Biografie

24. August 1889 · Louisville, Kentucky, USA

5. Dezember 1963 · North Hollywood, Los Angeles, Kalifornien, USA (nicht bekannt gegeben)

Leonard Thomas Clapham

1,87 m

Listed in the Guiness Book of World Records for having appeared in more films than any other actor (into the thousands).

The 1940 U.S. Census records his acting income for 36 weeks in 1939 as $3,182.

Prior to making his acting debut at Universal in 1920 he claimed to have been a train engineer, a builder and a draftsman.

Although his name is sometimes listed in reference works for Edison's Der große Eisenbahnraub (1903), he was a boy living in Louisville, Kentucky, at the time that film was made in New Jersey, and does not appear in it.

Met his future wife, Edith Stayart, on the set of Nan of the North (1922) in 1922.

[on working with Ken Maynard] I did six pictures with him, then refused offers after that. He was mean to his horses and mean to the people he thought he could buffalo. He was often half drunk on a picture and sometimes didn't even show up.

[on the many cowboy stars he worked with over his 50-year career] I got along with all of them, with the exception of one [Ken Maynard]. I especially liked Bill Elliott [aka Wild Bill Elliott], and although a lot of people found Allan Lane [aka Rocky Lane] too hard to work with because he was too much of a perfectionist, I enjoyed working with him on around 12 pictures, and respected that he tried to make his films stand out over the usual little western. One of my favorites was Sunset Carson. He encouraged me by giving me his sidekick role in some of his pictures. A star I owe lot to is Gene Autry. I made around 18 pictures with him and he was one of the nicest guys to work with. He always saw I got decent characters to play, and, in Gespensterreiter (1949) I got a great part playing a cowpoke in a big death scene. I've been told this was the best acting of my whole career. Later on, when I auditioned for some television work, I would bring along a 16mm print of that scene and show it on a casting agent's wall. Most of the time, I got the part.