Volume III: Biographies

HANSEL, Howell

Director, scenario writer (1913-1915)

Thanhouser Career Synopsis: Howell Hansel was a prominent director and scenario writer with Thanhouser, circa 1914-1915.

Biographical Notes: Howell Hansel was born in Indiana in 1860, and at a young age moved with his parents to Terre Haute in the same state, where he lived until the age of 18, when he departed for Cincinnati to become a reporter for The Commercial Tribune. In his childhood he dreamed of someday being a policeman, then a frontiersman and Indian fighter, and, finally, a pirate! While a high school student he was a frequent visitor to the theatre, where one day he saw an announcement for the forthcoming appearance of Edwin Booth in Hamlet. Inspired, he took a copy of Shakespeare's works from his father's bookshelf and read that particular play. When he heard Booth deliver Hamlet's lines, the young playgoer was awe-struck and on the spot resolved to someday become an actor himself. However, necessity intervened and forced him to work at other jobs, including that of a newspaper reporter, for several years after he left high school.

His stage debut was made at the Union Square Theatre in New York City in 1886 with Madame Modjeska's company in As You Like It. After spending two years with Mme. Modjeska, he was with Margaret Mather for a season, after which he was under the management of Charles Frohman for three years. Later, he was with the Liebler Company for two years. By 1913 he was in his third year of employment with David Belasco.

Along the way, Howell Hansel spent six years in Boston with the Boston Museum, Empire, and Castle Square theatre stock companies. At one time or another he was in stock in Philadelphia, Montreal, Brooklyn, Chicago, and Denver. An article in The Terre Haute Tribune, March 3, 1913, noted that by then he had been in nearly 500 different plays, during which he inherited more than a hundred million dollars, had been in love 150 times and married nearly as often, had been divorced at least 40 times, had been killed at least 250 times, and had been buried alive once!

For many years he pursued art as a serious hobby, first working in copper and brass. In early 1910 he was invited to make a brass sculpture for exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Fine Arts in Pittsburgh. He then studied painting, in New York City under William E. Norton, a marine artist. Summers were spent at his vacation home on the Massachusetts shore, where he maintained a 40-foot yacht, the Yankiana. He traveled up and down the New England coast in search of subjects for sketching, often making a draft in the summer and then developing the subject on a canvas in his home during the winter months. He also enjoyed reading, and built a fine library, which included many books about Shakespeare. In 1913, after his stage work with David Belasco, Hansel went into motion pictures and joined American Biograph, where he had several minor acting roles, after which he became a script editor for Solax, in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

The Thanhouser Experience: Charles J. Hite brought Howell Hansel to Thanhouser in late 1913 to direct "Thanhouser 'Big' Productions," multiple-reel feature films released on the first of each month. In its issue of April 1, 1914, The New York Dramatic Mirror stated Hansel was script editor for Solax; this error was corrected in the April 15th issue, which informed readers that he had been a director for Thanhouser since January 1, 1914. Actually, he had been a script editor for Solax the year before.

Howell Hansel later directed the 1914 Thanhouser serial, The Million Dollar Mystery, an accomplishment which brought him much acclaim. Hansel wrote the scenario for Lucy's Elopement, a 1915 Thanhouser film. In December 1914 he was named to the position of producing manager at New Rochelle, following the recent resignation of Lloyd F. Lonergan, who left during the confusion and uncertainty that followed Charles J. Hite's death. He remained with Thanhouser through early 1915. New Rochelle city directories note that from 1914 through 1916 he lived at 144 Meadow Lane.

In the Robinson Locke Collection at the New York Public Library several letters from Howell Hansel's daughter, Peggy (Margaret Lincoln Hansel), are preserved. She was a resident student at Miss Chamberlayne's School, The Fenway 28, Boston. At the time, her father lived at 144 Meadow Lane in New Rochelle. Sample letters (dates are postmarks; original spelling is retained):

(Postmarked January 20, 1915, addressed to "Mr. Howell Hansel, Thanhouser Film Corporation, New Rochelle, NY," and marked "Personal")

"Darling Daddy - I received your nice long newsy letter this morning. I liked the way it started 'Quiet little' Meadow Lane. Imagine Mummy reading cheap novels, how terrible, I can't imagine anything worse than that. Will you please send me some 'Reel Lifes,' I am dying to get some. Of course not being in the kitchen must take a good deal off your mind, how did Mother stand it, when you stopped cooking? 'A Raid on a Madhouse' sounds really spooky. I would love to see it. So the 'Million Dollar Misery' [sic] is soon going to be finished, thank goodness.

