Puttin' on the Ritz

Edward Sloman was an English silent film director, actor, screenwriter and radio broadcaster. He directed over 100 films and starred in over 30 films as an actor between 1913 and 1938. Sloman grew up in London's West End but left home at age 19 to become an actor. He spent several years in the... British theater and later became a director in both legitimate theater and vaudeville. After a quarrel with a powerful booking agent which resulted in his being effectively shut out of the British theatrical circuit, Sloman took an actress friend's advice and headed for Hollywood, emigrating in 1915. Introduced to director Wilfred Lucas at Universal Pictures, Sloman was soon employed as an actor paid $7.50 a day. To make ends meet, he wrote scenarios, which he sold for $25 apiece. Sloman wrote a script for a war film which was acknowledged by Thomas H. Ince, a major film director in Hollywood at the time, and on the basis of his work was hired by the Philadelphia-based Lubin Manufacturing Company to direct at Lubin's West Coast studio on Coronado Island near San Diego, beginning his first film in late-1915.
more