People active in the silent era and people who keep the silent era alive. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Photograph: Silent Era image collection.

Henry B. Walthall

Born 16 March 1878 in Shelby City, Alabama, USA, as Henry Brazeale Walthall
Died 17 June 1936 in Monrovia, California, USA, of influenza.

Brother of actress Anna Mae Walthall.

Married actress Isabel Fenton, 9 September 1904; divorced, November 1918.
Married actress Mary Charleson, 1918; until Henry’s death, 17 June 1936;
daughter, actress Patricia Walthall, born 16 March 1918.

Henry B. Walthall began his career as a stage actor in 1901 after having briefly studying law at Howard College. It appears that Walthall may have appeared in his first film at Edison Manufacturing Company with his future director, D.W. Griffith, in Rescued From an Eagle’s Nest (1908). In 1909, Walthall began his motion picture career in earnest for Biograph Company as Griffith was making his earliest films. The culmination of the Griffith-Walthall connection was Henry’s best-known role as Colonel Ben Cameron in The Birth of a Nation (1915).

Throughout his career, Henry B. Walthall remained working as a motion picture actor. At the time of his death in 1936, Walthall had appeared in more than 320 films.

References: Website-IMDb.