David Wayne Menefee is an American writer and editor from Fort Worth, Texas. After his work as a journalist for the Dallas Times Herald, he wrote and published several works about stars of the silent film era. In addition, he has served as an editor on numerous other books.
His Richard Barthelmess: A Life in Pictures (2009) was named by the San Francisco Examiner as one of the Top Ten Film Books of 2009.[1]
Biography
He was born in Fort Worth, Texas, a member of a long-established family among the earliest American settlers in Texas. The Menefee family is honored with an historical marker administered by the Texas Historical Commission. His great-great-grandfather, William Menefee, was one of the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico. William’s portrait hangs in the San Jacinto Monument in San Jacinto, Texas.
Menefee started his writing career in 1979 as a writer and marketing representative for the Dallas Times Herald, working for twelve years during an era characterized by fierce competition with an archrival, the Dallas Morning News. In 1991, the Dallas Morning News bought out the Herald, closed the business, and within weeks, razed the building to the ground. Associates from the Dallas Morning News invited Menefee to join their operation, which combined their circulation with subscribers obtained by their acquisition of the Herald. Menefee took on leadership responsibilities with their locally produced version of Parade Magazine, for which he anonymously contributed many articles.
Freelance writer and editor
Menefee, like many of his contemporaries, broke away from the newspaper industry in 2003 when failing economics forced many publications to downsize or close altogether. He struck out on his own as a freelance writer, immediately finding success with several books about the silent film era: Sarah Bernhardt in the Theater of Films and Sound Recordings (McFarland, 2003), The First Female Stars: Women of the Silent Era (Greenwood Praeger, 2004), and The First Male Stars: Men of the Silent Era (BearManor Media, 2008).
In 2006, Menefee worked for Brown Books Publishing Group, serving as editor on Sonnets by Robert Brown, Slaves to Medicine by Dr. George Beauchamp, and Downtown Dallas: Romantic Past, Modern Renaissance by Mark Rice. That year, he collaborated with Richard Davis on Lilian Hall-Davis: The English Rose, a biography of Britain’s noted silent film star.
In 2007, Menefee embarked on an effort to research stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood. He visited and communicated with major archives around the world in a detailed exploration of archive contents to unearth the materials available for several biographies. In 2008, after amassing enough materials for several books, Menefee began working on multiple projects. He completed some for publication within the following two years.
In 2009, Menefee worked for BearManor Media, serving as editor on Best in Hollywood: The Good, The Bad, and the Beautiful by James Best and Jim Clark, Burlesque: A Living History by Jane Briggeman, Johnny Olson: A Voice in Time by Randy West. Also in 2009, Menefee was the author of Richard Barthelmess: A Life in Pictures.
In 2010, Menefee shared credit along with William Thomas, Jr. on "Otay" The Billy "Buckwheat" Thomas Story. He also edited Tales from the Script by author Gene Perrett, Six Cult Films from the Sixties by author Ib Melchior, Will the Real Me Please Stand Up by author Christopher Knopf, Endless Summer: My Life With The Beach Boys by author Jack Lloyd, Confessions of a Scream Queen by author Matt Beckoff, as well as Now and Then, The Movies Get It Right by Neal Stannard.
Early in 2010, Menefee published George O'Brien: A Man's Man in Hollywood, the first full-length biography and filmography of one of Hollywood's most beloved stars. Menefee earned many positive reviews, including one from John Gallagher in the April 2010 National Board of Review:
"Menefee has done his research here, accessing the O’Brien estate, and loading the book with great graphics and rare photos. O’Brien was the son of the Chief of Police of San Francisco, and the author does a particularly excellent job in recreating the details of the 1906 earthquake and fire, which the O’Brien family survived."
Cynthia Tobar from the Mina Rees Library at CUNY Graduate Center wrote,
"One can't help but envision George O'Brien as anything less than a hero in life as well as on screen when reading David W. Menefee's richly detailed biography. This touching tribute pays homage to an actor popular with directors and audiences alike . . . researchers will marvel at Menefee's ability to seamlessly interweave absorbing narratives of the lives of those who crossed paths with O'Brien or helped him along his way to stardom . . . this book will prove a rich resource for film historians interested in the silent era and the development of the Western genre."
