Milton Sills

Milton George Gustavus Sills (January 12, 1882 – September 15, 1930) was an American actor who worked in both stage and film during the early twentieth century. Born in Chicago, Illinois, into a prosperous family, he was the son of William Henry Sills, a mineral dealer, and Josephine Antoinette Troost Sills, whose family had a background in banking. After completing high school, Sills received a scholarship to the University of Chicago, where he studied psychology and philosophy. Following graduation, he joined the university as a researcher and eventually rose to a professorship.

His path into acting began in 1905, when stage actor Donald Robertson visited the University of Chicago to lecture on Henrik Ibsen and encouraged Sills to consider a career on the stage. Sills left his academic post and joined Robertson's stock theater company, touring the country in that capacity. By 1908, while performing in New York City, he drew the attention of Broadway producers including David Belasco and Charles Frohman, and that same year made his Broadway debut in This Woman and This Man. His Broadway career extended from 1909 to 1916 and encompassed productions including Any House, Just Boys, The Law of the Land, Panthea, and What Would You Do?, among others. In 1914–1915, he played the role of Geoffrey Morton in The Law of the Land at the 48th Street Theatre. In 1912, Sills also joined the summer stock cast at the Elitch Theatre in Denver, where owner and producer Mary Elitch Long engaged him as leading man alongside Louise Woods.

Sills entered film in 1914 with the World Film Company production The Pit, a big-budget drama that marked his screen debut. Film producer William A. Brady subsequently signed him to a contract, and Sills made additional pictures for the company, among them The Deep Purple, opposite Clara Kimball Young. Through the early 1920s he worked with multiple studios, including Metro Pictures, Famous Players–Lasky, and Pathé Exchange. In 1923 he served as Colleen Moore's leading man in Flaming Youth, and the following year appeared in The Sea Hawk (1924), which became the top-grossing film of that year. In 1925, Sills and Doris Kenyon starred together in The Unguarded Hour for First National Pictures, and in 1926 he wrote and starred in Men of Steel, again alongside Kenyon. His transition to sound film began as early as 1928 with the part-talking production The Barker. His final screen appearance came in the title role of The Sea Wolf (1930), a performance described by The New York Times as "incisive."

Beyond his performing career, Sills was a founding member of Actors' Equity in 1913. On May 11, 1927, he was one of the original 36 individuals to establish the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He also authored a book published posthumously in 1932, Values: A Philosophy of Human Needs – Six Dialogues on Subjects from Reality to Immortality, co-edited by Ernest Holmes. His cultural reach extended internationally; a 1928 Danish vaudeville revue song referenced his name as a standard of male attractiveness. Poet Weldon Kees counted Sills among his favorite actors in childhood, and Sills' Men of Steel directly influenced Kees' poem "1926." For his contributions to motion pictures, Sills received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6263 Hollywood Boulevard.

In his personal life, Sills married English stage actress Gladys Edith Wynne in 1910, a niece of actress Edith Wynne Matthison. The marriage produced one child, Dorothy Sills, before Gladys filed for divorce in 1925. The following year Sills married silent film actress Doris Kenyon, and in 1927 the couple had a son, Kenyon Clarence Sills. Sills died of a heart attack on September 15, 1930, while playing tennis with his wife at their Brentwood home, at the age of 48. He was interred at Rosehill Cemetery and Mausoleum in Chicago. In December 1930, Photoplay published a poem discovered among his personal effects.