Lowell Sherman

Lowell Sherman (October 11, 1888 – December 28, 1934) was an American actor, stage performer, and film director born in San Francisco, California, to John Sherman, a theatrical management agent, and Julia Louise Gray, a stage actress. His maternal grandmother had also been an actress, performing alongside Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes Booth. Sherman grew up immersed in the theater and began performing as a child in touring companies before making his Broadway debut in 1904.

His early Broadway appearances included Judith of Bethulia in 1904 with Nance O'Neil and David Belasco's 1905 production of The Girl of the Golden West with Blanche Bates, in which Sherman played a young Pony Express rider. He continued building his stage career over the following two decades, appearing in productions such as Leah Kleschna and High Stakes, among others. In 1923, he took on the title role in Casanova, with Katharine Cornell as his leading lady, and that same year directed and starred in Morphia, his sole Broadway directing credit. Even as his film career advanced, Sherman remained active on stage, with his final Broadway appearance coming in The Woman Disputed, which ran from September 1926 through March 1927.

By 1915, Sherman had begun appearing in silent films, typically cast as playboys. D. W. Griffith cast him against type as the villain in Way Down East in 1920, and Sherman continued alternating between villainous and roguish roles throughout the decade in films including Molly O' (1921) and A Lady of Chance (1929), and later in talkies such as Ladies of Leisure (1930) and What Price Hollywood? (1932).

In 1921, Sherman was present at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco as a guest at a party hosted by Roscoe Arbuckle. He was in an adjoining room with Maude Delmont when Arbuckle was with Virginia Rappe, who died four days later. Allegations that Arbuckle had caused her death led to his arrest, first on a murder charge later reduced to manslaughter, and Sherman testified during the subsequent trial. His career did not suffer significantly as a result of his attendance at the party.

Dissatisfied with performing, Sherman expressed that stage acting, particularly when successful, became monotonous, and that film work felt equally unrewarding. In 1930, RKO executive William LeBaron offered him the opportunity to both star in and direct Lawful Larceny, a film adaptation of a Broadway production in which Sherman had previously appeared and whose role he reprised. Over the following three years, he acted in and directed seven additional films, among them Bachelor Apartment (1931) with Irene Dunne, The Royal Bed (1931) with Mary Astor, and The Greeks Had a Word for Them (1932) with Joan Blondell, which marked his final acting role on either stage or screen.

Turning exclusively to directing in 1933, Sherman achieved his greatest professional successes. He directed Mae West in She Done Him Wrong (Paramount Pictures, 1933), her first starring film, and followed it with Morning Glory (RKO Radio Pictures, 1933), in which Katharine Hepburn delivered the performance that earned her first Academy Award. He also directed Broadway Through a Keyhole (Twentieth Century Pictures, 1933) with Russ Columbo and Born to Be Bad (United Artists, 1934) with Loretta Young and Cary Grant, who had appeared in She Done Him Wrong. His final completed project, Night Life of the Gods (Universal Pictures), was released posthumously in 1935 and was received as both a critical and financial success.

Sherman was married three times and had no children. His first wife was actress Evelyn Booth, sister of playwright John Hunter Booth, whom he married on March 11, 1914; she was granted a divorce on March 19, 1922, citing neglect and cruelty. In 1926, he married actress Pauline Garon, and filed for divorce in January 1929, claiming she had deserted him in August 1928 at her parents' insistence; the divorce was granted in March 1929. His third marriage, to actress Helene Costello, younger sister of Dolores Costello, took place on March 15, 1930, in Beverly Hills, making Sherman a brother-in-law of John Barrymore, a longtime friend with whom he appeared in the early talkie General Crack. Sherman and Costello separated in November 1931 and divorced in May 1932.

At the time of his death, Sherman was directing Becky Sharp, the first film shot entirely in three-strip Technicolor. He continued working on the production even after falling ill, completing 25 days of filming before his death. Rouben Mamoulian was brought in to finish the film and chose to reshoot it entirely, using none of Sherman's footage. Sherman died on December 28, 1934, at a Los Angeles hospital from double pneumonia and is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. News of his death was broken by Louella Parsons on her Hollywood Hotel radio broadcast; listener complaints about her handling of the announcement led to her temporary suspension by the J. Wallis Armstrong Agency, which represented the program's sponsor, the Campbell Soup Company.