Milton Sills

Acting

Milton Sills

Born 1882-01-11 · Chicago, Illinois, USA

From Wikipedia Milton George Gustavus Sills (January 12, 1882 – September 15, 1930) was an American stage and film actor of the early twentieth century. Sills was born in Chicago, Illinois into a wealthy family. He was the son of William Henry Sills, a successful mineral dealer, and Josephine Antoinette Troost Sills, an heiress from a prosperous banking family. Upon completing high school, Sills was offered a one-year scholarship to the University of Chicago, where he studied psychology and philosophy. After graduating, he was offered a position at the university as a researcher and within several years worked his way up to become a professor at the school. In 1905, stage actor Donald Robertson visited the school to lecture on author and playwright Henrik Ibsen and suggested to Sills that he try his hand at acting. On a whim, Sills agreed and left his prestigious teaching career to embark on a stint in acting. Sills joined Robertson's stock theater company and began touring the country. In 1914, Sills decided to conquer the new medium of motion pictures. He made his film debut the same year in the big-budget drama The Pit for the World Film Company and was signed to a contract with film producer William A. Brady. The film was enormously successful, and Sills made three more films for the company, including another huge box-office draw The Deep Purple opposite silent screen star Clara Kimball Young. By the late 1910s, Sills had reached leading man status and parted ways with World Film, taking the then unusual path of freelancing as an actor. By the early 1920s, Sills was enjoying a highly successful acting career and working for such prominent film studios as MGM, Paramount Pictures, and Pathé Exchange. He was often paired with the most popular leading ladies of the era, including: Geraldine Farrar, Gloria Swanson and Viola Dana. His greatest public and commercial successes came with the now lost Flaming Youth (1923) opposite Colleen Moore, and the enormous box-office hit The Sea Hawk (1924). Sills made two sound pictures, showing that he had an excellent voice. Many may have forgotten that Sills had extensive stage training before embarking on his career before the cameras. Sills died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1930 while playing tennis with his wife at his Santa Barbara, California home at the age of 48. He was interred at the Rosehill Cemetery and Mausoleum in Chicago, Illinois.

Acting credits

The Forgotten Law poster
3.3

Margaret Jarnette discovers that her husband Victor has been cheating on her and confronts him. Outraged, Victor has his lawyer rewrite his will so that in the event of his death, his brother Richard will get custody of his daughter Muriel, and his wife won't. When Victor dies shortly afterward, Richard suspects that Margaret had murdered him and takes custody of Muriel. However, he soon begins to suspect that things may not be quite as cut-and-dried as he thought they were.

The Forgotten Law

1922

No artwork available
NR

Novice businessman Curtis Jadwin is introduced to the world of grain speculation by veteran broker Charles Cressler. At a performance of Faust, Curtis meets and falls in love with Laura Dearborn, the sweetheart of artist Sheldon Corthell. Curtis pursues Laura and finally convinces her to marry him, but soon after their wedding, he neglects her for his business. In her loneliness, Laura renews her relationship with Sheldon and the lovers plan to elope. When Curtis is ruined on the market, however, Laura rejects her lover and comforts her husband.

The Pit

1914

Skin Deep poster
10.0

The plot concerns a war hero who returns home determined to give up his old ways as a crook. Bud Doyle (Milton Sills) is still being hounded by the cops, and both his wife (Marcia Nanon) and a former associate, a dishonest politician, want to do him in.

Skin Deep

1922

Salvage poster
10.0

When her wealthy husband informs her of the death of her baby, Bernice Ridgeway leaves him and takes a tenement apartment opposite that of Kate Martin, whose husband is in prison, and becomes acquainted with Kate and her child. When Kate commits suicide, Bernice takes the child and assumes the dead woman's name; and the child's father, Fred Martin, having finished his term, discovers the deceit but keeps the secret.

Salvage

1921

The Rack poster
NR

Habitual unfaithful husband, Jack Freeman begins flirting with the Effie McKenzie, and so breaks up her marriage. Blanche Gordon, a friend of Jack's wife Louise, then comes to see Jack several times in order to plead with him to give up extramarital affairs and accept the responsibilities that go with being a husband.

The Rack

1915

Single Wives poster
8.0

As her first wedding anniversary approaches, a young wife begins to believe that her husband doesn't love her anymore, and she turns to a former suitor for comfort. Soon she makes up her mind to leave her husband, but when he is seriously injured she must decide if she really wants to end her marriage.

Single Wives

1924

Environment poster
9.0

The rehabilitation of "Chicago Sal," a lady crook, is seemingly realized when probation officers send her to the country home of Steve MacLaren to work off money stolen from him by her partner. She falls in love with MacLaren and is accepted as a member of the household. Unable to resist the temptation, however, she leaves the farm with two former colleagues when they come to visit her. MacLaren follows her to the city. She commits a crime; he helps her escape but is himself arrested for vagrancy and sent to jail. Sal returns to the country and promises to wait for him.

