Anecdotes

D.W. Griffith had vowed to make a director of Walsh and sent him down to Mexico to make a documentary on the notorious Pancho Villa. Walsh rode with the revolutionary leader from Juarez to Mexico City, recording the journey on film. Walsh later confirmed a long-standing rumor--after a battle in which Villa took many federal soldiers prisoner, he made Walsh and his crew film the prisoners' executions by firing squad. When Walsh got back to Hollywood, however, studio executives refused to allow the executions to be included in the documentary, as they were deemed too grisly for audiences to watch.

He often repeated Jack Pickford's wisecrack about him: "Your idea of light comedy is to burn down a whorehouse."

Walsh disliked his first wife, actress Miriam Cooper, intensely and referred to her in his autobiography as the "mercenary witch." As both were Catholics, Cooper never remarried after their divorce. They had two adopted sons.

Lost his right eye and lead role on location for In Old Arizona (1928) when a jackrabbit leaped into the windshield of his car.

One of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).

Was a pallbearer at Errol Flynn's funeral along with Mickey Rooney, Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams, Jack Oakie, Mike Romanoff and Otto Reichow on October 19, 1959, at the Church of the Recessional at Forest Lawn, Glendale, CA.

Was originally slated to direct Les aventures de Don Juan (1948), in 1945, however Errol Flynn had a falling-out with him.

Walsh remade three of his own films: Carmen (1915) as Loves of Carmen (1927); La blonde framboise (1941) as One Sunday Afternoon (1948); and La Grande Évasion (1941) as La Fille du désert (1949).

Jane Russell said in her biography that Walsh was blind towards the end of his life.

Is portrayed by Kyle Chandler in Pancho Villa (2003).

Walsh was picked by Biograph to go to Mexico and meet Mexican bandit-turned-revolutionary Pancho Villa. Walsh returned to the U. S. with enough footage for a seven-reel feature written by and starring Walsh as Villa with Christy Cabanne directing.

Changed his name--at the suggestion of playwright friend Paul Armstrong--from Albert Edward Walsh to the more exotic Raoul Walsh.

Final resting place: Assumption Catholic Cemetery, Simi Valley, California.

Directed one Oscar-nominated performance: Gloria Swanson in Faiblesse humaine (1928).

As a young man he was a sea going adventurer and a cowboy.

He has directed four films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: The Regeneration (1915), Le voleur de Bagdad (1924), La piste des géants (1930) and L'enfer est à lui (1949). He has also appeared in one film that is in the registry: Naissance d'une nation (1915).

Brother of actor George Walsh.

After playing bits in films Walsh drew the attention of director Christy Cabanne, who secured a series of bit parts in good pictures at Biograph with Blanche Sweet, Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, Dorothy Gish and Lillian Gish, Cabanne then introduced Walsh to D.W. Griffith, who took him west and secured him some directing jobs.

The family of Walsh's mother, Elizabeth Brough, could trace her family back before the Revolutionary War. His father Thomas was an Irish revolutionary who had escaped from a Dublin jail. They were married in St. Patrick's Cathedral. Thomas made a good living tailoring, designing and cutting men's clothes. The older Walsh designed the uniforms for Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders and made enough from the war to buy a mansion in the West Nineties near Riverside Drive, where he entertained such celebrities as Roosevelt, Buffalo Bill Cody, Diamond Jim Brady, Enrico Caruso, Frederic Remington and Lillian Russell.

Was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Signal Corps during World War I but never went to Europe. He managed war footage for bond drives and arranged to have Mary Pickford sell war bonds.

Wrote his autobiography - 'Each Man In His Time'.

Interviewed in Peter Bogdanovich's "Who the Devil Made It: Conversations With Robert Aldrich, George Cukor, Allan Dwan, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Chuck Jones, Fritz Lang, Joseph H. Lewis, Sidney Lumet, Leo McCarey, Otto Preminger, Don Siegel, Josef von Sternberg, Frank Tashlin, Edgar G. Ulmer, Raoul Walsh." NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

His favorite of his films was The Strawberry Blonde.