King Baggot
Birthday: 1879-11-06
Place of Birth: Saint Louis, Missouri, USA
Biography: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia William King Baggot (November 7, 1879 – July 11, 1948) was an American actor, film director and screenwriter. He was an internationally famous movie star of the silent film era. The first individually publicized leading man in America, Baggot was referred to as "King of the Movies", "The Most Photographed Man in the World", and "The Man Whose Face Is As Familiar As The Man In The Moon". Baggot appeared in over 300 motion pictures from 1909 to 1947, wrote 18 screenplays, and directed 45 movies from 1912 to 1928, including The Lie (1912), Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman (1925), and The House of Scandal (1928). He also directed William S. Hart in his most famous western, Tumbleweeds (1925). Among his film appearances, Baggot was best known for The Scarlet Letter (1911), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1913), and Ivanhoe (1913). Baggot began his career on the stage, in a Shakespearean stock company, and toured throughout the U.S. While acting in stock in St. Louis in 1909, he was cast as supporting player in the Schubert touring production of The Wishing Ring. When The Wishing Ring closed in Chicago, Baggot returned to New York to join another company. Upon a chance meeting with Harry Solter, who was directing movies for Carl Laemmle at Independent Moving Pictures Company (IMP), he was persuaded to go with Solter to the studio. Baggot became interested in the fledgling industry and decided to turn picture player. His first film was the romance short The Awakening of Bess (1909) opposite Florence Lawrence. It was directed by Harry Solter, her husband, at IMP in Fort Lee, New Jersey. At a time when screen actors worked anonymously, Baggot and Lawrence became the first "movie stars" to be given billing, a marquee, and promotion in advertising. Baggot starred in at least 42 movies opposite Lawrence from 1909 to 1911. In the latter year, he starred in at least 16 movies with Mary Pickford. He also began writing screenplays and directing, all the while becoming a major star internationally. When he appeared "in person" at theatres he was mobbed at stage doors. By 1912, he was so famous that when he took the leading part in forming the prestigious Screen Club in New York, the first organization of its kind strictly for movie people, he was the natural choice for its first president. King Baggot died in Los Angeles, California in 1948, age 68. For his contributions to the film industry, Baggot received a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. His star is located at 6312 Hollywood Boulevard.
Movies
The Temptress
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Once a Gentleman
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Think It Over
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Come Live with Me
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Shamus O'Brien
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The Cheater
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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Dr. Henry Jekyll experiments with scientific means of revealing the hidden, dark side of man and rel...
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The Marble Heart
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Mission of the War Chest
A short film about a fundraising campaign for the War Chest, a World War I initiative. The film aims...
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I Loved a Woman
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A Night at the Opera
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My Brother Talks to Horses
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Life's Twist
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The Emperor's Candlesticks
Spies on opposite sides fall in love in pre-revolutionary Russia....
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It May Happen to You
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The Wanderer
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The Hawk's Trail
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The Forbidden Thing
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Sweet Memories
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The Devil-Doll
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The Mirror
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Fragments: Surviving Pieces of Lost Films
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The Big Flash
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Sweepstakes
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The Big Store
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A Night at the Movies
A Night at the Movies is a short film starring Robert Benchley. It was Benchley's greatest success s...
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Stronger Than Desire
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Snow Gets in Your Eyes
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Mississippi
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That Mothers Might Live
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The Call of the Savage
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Dancing Co-Ed
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Arsène Lupin Returns
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The Red Rider
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The Adventures of Frank Merriwell
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The Silent Stranger
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I Take This Woman
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Merton of the Movies
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The Scarlet Letter
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Dangerous Partners
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Police Court
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Ivanhoe
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The Philadelphia Story
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Gallant Sons
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Bitter Sweet
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The Bad Sister
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A Cave Man Wooing
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Up Against It
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Graft
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Afraid to Talk
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The Wife’s Awakening
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Chinatown Squad
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Jackass Mail
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Stablemates
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Honky Tonk
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Opening Day
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What Price Hollywood?
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The Master and the Man
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In the Sultan's Garden
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For the Queen's Honor
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At a Quarter of Two
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Science
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Pictureland
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Tracked
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The Secret of the Palm
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While There is hope, There is Life
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Second Sight
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The Call of the Song
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The Fair Dentist
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The Rose's Story
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The Better Way
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The Girl in the Taxi
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The Death Kiss
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Boys Town
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The Thrill Chaser
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Torture Money
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The Eagle's Eye
A criminologist and a government agent team up to expose a ring of German spies....
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Romance in the Rain
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The Czar of Broadway
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The Secret Heart
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Absinthe
A Parisian artist becomes addicted to the liquor absinthe and sinks to robbery and murder....
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Fingers at the Window
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3 Kids and a Queen
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Rio Rita
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Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in Hollywood
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Over the Hills
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Sweepstake Annie
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At the Duke's Command
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The Ice Follies of 1939
Mary and Larry are are a modestly successful skating team. Shortly after their marriage, Mary gets a...