"Remember me to Alexander, George Webber, Joe and George Grimmer, and give my love to Braine and Rene, and by the way will you ask Mummy to send me Rene's picture. Have you heard from Midge yet, I haven't. Willie Braugh says she sends her love to you and all. We were going to see 'Merry Wives of Windsor,' but Miss Chamberlayne says it is to rude and boisterous. A million hugs and kisses for you, Mummy and Ted - From your Peggy"

(Postmarked January 28, 1915, addressed to "Mrs. Howell Hansel, 144 Meadow Lane, New Rochelle, NY)

"Darling Mummy - Please send me my duet book, it has a dark cover with red lettering on it. Please send it soon. Just think in less than a month I will be fourteen, will you send me money for a theatre party, please dear. Daddy is dandy to send me 'Reel Life.' Everything has been so tame lately I wish something exciting would happen. I received the letter with the money today. Miss Knight has some money from you to. I see by the check that Daddy belongs to the New Rochelle Bank. I think my riding habit is fine, I have only ridden once though.

"Sunday I am going to see Frieda Hempel, and the next Marcella Sembrish, Saturday afternoon I am going to see 'Julius Caesar' Henry Jewet Players. I have just been downstairs to Miss Knight, and paid my debts, out of the money you sent her and me, I have, one thirty five left, but I am free from debt. Miss Chamberlayne says I am to pay for my theatre, and not put it on the bill, so please send some ticket money. Yes, dearest, I take it all back you are not mean for you would never leave me alone and go to the city, I am pretty sure. Please hurry and send me my shoes, and a pair of silk stockings. After all, Mummy, Mary H. and I are pretty good friends, I love her to death. Do all the children get along nicely? I hope so. A million hugs and kisses for you, Daddy, and dear old Ted. - From your 'Baby'"

(Postmarked February 3, 1915. Addressed to "Mr. Howell Hansel, Thanhouser Film Corporation, New Rochelle, N.Y.")

"Darling Daddy - This is just a very little letter, in fact a little note, but I wanted you to know I still love you. Yesterday I received your 'Reel Life,' its just dandy of you to send it, I wish every week you'd send me one. The night of my birthday we give a dance, it must be then because Ash Wednesday comes the seventeenth, and then enters Lent.

"Well now how do you like the Kaiser?, do you think we will go to war? I hope not. Yes, I said slush, when I saw the greatest director H.H. Oh Slush. Saturday I saw the Henry Jewett Player's in Julius Caesar, and it was really dandy. The best man played Brutus. R.D. MacLean, he was a dandy actor. Mark Antony also was very good. A billion hugs and kisses to you, Mummy and Ted. - From Your Peggy"

(Postmarked March 10, 1915)

"Dearest Daddy - This morning I received a different moving-picture book, and yesterday I got your other book. You are just dandy to send them. Friday I saw Pavlova in 'Amarilla' 'Seven Daughters of the Ghost King' and then in different dances. I saw her in the Dragon Fly Dance. She was simply perfect. Saturday Mr. and Mrs. Potter (Willie Brough's mother and father) took us to Keiths. During one act a man shouted fire, and you could smell smoke so plain. Mr. Potter told us not to be frightened, but to follow him. We soon found out it was the Adams House.

"Yesterday was the recital Miss Hamilton and Miss Tidkens [?; not clear] said I sang and played fine. I was not frightened at all. All the girls here are just crazy over moving pictures. I have forgotten how they look, Have seen only one number of Pathe Wekley, and that was the day I went to Keith's. It really made me homesick. Give my love to Miss Hastings and tell her I would love to see her. Remember me to Mr. Farrington, Miss Forbes, Florence, Harry Benham, and all of the others. Give my love to Rene also. A million hugs and kisses, From your Peggy"

(Postmarked April 18, 1915)

"Dearest Daddy - This isn't a very long letter, as I wrote all the news to Muzzer [nickname for her mother], but I want you to know I'm thinking about you just as much as Mummy. Isn't that mean about 'The Birth of a Nation'? Saturday night they threw eggs and sulphuric acid from the balcony so now Miss Chamberlayne thinks it won't be safe to go. I would love to see it again. It has not been stopped yet though. I am glad you are having luck with your battle sceanes. I hope they will be as good as Grith [D.W. Griffith], well however you spell his name, but you know who I mean.