Environment

1922

No artwork available
7.0

Nicola Riccobini, a puppet master in New York's Italian quarter, is an energetic and domineering man in the family, in contrast to his dreamy, poetic cousin Bruno.

Puppets

1926

Seeing Stars poster
4.9

First National gala celebrity banquet with stars.

Seeing Stars

1922

Souls for Sale poster
6.3

A young woman hits Hollywood, determined to become a star.

Souls for Sale

1923

The Little Fool poster
9.0

Richard Forrest's philosophy of marital relations is that it is not up to the husband to hold his wife's love but that she should "hold it herself." His theories are put to a practical test when his best friend, a young author, comes to the Big House. The friend falls in love with the wife and frankly tells her husband of the fact, saying that it is best that he go away.

The Little Fool

1921

Miss Lulu Bett poster
5.9

Lulu Bett lives in the home of her sister Diana and Diana's husband, Dwight. One day Dwight's brother, Ninian, shows up, and he and Lulu Bett have a mock marriage. Dwight declares the marriage legal, but it turns out that Ninian already has a wife.

Miss Lulu Bett

1921

Dangerous to Men poster
7.0

When noted scientist John Vandam dies in the Orient, he leaves the guardianship of his eighteen-year-old daughter to his old friend Sandy Verrall. Sandy believes that Eliza is a little girl and so prepares for the arrival of a child. Displeased with the situation, Eliza decides to dress and act like a kid so that Sandy will tire of her and send her away.

Dangerous to Men

1920

The Silent Lover poster
8.0

The dissolute Count Pierre Tornai, having dissipated his fortune in Paris, embezzles embassy funds while intoxicated; and after spending his last penny on a dancer, he contemplates suicide but is persuaded to enlist in the Foreign Legion. Based on the 1922 play Der Legionër by Lajos Biró.

The Silent Lover

1926

The Fear Woman poster
9.0

When her drunken father dies from falling downstairs on the night of her engagement announcement, Helen Winthrop finds a note from him warning that drinking has ruined the family's past four generations. She breaks her engagement to lawyer Robert Craig so that she can test herself as she fears that her children might inherit the habit. After sacrificing her reputation to save that of her adulterous married friend Stella Scarr, Helen goes to a resort hotel where she wins a tennis tournament and flirts with Percy Farwell, the son of social climber Mrs. Honorah Farwell. In order to break up her son's romance with a supposedly disgraced woman, Mrs. Farwell hires Robert Craig.

The Fear Woman

1919

The Valley of the Giants poster
7.0

Bryce Cardigan struggles to protect his Redwood inheritance from a railroad-owner, who is also the guardian of the woman Bryce loves.

The Valley of the Giants

1927

No artwork available
NR

Comic short reworking of "The Taming of the Shrew".

The Taming of Mary

1915

One Clear Call poster
7.0

An outcast who runs a road house of ill repute leads his mother to believe him dead. His only friend, a doctor, falls for a married woman.

One Clear Call

1922

The Faith Healer poster
9.0

A traveling preacher has, through his faith, the power to heal, but loses it when he falls in love. Considered lost.

The Faith Healer

1921

The Sea Tiger poster
10.0

Julian Ramos is a fisherman in the Canary Islands. As the guardian of his hotheaded younger brother Charles, Julian regards it as his duty to protect the boy from women -- and vice versa. When Charles begins pitching woo at aristocratic Amy, Julian runs interference by pretending to be in love with the girl himself. As time passes, of course, he stops pretending.

The Sea Tiger

1927

No artwork available
NR

Perpetua is a rich little orphan with a kind but absent-minded dreamer of a guardian, Thaddeus, who is very much older than herself. Perpetua wants to live in Thaddeus's house but instead is sent to her eccentric animal loving Aunt's, Miss Majerdie. Unhappy Perpetua runs away to Thaddeus’s. He endures her for a time and finally ships her back to his Aunt Majerdie's. Pursued by several suitors whose ardor cools when the rumor goes round that she is penniless. Her wealth having intimidated him before Thaddeus steps in now and declares his love for her.

The Arrival of Perpetua

1915

The Unguarded Hour poster
9.0

Bryce Gilbert convinces his daughter, Virginia, that she should not elope with a casual boyfriend and sends her to Italy to stay with his fiancée, Duchess Bianca.

The Unguarded Hour

1925

Behold My Wife poster
8.0

In Canada, a young woman of Indian blood marries an Englishman who sends her back to England to humiliate his family and the woman who once spurned him. But the man's brother shows her the ways of English civilization, and a great surprise awaits her husband when he returns to his homeland.

Behold My Wife

1920

Married in Name Only poster
NR

Robert Worthing marries his sweetheart, Madeline Francis, but the wedding is ruined by his mother, who announces that because she and her parents are insane, he possesses tainted genes. Fearing that he will pass the disease on to his children, the bridegroom avoids his new wife and locks the door between their rooms. Deeply in love with Madeline, whom he is forced to love only as a sister, Robert considers suicide, but all ends well when the young man learns that he was adopted.

Married in Name Only

1917

Behind the camera