Elmer Booth

Elmer began acting in touring stock companies as a teenager and achieved great success in the stock company at the Central Theater in San Francisco from 1903 to 1906. Between 1910 and 1915 he starred in 40 movies; one of those was D. W. Griffith's The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), cited by many film experts as the first gangster movie.{{citation needed|date=June 2017}}

Playing "The Snapper Kid", a Manhattan street tough engaged in a turf war on the Lower East Side, Booth interpreted the gangster as a cocky, entertaining antihero, far different from the standard teeth-gnashing movie bad guys of his time.{{Citation needed |date=May 2021}}

In the early hours of June 16, 1915, Booth died in an accident in California while riding in a car driven by Tod Browning, an actor and new director with Reliance-Majestic Studios in Hollywood."Investigating Ride to Death", Los Angeles Times, Pictorial City Sheet II, June 17, 1915, p. 1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers Actor George Siegmann was also a passenger in Browning's car. The day after the accident, the Los Angeles Times reported that the three men were returning to downtown Los Angeles from a roadhouse when Browning's car crashed into a train of the Salt Lake Railroad:{{blockquote|Elmer Booth was killed instantly. The motor car in which he was speeding towards Los Angeles with his two companions rammed the rear part of a flat car loaded with steel rails at Santa Fe avenue and Salt Lake tracks early yesterday morning. The conductor of the train, Harry Jones, approaching, had waved his lantern as a danger signal, and then had come to the crash that sent Elmer Booth, who was just realizing his dramatic ambitions, headforemost into the rails.}}Browning and Siegmann survived, although they both suffered serious injuries.[https://archive.org/stream/movingpicturewor25newy#page/74/mode/2up "Elmer Booth Killed"], Moving Picture World, July 3, 1915, p.75. Internet Archive, San Francisco, California. Retrieved November 18, 2019. Later reports blamed the accident on heavy fog; nevertheless, Elmer's sister Margaret never forgave Browning for the loss of her brother.{{cite book|title=The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror|author=Ska, David J.|page=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780571199969/page/35 35]|publisher=Macmillan|date=2001|isbn=978-0571199969|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780571199969/page/35}}

D. W. Griffith, who had planned to cast Booth in an important role in Intolerance, delivered the actor's graveside eulogy.{{Citation needed |date=May 2021}}

Booth married actress Irene Outtrim in 1908. That same year, their son was born; he died of pneumonia in March 1910.{{cite news |title=Parents Permitted to Have Child Only Day Before Death Comes |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/34637151/tragic-death-of-the-child-of-irene/ |access-date=April 7, 2021 |work=The Salt Lake Tribune |date=March 23, 1910 |page=20|via = Newspapers.com}}

• A Beast at Bay (1912)
• An Unseen Enemy (1912)
• The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912)
• Gold and Glitter (1912)
• The Adopted Brother (1913)
• Mrs. Black is Back (1914)
• Gasoline Gus (1915)
• A Chase by Moonlight (1915)

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• {{IMDb name|0095695}}

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Category:1882 births

Category:1915 deaths

Category:American male film actors

Category:Male actors from Los Angeles

Category:Road incident deaths in California

Category:20th-century American male actors

Category:Burials at Inglewood Park Cemetery