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Marie Antoinette
The young Austrian princess Marie Antoinette is arranged to marry Louis XVI, future king of France, ...
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San Francisco
A beautiful singer and a battling priest try to reform a Barbary Coast saloon owner in the days befo...
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Mad Holiday
A temperamental film star's vacation turns deadly when he uncovers a murder....
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Ziegfeld Girl
Discovery by Flo Ziegfeld changes a girl's life but not necessarily for the better, as three beautif...
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The Awakening of Bess
The Awakening of Bess is a silent short film of 1909 directed by Harry Solter . The protagonists of ...
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The Call of the Circus
A circus girl must decide to stay under the big top or marry the minister who loves her....
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The Count of Montebello
Gerald and Percy inherit a fortune and spend all of it in pursuit of a young heiress....
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The Eternal Triangle
A young wife instigates a duel between a dashing count, with whom she has been having an affair, and...
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A Game for Two
A wife tries to drive away her husband's best friend by flirting with him, but trouble arises when t...
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The Irony of Fate
A rejected suitor rebuffs the woman he loves after the death of her husband....
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Jane and the Stranger
Jane thinks she has witnessed a murder and the suspect is arrested; she later learns the truth and s...
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Bear Ye One Another’s Burdens
When an infirm husband learns of the dire circumstances his wife must endure, he makes every effort ...
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The Blind Man’s Tact
Five days more! Only five more days says the physician, and the man who has for so long a time been ...
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The Maelstrom
A young woman marries a man she hardly knows or understands; in a moment of crisis, the two suddenly...
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The Miser’s Daughter
A young woman pulls a fast switch on the fiance handpicked by her father....
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The New Shawl
A husband becomes jealous when he finds his wife's shawl in a suspicious location....
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Old Heads and Young Hearts
Two old gentlemen who have been pals from boyhood decide that their children ought to marry. This in...
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Once Upon a Time
A woman is forced to reevaluate the quiet man in her life when she finds he actually could be her kn...
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Pressed Roses
Roses and trousers have little in common and pressed roses presage something wrong in the scheme of ...
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A Reno Romance
A couple goes to Reno to be divorced, but change their minds at the last moment....
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The Taming of Jane
A fickle tomboy eventually falls for the suitor who had previously been annoying her....
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Transfusion
After an accident, a young girl desperately needs a blood transfusion to save her life. A young blac...
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Two Men
An orphaned girl raised by a miner in the wilderness falls in love with a tenderfoot, even though th...
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The Winning Punch
A girl's affections waver between the winner of a boxing match, and a greedy count....
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The Doctor's Perfidy
A young doctor is jealous of one of his patient's romantic interest in his nurse....
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Love's Stratagem
Nell Connors is in love with Jack, a sailor, but is unaware that he was shipwrecked and is facing tr...
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All the World’s a Stage
A jealous husband misinteprets the performance his actress wife is putting on with his best friend....
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The Great Universal Mystery
A promotional one-reel film promoting the stars of Universal Pictures....
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The Ghost Comes Home
Comic mayhem results when a small town pet store owner, mistakenly believed killed during a sea voya...
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Half a Rogue
When New York playwright Richard Warrington returns to his home town, Republican bosses nominate him...
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The Postman Always Rings Twice
A married woman and a drifter fall in love, then plot to murder her husband....
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The Man from Nowhere
Although Dorenzo murders Betty Herron, a jury convicts her brother James, and sentences him to life ...
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The Suburban
Robert Gordon wants Donald, his son, to marry Sir Ralph Fisher's sister, but Donald loves Alice, a w...
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Parnell
Irish politician Charles Stewart Parnell struggles to free his country from English rule, but his re...
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Building for Democracy
A husband and wife are arguing about how to spend their money, when 'Democracy' appears and convince...
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Kildare of Storm
At her mother’s behest Kate Leigh marries wealthy Basil Kildare, owner of a Southern plantation call...
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The Time-Lock Safe
Early movie star Florence Lawrence appears in this dramatic farce, in which the police pay a famous ...
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Holiday in Mexico
Christine Evans, the fifteen-year-old daughter of the widowed American ambassador to Mexico Jeffrey ...
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The Dwelling Place of Light
After her boss sexually harasses her and has an affair with her sister, stenographer Janet Butler qu...
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Father Brown, Detective
After notorious jewel thief Flambeau meets Evelyn Fischer during a raid on a casino, he falls deeply...
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Cheating Cheaters
The Palmers, an apparently wealthy family, move into the house next door to the Lazarres. However, t...
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Too Hot to Handle
While in Shanghai reporting on the Sino-Japanese war, Chris Hunter, a shrewd news reporter, meets pi...
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The Man Who Stayed at Home
In a Virginia resort town in August 1918, Christopher Brent is viewed as a slacker because he refuse...
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