Marshall Stedman

Marshall Stedman (August 16, 1874 – December 16, 1943) was an American actor, director, playwright, author, and drama teacher who worked across stage, silent film, and education throughout a career spanning several decades. Born Edward Marshall Stedman Jr. in Bethel, Maine, he was the son of Edward Sr. and Eliza Putnam (née Rice) Stedman. His father, a decorated naval officer, was at the time of his death in 1939 the oldest surviving graduate of the United States Naval Academy and one of only three retired naval officers with service during the American Civil War. Stedman received his early schooling in Chicago at South Division High School and the Harvard Preparatory School before enrolling at Colorado College in Colorado Springs.

Stedman entered the theater profession at approximately eighteen years of age with William Morris' stock company, where he took on the role of Bob Appleton in Ludwig Fulda's three-act drama The Lost Paradise and Ned Annesley in Sydney Grundy's four-act play Sowing the Wind. He subsequently joined E. H. Sothern for two seasons and appeared in a number of one-act plays while also touring in Shakespearean repertoire productions. His Broadway career ran from 1897 to 1899 and included appearances in The King's Musketeer and Change Alley.

Around 1900, Stedman lived in Gilpin County, Colorado, alongside his father, sister Agnes, grandmother Miriam, uncle Josiah Stedman, and later his wife Myrtle. Contemporary news accounts reported that the family was involved in a mining venture near American City known as the Charlemagne Lode. On January 13, 1900, Stedman married Myrtle C. Lincoln in Chicago; she was not yet seventeen at the time and was herself an actress. Their only child, Lincoln Stedman, was born in 1907 and went on to pursue his own career in Hollywood. The couple separated around 1919 and subsequently divorced. Stedman later married Rieka Kulaars, a native of the Netherlands.

In 1906, Stedman was appointed head of the drama school at the Chicago Musical College, a post he held for approximately four years. He then spent a season in vaudeville before moving into film work, serving as a director, actor, writer, and producer at Essanay Studios and later the Selig Polyscope Company. Among his film credits was Circumstantial Evidence (1912), directed by Otis Thayer and produced by Selig Polyscope. Long considered lost, the film is included in the Dawson Film Find and is referenced in the 2016 documentary Dawson City: Frozen in Time. He also appeared in a number of villain roles in films produced by Hobart Bosworth.

Stedman returned to teaching as a drama instructor at the Eagan School of Drama and Music in Los Angeles before founding the Marshall Stedman School of Drama and Elocution in Culver City, California, in the late 1920s. Alongside his teaching work, he continued to write and act, frequently staging community theater productions performed by his students in plays of his own authorship. His prolific output as a writer included numerous published works for performance, among them What a Kiss Can Do: And Other Recitations for Children (1925), Readings and Encores for Children and Grown-Ups (1926), Loving Lunatics: A Farce Comedy in One Act (1929), and Amusing Monologues (1940), with additional titles appearing regularly through the 1930s.

Stedman died on December 16, 1943, in Laguna Beach, California, at the age of sixty-nine. He was survived by his son Lincoln, who died before the end of that same decade.