"When you see Burr McIntosh remember me to him, also all of the old Thanhauser bunch especially Miss Hastings, and ALL the Farringtons. I wish you could have gotten Mother's handy Andy for Aunt Nancy. Tell Emerson he must not forget how to make good things to eat, becasue for four months I will eat everything. How did you keep the children when Muzzer was away, did you give dear old Ben, and naughty Dick their cream every morning? and I hope you didn't let Dizzy out or tickle Ted's nose. How is dear old Bennie's back getting along, has he any more bruises? Be sure and write soon Daddy dear. Oceans, miles, feet, and sq. inches of love, hugs and kisses. From A Girl Whoes Going to Sing and Play a Lot This Summer. Guess who?"

(Postmarked May 3, 1915, addressed to "Mr. Howell Hansel, 144 Meadow Lane, New Rochelle, N.Y.")

"Dearest Daddy - Just this hour I received your letter and the five dollars. By all means accept Lubin's offer, it would mean everything. If you do, I will work so hard that when I am grown I will beat Calvé all to pieces. I will try all the time. Please do not refuse the offer. Friday evening I and another girl are going to Keith's to hear Emma Calvé. Funny wasn't it that you should write me about her when I am going to hear her so soon. The fifteenth I am going to hear Harold Bauer and Ossf Gabrielovitch, who Miss Hamilton thinks are the two greatest pianists living, in a joint concert. Miss Hamilton likes Bauer first and the Gabrielovitch, whom she likes better than Godowsky her other teacher. Will you please send me money for Calvé and the other two.

"This Sunday I am invited to hear John McCormick who Muzzer adores? If you see Polly again, tell her I will answer her letter very soon. Tell Mummy I would like my street pumps very soon. Mrs. Black is going to put me in an outside play 'The Bluebird,' but not the one that we are doing. I am to be Light in that. I am so excited over it I do hope I will be good. I will write Mummy tomorrow. Now be sure to accept that offer. A million kisses and hugs for you, Mummy, and all the children. From your Peggy."

(Excerpt from undated letter to "Muzzer"):

"I hope Daddy will put Calvé into pictures. I know she'd be fine in them."

A 1914 Biographical Sketch: The New Rochelle Pioneer, October 10, 1914, carried the following: "Howell Hansel's dramatic work is but one aspect of a many-sided intellectual life. Maker of artistic things in brass and copper, wood carving and painting in water colors, familiar with philosophy and a skilled yachtsman are only a few of the things that have gone to make up the life of he, who is at present the leading director of Thanhouser's greatest serial motion picture film, The Million Dollar Mystery.

"'He can toil terribly,' was said of Sir Walter Raleigh, and the same might truthfully be said of Howell Hansel, except that he doesn't toil 'terribly,' but only incessantly. For three years he was leading man at the Castle Square Theatre, and one year at the Empire Theatre, in Boston, Mass., and his work and personality have become well known to those who have appreciated and wondered at the excellence, the thoroughness and the versatility of his art, but his surplus energy has found an outlet in other activities. He has worked in metal. He has made beautiful and most artistic things in brass. He has carved in wood. He has done some very creditable watercolors. He has made excellent pencil sketches. He is an amateur photographer. He is a yachtsman who sails his own boat, which he could also design and construct if it didn't take too long. He has a well selected library, and he has found time to learn what is between the covers of his books, and to familiarize himself with philosophy in its truest sense, and with many of the finest things in literature. Besides all this, there has been leisure for companionship with the sympathetic Mrs. Hansel, and with their lovely child.

"How does a man find time for all that? Days are not elastic. They have only 24 hours. If you should ask Mr. Hansel that question, he would probably reply, 'Well, by always keeping busy,' which is not an altogether satisfactory answer for there are many of us who 'keep busy,' and yet never seem to accomplish much. Mr. Hansel has learned the secret of keeping busy to advantage. He has learned that alteration of work is equivalent to rest, and that when the brain cells used, for instance, in memorizing long speeches in new roles begin to get fatigued, he can rest them by calling into action other brain cells used in a different work.

