Wissenswertes

Both wives were actresses. Second wife Mary Charleson bore him a daughter, Patricia Walthall, in 1918.

At the zenith of his career under D.W. Griffith, Walthall earned the huge sum of $175 per week.

Presented an Honorary award for lifetime achievement to D.W. Griffith at the 1936 Academy Awards ceremony.

At the beginning of the Spanish-American War, Walthall enlisted in the First Alabama Regiment with the United States Army. Serving eleven months, a bout of malaria while in camp at Jacksonville, Florida kept him from seeing action.

Was in four Oscar Best Picture nominees: Flügel aus Stahl (1927), Die 42. Straße (1933), Schrei der Gehetzten (1934) and Flucht aus Paris (1935), with Wings winning the inaugural Best Picture Award.

He was dubbed the "Edwin Booth of the Screen," a reference to the brother of John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, an event that was reenacted in Die Geburt einer Nation (1915), in which Walthall starred.

Studied law at Howard College but dropped out after six months to pursue theater in New York, making his debut in 1901 and performing in numerous Southern melodramas.

One of eight children, he was born in affluence on a plantation near Shelby County, Alabama. His father, Junius Leigh Walthall, was a Virginia native who served as captain in the Confederate Army and who later became a respected figure in Alabama politics.

In 1906, as part of the cast of the Broadway show "The Great Divide," he befriended fellow cast member James Kirkwood. Kirkwood went on to direct films and he introduced Walthall to D.W. Griffith. Walthall also appeared in a number of Kirkwood's films.

His middle name, Brazeale, was his grandmother's Irish maiden name.

During the filming of The Failure (1915), Christy Cabanne deliberately failed to call for extras at the appropriate time so that when they were required he had none, thereby forcing Frank E. Woods to call everyone on the lot to take part, resulting in Walthall, Charles Clary, Jack Conway, Sam De Grasse, Ralph Lewis, Spottiswoode Aitken, George Siegmann, George Beranger and around twenty other leading men and directors appearing in the movie as barflies.

Some of director D.W. Griffith's associates questioned his casting of Walthall as Col. Ben Cameron in Die Geburt einer Nation (1915), feeling he was too physically slight for the role. (Walthall was 5'7"). Griffith confidently responded, "Wally will play him big". He was correct, but as a safeguard the character was nicknamed "The Little Colonel".

D.W. Griffith considered Walthall one of the greatest actors he ever worked with, though "a bit florid" at times.