty by throwing vitriol in my face if I left him." The divorce was final on November 13th of the same year. The couple had lived together only seven months. In 1912 Mrs. Mitchell was chosen as a representative type of beauty for the Sunshine State, and her likeness was scheduled to adorn the seal which was to be part of the Florida state exhibit at the forthcoming Panama-Pacific International Exposition, held in San Francisco in 1915. Howard M. Mitchell remained in films through at least 1950, and died on October 4, 1958 in Hollywood, California.

Thanhouser Filmography:

1914: The Harvest of Regrets (9-27-1914)

1915: Ambition (12-21-1915)

1916: Betrayed (1-29-1916), Outwitted (2-16-1916), Fear (3-29-1916), The Traffic Cop (4-8-1916), When She Played Broadway (5-9-1916), The Window of Dreams (6-15-1916)

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