Holbrook Blinn

{{Infobox person

| name = Holbrook Blinn

| image = Holbrook Blinn in Seven Deadly Sins.png

| imagesize =

| caption = Blinn in 1916

| birthname =

| birth_date = January 23, 1872[https://archive.org/details/whoswho141926/page/292/mode/2up Blinn, Holbrook] in Who's Who in America (1926 edition); p. 292

| birth_place = San Francisco, California, U.S.

| death_date = {{death year and age|1928|1872}}

| death_place = Croton-on-Hudson, New York, U.S.

| othername =

| occupation = Actor

| years_active = 1897–1927

| spouse = Ruth Benson

| domesticpartner =

| website =

}}

Holbrook Blinn (January 23, 1872 – June 24, 1928) was an American stage and film actor.

Early years

Blinn was the son of American Civil War veteran Col. Charles Blinn and actress Nellie Holbrook-Blinn. He was born in San Francisco and attended Stanford University before he began a career in acting.{{cite book |last1=Briscoe |first1=Johnson |title=The Actors' Birthday Book: An Authoritative Insight Into the Lives of the Men and Women of the Stage Born Between January 1 and December 31 |date=1907 |publisher=Moffat, Yard |page=32 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VzFAAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22Holbrook+Blinn%22+actor&pg=PA32-IA1 |access-date=October 19, 2022 |language=en}}

Biography

Blinn debuted on stage as an adult early in the 1890s with a traveling company in the western United States. By 1892 he had moved to the East, acting for two seasons in The New South. Following that experience, he headed the first dramatic troupe to tour in Alaska.

Blinn had appeared on the legitimate stage at age 6, in The Streets of London,{{cite news |last1=Halasz |first1=George |title=Has Polish and Sophistication |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/111579695/holbrook-blinn/ |access-date=October 19, 2022 |work=The Brooklyn Daily Eagle |date=May 13, 1928 |page=12|via = Newspapers.com}} and played throughout the United States and in London. He appeared in silent films and was the director of popular one-act plays at New York's Princess Theatre.{{cite magazine |date=July 1916 |pages=49–50 |title=Belasco's Teacher's Boy |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6v1LAQAAMAAJ&dq=%22Holbrook+Blinn%22+actor&pg=RA1-PA49 |magazine=Photoplay Magazine |access-date=October 19, 2022}} He was also one of the founders of that theatre.{{cite book |last1=Liebman |first1=Roy |title=Broadway Actors in Films, 1894–2015 |year= 2017 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-1-4766-2615-4 |page=31 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DPQHDgAAQBAJ&dq=%22Holbrook+Blinn%22+actor&pg=PA31 |access-date=October 19, 2022 |language=en}}

For three years Blinn acted in London in The Only Way, Don Juan's Last Wager, and Ib and Little Christina. His Broadway stage successes include The Duchess of Dantzic (1903, as Napoleon), Salvation Nell (1908) in a breakout performance as the brutish husband of Mrs. Fiske, Within the Law (1912), Molière (1919), A Woman of No Importance (1916), The Lady of the Camellias (1917), and Getting Together (1918).

File:Holbrook Blinn 2.jpg in the play The Great Silence (Sunset Magazine, Nov. 1905 – April, 1906)]] Some of his finest silent screen accomplishments are in McTeague (1916), The Bad Man (1923), Rosita (1923), Yolanda (1924), and Janice Meredith (1924), the latter two films both starring Marion Davies.

In 1928, Blinn was unanimously elected president of the Actors' Fidelity League.{{cite news |title=Actors' Fidelity elects |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/104554803 |access-date=December 26, 2020 |work=The New York Times |date=May 30, 1928 |page=13|id={{ProQuest|104554803}} }}

File:Holbrook-Blinn-by-Manuel-Rosenberg.jpg 1922]]

Personal life and death

File:Holbrook Blinn Gravesite 2010.JPG]]At the time of his death, Blinn was married to the former Ruth Benson,{{cite news |date=July 4, 1941 |title=Actor's widow sells Westchester place |page=24 |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/106010100 |access-date=December 26, 2020 |id={{ProQuest|106010100}}}} an actress.

Blinn died from complications of a fall off his horse near Journey's End, his Croton-on-Hudson, New York home, and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York.