"The more one thinks of Mr. Hansel's manifold activities, carried on easily, lightly, along with the exhausting labors of his profession, the more the wonder grows. He never seems to work. It seems like the easiest kind of play for him. No sign of drudgery or of reluctant toil. He appears to be taking his recreation. When not working he is the same. When you ask him how he finds time and strength and mood for it all, and when you insist upon a definite answer, he replies: 'Many have asked me questions like that, and I never know exactly how to answer. First, of course, I take care of my health and try to live as hygienically as possible. No late suppers. Then, I never worry about anything, no matter what it is. Worry exhausts the vital forces quicker than work does. Then I love my profession, and when a man does that it is never drudgery. If one has ideals and tries to live up to them, life in all its phases becomes interesting.'

"Mr. Hansel for three years was under the management of David Belasco, one year of which was with the Fighting Hope, with Blanche Bates, and two years with the Woman company. Prior to this he was with Liebler & Co., later playing leads in stock at the Chestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia. He has played about 400 leading and star roles, among them Shylock, Hamlet, Romeo, Orlando, Benedict, Brutus, Malvolio, Jacques, Richard and Richelieu, in the classic plays, and practically all of the well-known modern parts. The Woman Co. was his last engagement on the speaking stage prior to going into the motion picture business a year ago, when he joined the Biograph Company as an actor. Later be became director and scenario editor for the Solax Company, at Fort Lee, N.J. Last December he was transferred to the Thanhouser Film Corporation studio and is now busily engaged in staging the great serial picture, consisting of 46 reels, nearly nine miles, the largest picture film ever attempted, which has already become famous the world over.

"Besides the previous mentioned parts, Mr. Hansel has played the role of Corin in As You Like It, in Modjeska's Company, and has also supported Margaret Mather, James O'Neill and Kyrle Bellew, playing second to Robert Edeson, and being the leading man of stock companies in New York, Denver, Indianapolis, Montreal, and Chicago. For a few years at the beginning of his career there were discouragements enough. But Mr. Hansel kept at work trying to get ahead. He read everything he could find about the stage. He mastered all the details of stage technique. He studied the great actors. By and by the fruits of his industry began to show, and he reaped what he had sown in the days of adversity.

"Today, instead of being merely a good actor, he is also a well rounded and well balanced character, deeply interested in many things outside his art. Doubtless his diversified intellectual interests have made him a better actor, for they have widened his horizon. On the street or at his home none of the stage mannerisms or stage atmosphere cling to him. A stranger might take him for a professional or a businessman, never an actor. He is modest. In conversation he can be interested in most any conversation except himself. All of which goes to show that Howell Hansel is 'the master of his art not its slave."

Howell Hansel's Later Life: Howell Hansel went from Thanhouser to the World Film Corporation. In April 1915 he was working for World at the Mittenthal Studio in Yonkers, directing a feature picture in which a number of former Thanhouserites participated, including Morgan Niblack, Henry West, Al Mayo, Joseph Clements, and George Osborne.

The New Rochelle Pioneer, May 29, 1915, reported that Hansel had severed his connection with World and was headed to Betzwood, Pennsylvania to work for Lubin. (That this was a possibility is mentioned in the letter of his daughter Peggy, postmarked May 3, 1915, quoted above.) Al Mayo was slated to go with him as his assistant director. For Lubin, he directed the highly publicized September 1915 release of Tillie's Tomato Surprise. In October of the same year he moved to Arrow, where he was involved in various films, including The Irony of Justice (1916) and The Deemster (1917). For William Fox, he directed Ben Bolt. His wife, who was known on the stage as Lucille Lee, in 1913 was a dramatic critic for The Boston Post. The couple had one child, Margaret Lincoln Hansel, known as Peggy.

In the late spring of 1917 he was at Saranac Lake in the Adirondack Mountains directing the filming of snow scenes for The Long Trail, a Paramount picture, when he caught cold, which later developed into a serious case of pneumonia. He remained in poor health for nearly six months, and died in New York City on November 5, 1917, at his home at 210 West 21st Street. His remains were cremated at the New York-New Jersey Crematory, Union Hill, New Jersey, following services at the Campbell Mortuary Chapel. He was survived by his wife and his 17-year-old daughter, Peggy.

Note: His surname was often misspelled as "Hansell."

Thanhouser Filmography:

1914: A Woman's Loyalty (5-5-1914), A Dog of Flanders (5-19-1914), A Hatful of Trouble (12-27-1914), Lucy's Elopement (12-29-1914)

1914-1915 Serial: The Million Dollar Mystery

1915: A Man of Iron (2-16-1915)

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