Volume III: Biographies

NEWMAN, Robert

Studio employee (1912-1915)

Thanhouser Career Synopsis: Robert Newman was a Thanhouser studio employee intermittently circa 1912-1915.

Biographical Notes: Robert Newman, known to his friends as "Bobby," was among the employees in attendance at the September 7, 1912 outing for Thanhouser employees and friends. In the same year, a caption of a photograph showing the crew for Jess identified him as a property man. He remained a property man with Thanhouser until October 1914, when he went to fill a similar position with "Doc" Willat's studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey. He then returned to Thanhouser for a brief stint as a stage carpenter, but by August 1915 he had left again and was with Universal in Coytesville, New Jersey.

Could the Thanhouser employee have been one of the following?

1. A likely possibility is Robert Newman, a driver, who in 1912 and 1913 lived in New Rochelle at 32 Woodbury Street, relocating by 1914 to Plain Avenue.

2. An actor named Robert Newman was mentioned in an article in the Rochester Democrat, March 28, 1916, as being in the stage production of Potash and Perlmutter presented in that city. He played a "breezy, bragging" salesman.

3. The Musical Courier, December 3, 1918, printed a photograph of Robert Newman, a mustached gentleman who at the time was manager of the Queen's Hall Orchestra in London.

Note: Thanhouser's Robert Newman is not to be confused with Robert Newman (July 21, 1903-April 12, 1982), who was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and who entered show business as a lad, serving at one time as an office boy for Variety, after which he was a poster boy for George M. Cohan, and, eventually, was a producer of Broadway plays, including Bad Girl.

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