In 2011, BearManor Media published Menefee's Wally: The True Wallace Reid Story (Foreword by Robert Osborne), the first full-length tribute to the renowned silent film star, Wallace Reid. He also served as editor for actress Marilyn Knowlden's autobiography Little Girl in Big Pictures.
Also in 2011, with the creation of Menefee Publishing, Inc., Menefee published Sarah Bernhardt, Her Films, Her Recordings, Charlie O'Doone's Second Chance and Other Stories. In addition, with co-author Robert L. Willis, he launched a new mystery series featuring detective Margot Cranston, including the first four titles, The Secret of the St. Lawrence Lighthouse, The Mystery at Loon Lake, and The Quest for the Jade Dragons. He also published the historical fiction novels, Brothers of the Storm about African American history, and The Remarkable Mr. Messing, about surviving the Holocaust in World War Two. Other works published include The Rise and Fall of Lou-Tellegen, the first biography of actor Lou-Tellegen; and Falling Stars: 10 Who Tried to be a Movie Star.
In 2012, his works included Sweet Memories, about the Mary Pickford / Owen Moore romance, and Can't Help Falling in Love (with co-author Carol Dunitz.)
Menefee is working on a film project, Triple Crown, a screenplay about the famous jockey Earl Sande, written in collaboration with Richard J. Maturi.
“I believe in doing thorough research”, Menefee said in a recent interview. “For thirty years, I researched the life and work of Sarah Bernhardt in order to produce the first ever in-depth account of her work in motion pictures and on sound recordings, a part of the Divine Sarah’s work that most of her biographers tended to skip over. There is an old saying that a writer should only write about what he or she knows, and I’m certain that is always the right course to take.”[citation needed]
Works as author
The First Male Stars: Men of the Silent Era
The First Female Stars: Women of the Silent Era
Sarah Bernhardt in the Theater of Films and Sound Recordings
Richard Barthelmess: A Life in Pictures
George O'Brien: A Man's Man in Hollywood
with William Thomas, Jr., Otay! The Billy Buckwheat Thomas Story
Related Research Articles
Sarah Bernhardt was a French stage actress who starred in some of the more popular French plays of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils, Ruy Blas by Victor Hugo, Fédora and La Tosca by Victorien Sardou, and L'Aiglon by Edmond Rostand. She also played male roles, including Shakespeare's Hamlet. Rostand called her "the queen of the pose and the princess of the gesture", and Hugo praised her "golden voice". She made several theatrical tours around the world, and she was one of the early prominent actresses to make sound recordings and to act in motion pictures.
Richard Semler Barthelmess was an American film actor, principally of the Hollywood silent era. He starred opposite Lillian Gish in D. W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms (1919) and Way Down East (1920) and was among the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1927. The following year, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for two films: The Patent Leather Kid and The Noose.
Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl, often referred to simply as Broken Blossoms, is a 1919 American silent drama film directed by D. W. Griffith. It was distributed by United Artists and premiered on May 13, 1919. It stars Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, and Donald Crisp, and tells the story of young girl, Lucy Burrows, who is abused by her alcoholic prizefighting father, Battling Burrows, and meets Cheng Huan, a kind-hearted Chinese man who falls in love with her. It was the first film distributed by United Artists. It is based on Thomas Burke's short story "The Chink and the Child" from the 1916 collection Limehouse Nights. In 1996, Broken Blossoms was included in the annual selection of 25 motion pictures to be added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.
Lou Tellegen was a Dutch-born stage and film actor, film director and screenwriter.
Alice Geraldine Farrar was an American lyric soprano who could also sing dramatic roles. She was noted for her beauty, acting ability, and "the intimate timbre of her voice." She had a large following among young women, who were nicknamed "Gerry-flappers".
Pola Negri was a Polish stage and film actress and singer. She achieved worldwide fame during the silent and golden eras of Hollywood and European film for her tragedienne and femme fatale roles. She was also acknowledged as a sex symbol.
William "Billie" Thomas Jr. was an American child actor best remembered for portraying the character of Buckwheat in the Our Gang short films from 1934 until the series' end in 1944. He was a native of Los Angeles.
