 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these messages)
|
Ardon Van Buren Powell | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 31, 1886 |
| Died | August 20, 1962 (aged 76) |
| Pen name | Van Powell |
| Genre | Adventure |
Ardon Van Buren Powell was an American screenwriter in the early years of the movies industry and later a writer of adventure books for boys. He wrote as both A. Van Buren Powell and Van Powell.
Ardon Van Buren Powell was born in Macon, Georgia and moved to New York with his family as a child. He graduated from Dewitt Clinton High School. Despite being visually impaired from birth, Powell pursued a career as a writer, first as a reviewer of theatrical production for Billboard magazine and later of comedies in the silent film industry. From 1912 to 1921, he worked in the film industry in New York City. Some of his credits were screen adaptations of works by other writers including O. Henry and James Oliver Curwood. In 1919, he wrote The Photoplay Synopsis, a guide to screenplay writers for writing in a synopsis-only format. It has bee noted in more recent overviews of early screenplays that it was among the later works that still primarily talk about dividing the story by reel lengths and Photoplay mentions "a reel is elastic enough to allow of a few feet more or a very few feet less on a reel, so as to permit the proper continuity of scenes". [1]
When the movie industry largely moved to California, Powell remained in New York and began writing adventure novels for boys. [2] [3] He wrote three adventure series: the Bud Bright series, five novels published 1929 to 1931, The Mystery Boys series, five novels published in 1931, and the Sky Scouts series, four novels published in 1932. [4] The Sky Scouts series, unlike his first two series, by being standalone adventures with a different set of characters for each book, although all four feature three teenage boys as their protagonists and some sort of aviation-themed mystery. The first three titles of Sky Scouts were later republished under the Air Mystery Series. [5]
In the early 1940s, with his vision almost completely gone, Powell changed careers and became an insurance broker in Vineland, New Jersey. He resided in the town for the last 35 years of his life, the final 17 of them in a home for the handicapped. [6]
Powell died in Vineland on August 20, 1962. According to his obituary, he was the author of 22 books. [7]
Included among Powell's 47 movies credits are:
(First published by A. L. Burt, later reprinted by Saalfield Publishing as the "Air Mystery" series.)
Arthur Benjamin Reeve was an American mystery writer. He is known best for creating the series character Professor Craig Kennedy, sometimes called "The American Sherlock Holmes", and Kennedy's Dr. Watson-like sidekick Walter Jameson, a newspaper reporter, for 18 detective novels. Reeve is famous mostly for the 82 Craig Kennedy stories, published in Cosmopolitan magazine between 1910 and 1918. These were collected in book form; with the third collection, the short stories were published grouped together as episodic novels. The 12-volume publication Craig Kennedy Stories was released during 1918; it reissued Reeve's books-to-date as a matched set.
Wilfred Van Norman Lucas was a Canadian American stage actor who found success in film as an actor, director, and screenwriter.
S. S. Van Dine is the pseudonym used by American art critic Willard Huntington Wright when he wrote detective novels. Wright was active in avant-garde cultural circles in pre-World War I New York, and under the pseudonym he created the fictional detective Philo Vance, a sleuth and aesthete who first appeared in books in the 1920s, then in films and on the radio.
Louis Robert Wolheim was an American actor, of both stage and screen, whose rough physical appearance relegated him to roles mostly of thugs, villains and occasionally a soldier with a heart of gold in the movies, but whose talent allowed him to flourish on stage. His career was mostly contained during the silent era of the film industry, due to his death at the age of 50 in 1931.
Mary Roberts Rinehart was an American writer, often called the American Agatha Christie. Rinehart published her first mystery novel The Circular Staircase in 1908, which introduced the "had I but known" narrative style. Rinehart is also considered the earliest known source of the phrase "the butler did it", in her novel The Door (1930), although the exact phrase does not appear in her work and the plot device had been used prior to that time. She also worked to tell the stories and experiences of front line soldiers during World War I, one of the first women to travel to the Belgian front lines.
Jack Perrin was an American actor specializing in Westerns.
Francis Ford was an American film actor, writer and director. He was the mentor and elder brother of film director John Ford. As an actor, director and producer, he was one of the first filmmakers in Hollywood.
Ruth Roland was an American stage and film actress and film producer.
Grace Cunard was an American actress, screenwriter and film director. During the silent era, she starred in over 100 films, wrote or co-wrote at least 44 of those productions, and directed no fewer than eight of them. In addition, she edited many of her films, including some of the shorts, serials, and features she developed in collaboration with Francis Ford. Her younger sister, Mina Cunard, was also a film actress.
Arthur Charles Miller, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer. He was nominated for the Oscar for Best Cinematography six times, winning three times: for How Green Was My Valley in 1941, The Song of Bernadette in 1944, and Anna and the King of Siam in 1947.
Paul Mahlon Powell was an American journalist, director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. Powell was most active during the silent film era and is best known for directing Mary Pickford in Pollyanna (1920).
Charles Edgar Schoenbaum A. S. C. was an American cinematographer. His known film credits began in 1917—although he probably had earlier films—and ended with his untimely death from cancer in 1951 at age 57. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 1949 for his work on Little Women.
Beau Geste is a 1926 American silent drama film directed by Herbert Brenon and based on the 1924 novel Beau Geste by P. C. Wren. Ronald Colman stars as the title character.
David Powell was a Scottish stage and later film actor of the silent era.
Mabel Van Buren was an American stage and screen actress.
Hobart Henley was an American silent film actor, director, screenwriter and producer. He was involved in over 60 films either as an actor or director or both from 1914 to 1934.
Margaret O'Bannon Womack Vandercook was an American writer of children's literature.
William James Herbert Hayens was an English novelist and editor. He was well known for his juvenile fiction and books written for schools.
Russell Gordon Carter was an American writer of more than fifty books and short stories, primarily for young people.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