The Lady of the Camellias, sometimes called in English Camille, is a novel by Alexandre Dumas fils. First published in 1848 and subsequently adapted by Dumas for the stage, the play premiered at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris, France, on February 2, 1852. It was an instant success. Shortly thereafter, Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi set about putting the story to music in the 1853 opera La traviata, with female protagonist Marguerite Gautier renamed Violetta Valéry.
The Famous Players Film Company was a film company founded in 1912 by Adolph Zukor in partnership with the Frohman brothers, powerful New York City theatre owners and producers.
George O'Brien was an American actor, popular during the silent film era and into the sound film era of the 1930s, best known today as the lead actor in F. W. Murnau's 1927 film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and subsequent appearances in a number of Westerns in the 1930s and 1940s.
John Boles was an American singer and actor best known for playing Victor Moritz in the 1931 film Frankenstein.
Beggars of Life is an American part-talkie sound film that was directed by William Wellman. Although the film featured sequences with audible dialogue, the majority of the film had a synchronized musical score with sound effects. The film was released on both sound-on-disc and sound-on-film formats. Currently circulating are mute prints from the sound-on-disc version. The majority of the sound discs are believed to be lost.
Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth, Les Amours d'Élisabeth, Reine d'Angleterre or La reine Élisabeth is a 1912 feature 4-reel French silent film based on the love affair between Elizabeth I of England and the Earl of Essex. It was condensed from a play of the same name and directed by Louis Mercanton and Henri Desfontaines. It was shot in Paris and starred Sarah Bernhardt as Elizabeth and Lou Tellegen as Essex. Bernhardt by then was 68 and said of the film "This is my last chance at immortality". She and Tellegen were already romantically involved, and this was their second film together.
Michael G. Ankerich is a biographer whose work focuses on American silent film and early twentieth century actors and actresses. Ankerich's interviews with the last remaining silent film stars were featured in Broken Silence: Conversations With 23 Silent Film Stars (1993) and The Sound of Silence: Conversations with 16 Film and Stage Personalities Who Made the Transition from Silents to Talkies (1998). His biography of silent film actress Mae Murray, Mae Murray: The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips, was named one of the top 10 must-read film books of 2012.
Orphan of Lowood is a 1926 German silent drama film directed by Curtis Bernhardt and starring Evelyn Holt, Olaf Fønss and Dina Diercks. It is based on the 1847 British novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, and is the last of at least eight silent film adaptations of the novel. It was shot at the Terra Studios in Marienfelde. Director Bernhardt, a Jew wanted by the Gestapo, escaped from Nazi Germany and immigrated to Hollywood where he directed films for MGM, RKO, Columbia Pictures and Warner Brothers.
The Curtain Falls is a 1934 drama film directed by Charles Lamont and starring Henrietta Crosman as an elderly actress on the brink of retirement. This film was made and released by the Poverty Row motion picture studio Chesterfield Pictures and was filmed at RKO Studios in Hollywood. Karl Brown wrote the story and screenplay.
Thomas Ince: Hollywood's Independent Pioneer is a biography of Thomas H. Ince, written by Brian Taves and published by University Press of Kentucky in 2012. Upon publication the book was positively reviewed by critics. Divided in 5 parts, the book provides information about Ince's life and his films, including their financial details. Taves rejects the idea that William Randolph Hearst was responsible for Ince's death.
Young Nowheres is a 1929 American drama film directed by Frank Lloyd and starring Richard Barthelmess, Marian Nixon and Bert Roach. It was produced and released by First National Pictures with a Vitaphone soundtrack in both silent and sound versions.
The Clairvoyant is a 1924 French silent drama film directed by Leon Abrams and starring Sarah Bernhardt, Georges Melchior and Harry Baur. It was based on a play by Sacha Guitry. This was the final film of the celebrated stage actress Sarah Bernhardt who died during production.
Harry L. Decker (1887–1959) was an American film producer associated with Columbia Pictures where he mainly oversaw production on western films. As an editor he was active in Hollywood from the 1910s through the 1930s. As a producer, he primarily worked on B-movie Westerns.
References
↑ Thomas Gladysz, "Top Ten Film Books of 2009," San Francisco Examiner, 15 December 2009
Sources
Review of Sarah Bernhardt in the Theater of Films and Sound Recordings by Catherine Ritchie, Theater Librarian, Fine Arts Division Dallas (TX) Public Library, in Broadside, 2003.
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